Tag: honesty

Confidence not Arrogance

Everyone knows the importance of confidence. And yet so many people struggle with it. Why? Why is it so darn difficult to build confidence? The simple answer is: because it is work. The slightly more elaborate answer is: because it requires constant hard work and honesty. I believe that when people hear that they should become more confident, they end up becoming more arrogant, which is counterproductive.

Both confidence and arrogance start with someone not feeling good about themselves. The problem with arrogance is, that it is what happens when we try to make ourselves feel better, without being willing to acknowledge our problems. We try to make other people believe, how great we are, because we cannot believe ourselves, when we say “I am awesome.”. We hope that when other people believe, that we are great, we can believe it ourselves and find a way to be at peace with ourselves. In other words we are trying to put up a show. The show that we are awesome. The show that we enjoy our lives and that we are in control.

Another very characteristic thing that is an indicator for arrogance is, when we feel the need to be acknowledged and approved by others, but most importantly: when we always want to be better than others. We constantly need to measure up against other people and be better than them, in order to be able to feel good about ourselves. This sometimes goes as far as we feel the need to put other people down. We feel the need to be seen. We feel the need to brag. We feel threatened when someone is better than us.

And while we keep all this up we end up being exhausted and still not at peace. The reason for this is simple: we lack honesty. Everything we do is nothing but a show. We know exactly that we are not as great, as we want to make other people believe. And we end up never being able to fool ourselves. Because we are not stupid.

Confidence is knowing that who we are is good enough. And that knowledge needs to be based on facts. If we are not confident, we need to consider the possibility, that there are some things we need to work on. Gaining confidence starts with honesty. It starts with figuring out, who we are. What are the things we like about ourselves and what are the things we do not like? For me some things that I did not like were and still are that I do not study enough and how much I tend to complain. Often these things are the very things standing in between us and our happiness.

We do not need to despair. Confidence is not only when we have eliminated all our flaws. Confidence is, when we know we are working towards it. We are improving. Because we started being confidence by being honest, we are still being honest with ourselves. And we get to tell ourselves that we are handled our flaw brilliantly today. Or even just that we improved compared to yesterday. Or that we kept going, even though we did not feel like it. But we can say this without lying to ourselves.

Confidence is not about what other people think about us. Confidence is what we think about us. Confidence allows us to be at ease and gives us peace because we do not have to fear our own thoughts. Of course there will be days where it is more difficult than on other days. And that is where discipline comes in. Confidence is more than just a nice feeling. I said confidence required hard work. And it does so, because it is not always easy to improve ourselves. And sometimes we just want to give in and stay in bed. We all know the feeling. But confidence is what we gain from getting up nevertheless.

We cannot be happy without being confident. And we cannot gain confidence without honesty and self-discipline. We need both. We can acknowledge our flaws and do little to nothing about them. That is just immature, maybe even cowardly behavior. It showcases a lack of self-discipline. And while it is true that some naturally have more than others and some build it easier than others, I do not believe that anyone should allow themselves to use that an excuse to not be confident. If we are self-disciplined, but not honest about our flaws, we are wasting our energy, or maybe we are not as disciplined, as we thought we were to begin with.

I get it. I am struggling with discipline myself. It’s tough. And being honest with ourselves is a bench. But the reality is that we all want to be happy. And being honest with ourselves only hurts us, if it means, we have to work on ourselves. Why would we try to deceive ourselves? Arrogance is, when we try to deceive others in the hopes that at some point we end up believing it ourselves. We need to understand that it is our own decision. No one is making us build confidence. No one is making us be honest with ourselves. But I will rather be honest with myself and put in some work in order to gain peace and happiness. In order to be able to live with myself.

The people who are constantly stating we need to be more confident conveniently forget to mention how much work it is, because they are aware, that if they admit that, some people will choose to not start this journey. But I think, that we need to understand the choice that we have. And it is no good to us, if we think we are confident and still feel so insecure. That insecurity is most likely coming from some flaw within us, that we have not addressed yet.

While it is true, that confidence is not about how other people see is, rather than about us being please about us, we also have to understand that we are humans, which means, we have emotion and rationality. What I have described tackles the topic of self-confidence from a rational perspective. But sometimes there is no rational reason for us to feel insecure. Sometimes we are truly confident rather than arrogant, and still feel insecure. This is a mere emotion, and we really know, we are good enough. In such situations it can help to approach the problem from an emotional side, because the problem is purely emotional to begin with.

Let me illustrate this with an example: I have been very insecure about my appearance and my body since I was a little girl, even though there was no reason for that. When I got into uni and felt insecure, I imagined what I would think about me, if I saw myself. Since what I thought was never really negative, I have been able to tremendously improve my body image. Because what I felt was perfectly irrational. This would not have worked, if I had not been taken care of. Which is, why I advise to take a rational approach to confidence. We naturally try to deal with our insecurities emotionally. But we can do that so much better, if there are actually facts to back up our positive self-talk.

