Confidence is one of the most essential requirements of life. Especially in crucial life situations where coming across as aware of yourself matters the most, it is your level of confidence as well as your assertion of it that can grant you with an identity others look up to in awe. But it takes no more than a haughty awareness of oneself to make your tremendous confidence just another instance of tumbling to the downfall that overconfidence has always been bringing folks to. So in order that your confidence lets you have the best of it and not instead beget your downfall, it’s essential that you stay rooted and not go over the limit. But understanding when you are stepping the line is crucial to your perception, so that you continue to wade in the deep expanse of confidence and not go drowning in its extant reach.
Here’s the most significant pointers that will help you in not going overboard with this very crucial life skill-
Assertion
Source: Indiatimes.com
A great deal about being confident is asserting your confidence. That’s because when you are assured of yourself and your place, there comes a natural tendency to assert your worth. But the deal here is that this assertion should always be subtle. In fact a marked departure of confidence is when you feel the need to assert. As a confident person, the energy inside of you will prove its worth which is why you don’t actually need to worry about showing off your confidence. The moment you feel the need or the urge to assert your worth is when you should know that you are going overboard with it.
Overconfidence comes across as something very repulsive mainly because it involves the tendency to come across as superior. Or in other words trying so hard to assert the confident you that you shake other people off. No one like an obnoxious snob, someone who is repeatedly trying to brush his/her presence onto the face of others. And an overconfident person does just that, constantly being a bit too vocal about what they are in order to subvert the shortcomings of what they aren’t. Letting therefore your actions speak for you instead of proceeding to doing all the talking yourself is an essential mechanism to not cross over the threshold of confidence.
Acceptance
Whoever believes that a confident person is one who knows every single thing that will not let him fail ever in life is living in a bubble of unreality. Everyone and anyone can fail in life. That however is not a definer of the worth of confidence but rather a more dynamic view into the ways of life. Because being confident does not entail a life of convenience for you, it is necessary to be accepting of whatever life gives you. And not just in loss that should not let you be underconfident, incessant successes too should not render you so overconfident that you completely overrule the uncertain nature of existence. Accepting therefore the wins graciously and not boastfully is what can keep you from stepping into overconfidence.
Calmness
Because confidence in itself is a very positive trait, it also propagates similar positive characteristics like calmness. And the calm characteristic of a confident person stems from his knowledge of his worth. Not feeling the need to assert himself unnecessarily, such people generally remain composed within their perception of themselves. Because they know they can do the job at hand better than most others, they do not have much to worry about and therefore come across as someone extremely cool and composed. While it is indeed possible that even the most confident of people get excited when they come face to face with a challenge, it is again how they assert their emotions that makes all the difference. Confidence can render your excited, but never aggressive. The moment you cross over to the murky terrains of unjustified aggression, you let your confident self morph into a hollow, overconfident one.
Pride
Source: lifealth.com
Being confident brings a sense of belief in yourself, that which drives out any other form of assurance that you might need. This is why confident people are never proud of their endowing. They can be steeped tremendously in it, treasure it, nurture it and most importantly value it. But their awareness of something that can as easily hold them back as it allows them to flourish keeps them from being unduly obsessed with it.
Pride is but a manifestation of self obsession or more appropriately a trait manifested mostly but not exclusively, by narcissistic personalities. And people who are proud of their confidence have a lot to lose. Not only they risk coming across as the overconfident folk everyone detests, they also risk losing their own confident self. This is because when you gratify a vice as corroding as pride, you seldom have the energy to concentrate on other things in life. Which means eating away your own confidence till the point you become underconfident even when you might come across as someone on the extreme opposite of the spectrum
Realisation
Much of the level of confidence you embody in your person comes from an inner realisation that which goads you into undertaking such tasks that might seem inconceivable at first. The inner voice that prods you on into confidence can also let you to be overconfident if you allow it to fall under the influence of external dictums. While people of course can encourage you and give the pep talk to instill some gut in your spirit, it becomes essential that you do not let all the talking get to your head.
It’s easier said than done though. Even when the ‘talk’ is all in good spirit and with good reason, it can take you overboard if you just dwell into everything everyone says without having a clear perception of yourself. No matter how well someone might know you in person, it’s always your own understanding that makes up who you are. Realising therefore also your limitations is one rather unlikely but essential key to holding yourself from not getting overconfident. Just as having faith in your abilities is crucial to building up your confidence, similarly being aware of what limits you helps keep your perception of the self from getting unnecessarily bloated. An acute realisation of what makes you confident is a good way to keep it under check in order to make the best out of this skill.
Discontentment
What makes confidence such a coveted life skill is that it gives you the ability to accomplish things simply by believing that you can do them. But just because you can do a job, and do it well than most others doesn’t however mean that you are the only one capable of it. Confidence is having belief in your abilities, overconfidence is having the belief in other’s disabilities. In its negative connotation therefore, overconfidence develops from other negative traits in you. And one of such negativities is envy that itself stems from discontentment.
Even when your overconfidence might not seem to be something that can arise out of jealousy, it is in many ways a reiteration of similar emotions. Naturally then, keeping the envious feels in check can serve to disrupt your overconfidence. Because confidence anyway is about how assured you are of yourself, you can save yourself from going pompously debilitating to your own disadvantage by keeping the analysis to yourself and not make it an extension of surveying the limitations of others.
Assumptions
Confidence resides in realistic assumptions, that involves making such life decisions that are a direct draw from the potential that you harbour within yourself. To that effect therefore, assumptions that are rooted in your perception of the self renders you confident and at the same time stops you from getting away with too much of that recognition. Overconfidence sets in when you pursue such expectations from yourself that are based on fancied assumptions.
Overconfidence in fact is refusal to see yourself for who you are but what you can be can be, based on assumptions that are as flawed as you. It is important hence to understand where your desires stem from so that they do not coerce your beliefs into attaining something unpracticable from you. Even a little generousness on your part as to relaxing the basis of your assumptions and there you are- an uncouth person without anything but overconfidence to reek of.
