I recently mentioned how I went through some of my old posts and saw that the tone of some of my posts came across as arrogance (which was definitely not what I was going for in posting).
Which brings me to the question: What separates arrogance from playful cockiness?
Some of the things I said that were off putting were along the lines of, “Of course I succeeded – why wouldn’t I?” or “… and then I did this to her and then I did this to her…” Things like that. Now, I’m exagerating it a bit for the purpose of this discussion, but some of it really did sound that obnoxious and I was totally unaware how it came across as I was writing it.
What made it arrogant was that I was kind of implying that I am flawless and that everything comes easy to me. I think that playful cockiness is about expectations, whereas arrogance is about beliefs about one’s self. Arrogance has a feeling of “I am better than you” whereas cockiness has a feeling of “I expect great things and I’m not ashamed to say it.”
Now on the inside I think that whenever I come across as arrogant, it’s really just me propping up a wall to replace a weak belief. The are plenty of things in my life that I am confident about and when I talk about them I do so in a more laid back way. There are other things I know I’m not great at and I’m OK with it, so I have no problem admitting it. It’s the things that I want to be good at or that I’m working on being good at where I run the risk of coming across as “arrogant”.
My method in knocking out old habits and beliefs is to choose a new, empowering belief and to continually rehearse it in my mind. This means I’ll repeat it to myself, I’ll imagine my life with that belief in place, I’ll imagine the results I want, etc. Sometimes in my efforts to strengthen the belief I’ll explicitly state it, which comes across as arrogant when it’s really just an attempt to block my old, disempowering beliefs from coming up.
The news is that a lot of the beliefs that I have worked on have shifted into what I wanted them to be, which is great! Now I am a lot more laid back in those areas since my reality did eventually shift towards where I want it to be.
I’ve said it before, I believe this game is about balance. We start on one side and in our attempt to correct something, we swing to the opposite extreme. Then we find the middle ground.
Thoughts?
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Great Post!!
We need to have confidence to succeed in anything, without it we have no chance.
I look at all of the top guys whether it be sports stars, actors, writers, artists and anyone who is good at what they do they must believe in themselves and know that they can do what ever they put their mind to.
Also on arrogance I know that it catches up with them in the end because like you said they think they are better then everyone and they don’t improve because they think that their game or life does not need improving.
Take Care Man.
You’re just not good enough to carry yourself to the point where any confidence can be taken as playful cockiness.
Dear Skills,
You are a cunt.