Confidence can make you feel good about yourself – “able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.” But, can too much confident make you arrogant?
While confidence is becoming, arrogance can undermine what you’re striving to achieve. A bit of humility can go a long way to increase your attractiveness and make your true confidence stand out.
Sometimes the line between confidence and arrogance becomes blurred.
Before you do more damage to your reputation than good, there are some things you should ask yourself about you may come across to others. This includes:
- Do you make eye contact? If you avoid making eye contact with others, you could project the image of being interested in only yourself. Confident people make eye contact and are interested unequivocally in the conversation taking place.
- Are you always late? Being consistently late indicates a lack of respect for others. Your time isn’t more important than everyone else’s. If you’re a confident person, you’re on time or apologize when you run into a snag.
- Do you bully others by being condescending? Calling others “stupid,” and downplaying their successes doesn’t make you look confident – it makes you look like a bully. Eventually, you’ll lose all respect from others.
- Do you “one-up” others during conversations? Trying to show your superiority over others by one-upping is actually a turn-off to others. You don’t look more superior – you look desperate for attention.
- Do you blame others for your mistakes? If you’re arrogant, you don’t like to “lose,” and will blame others rather than take the fall for your own mistakes.
- Are you a “name-dropper”? Confident leaders don’t brag endlessly about whom they know or met or are friends with. It’s perfectly okay at times to bring your famous friend into the mix of conversation, but consistently dropping names makes you seem fake.
- Do you know the answer to “everything”? Arrogant people will invent an answer to a question or problem rather than admitting to not knowing. The confident person will admit he or she doesn’t know the answer, but will vow to find a solution.
- Do you truly listen to others? Some people interrupt others because they’re only concerned about what they want to say and push others into the background. They don’t listen and they always look around the room for someone else to talk to.
The fine line between confidence and arrogance can be difficult to maneuver – especially if you’re overly confident. Monitor your actions and words and remember that when you’re confident, you’re an inspiration to others. If you’re arrogant, others are repulsed and turned-off by your words and actions.