It is also important to understand the difference between being arrogant vs. being confident and competitive. Both types of people may feel threatened when they come across someone who is better than them. But the arrogant person may try to talk them down or talk themselves up, maybe even do some improvement to keep up the facade. The confident but competitive person will take this encounter as a motivation to improve further. That is a good thing as long as we don’t try to improve, just to be better than that person. A confident person does not care if someone else is better at something, they don’t care for. They acknowledge and praise the achievement. But they will not go out of their way to be better than the other person.

Say we meet someone who runs faster than us. Us trying to beat that person is not a bad thing. It may benefit our health and mental state. But it becomes problematic, as soon as we endanger ourselves, or when it makes us feel threatened even though running that fast was never our goal to begin with.

This illustrates beautifully not only what it means to be confident, but also why it is so “in” to not care about what other people think, because if we are confident, it does not matter, what people think, because we know our flaws and we also know we are working on them. In summary confidence is about knowing ourselves. Knowing who we are today. And knowing who we want to be. It is about working towards that in order to not lie to ourselves when we say “I love who I am.”.

High Caliber Women

I have been mentally evolved in the thoughts of what makes a high caliber woman for a while now. It is no secret, that I am a woman and therefore it is obvious, where my interest in the topic is coming from.

Respect.

I have talked about respect a lot. And I believe the first and foremost quality a high caliber woman has, is respect. Respect for herself, for the ones around her. For opinions she is presented with. She respects the rules of the community she is living in. That does not mean, she has to like them, but she respects them and lives according to them. For instance this applies to respecting speed limits. Not because she thinks that the speed limit itself deserves her respect, but she respects the government who made those rules enough, to believe, that they make those rules with everyone’s best interest in mind, and therefore she will keep to those rules, because she respects others and she will never want to hurt them, therefore doing, what is best for everybody.

Integrity.

While respect is a very big topic and does affect many areas of a human’s specifically a woman’s life, integrity is even bigger. Much bigger. Integrity is about the character of a woman. Of course a woman gets to choose who she wants to be. She gets to choose her partner and she gets to choose to stay single. But once she chooses she makes a commitment. This does not only apply to relationships. This also applies to everything in a woman’s life. She will not make important decisions like how to spend her time lightly. She will make a decision and commit. Which means, that everything a high caliber woman sets her mind to she considers worth fighting for.

She makes those choices out of respect for herself and her surroundings. But it is impossible to make good choices, choices we can commit to, if we are not able to be honest. If a high caliber woman does not want to do something, she will communicate that. Respectfully. But unmisunderstandably. Because she understands that it is more important to commit fully to the things she does want to do, than to commit to a big number of things half-heartedly. A good woman will choose her commitments wisely, because she understands the importance of those choices. This is what separates her from an experimenting Teenager. There is nothing wrong, with trying out new things. We can also commit to trying something out, we can commit to researching how a new style of clothes would make us feel. But while the Teenager thinks this new edgy style is their new style that they will be wearing for the rest of their lives, a high caliber woman knows she is just trying something new. And once she knows how that new style makes her feel she will commit to wearing it sometimes or not. She does not need to commit to always wearing it, but she can do so, if she wishes to.

Integrity is also about the values a woman commits to. Integrity means that she knows and respects her values. She does not compromise them for momentary pleasure. She protects those values. And she will distance herself from anyone who tries to alter her values. Not because she is a coward. But because she is aware, that the longer she is around people who do not respect her values to more likely it becomes she will water down those very values, which is never something anyone with integrity should be doing.

And finally: She cares about her commitments. Which is exactly, why she does not change what she commits to on a whim. She puts effort into her commitments. She cares about them. And they are valuable to her. This includes her social commitments, her commitments to learning new skills and exploring new hobbies, and this also includes her commitment to herself.

Gentleness and Caring.

I have an entire blog post on caring. And this most obviously ties into commitment and integrity. But it is so important on its own, that I could not just skip it here. Not only caring about something is a very beautiful quality in a woman, but also caring for something or someone. This can be the people around her, her family, her friends, her community, or her pets or flowers or even just the things she own. And she does so in gentle manner. A high quality woman does not have the intention, to hurt anyone or anything, therefore she will approaches things with gentleness. This does not mean, she will fake and be sweet just to please someone, when really she thinks that that person overstepped the boundaries. A high value woman is also honest. But she will not try to put that person back into his/her place, as gently as possible.

But from this caring also comes the protective sides in a high value woman. Gentleness and caring does not make the woman weak. They makes her strong. And make her fight for, what she believes in and protect those dear to her.

Communication and Honesty.

In the section on integrity I discussed the ability of a woman to understand, that she is just researching. In order to know what her commitments are, a high caliber woman will always be honest with herself. This ties back into integrity and respect. Without honesty it is very hard, to make the right decisions and the right commitments.

A high caliber woman will always speak her mind, but she will not end up loud and harsh, doing it. She will stay respectful and gentle, but yet firm. She understands the importance of open and honest communication. She understands that her relationships depend on it. And she tries her best to not lash out on someone for telling the truth or get upset by it. She will try to make her surrounding a safe place for the truth.

Appearance.

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Looks. Appearance. They say so much about us. And many people put a lot of time and effort into maintaining them. And I agree with the statement that looks are important. But they are not important in themselves. They matter, because they allow us, to know how much a woman (or a man for that matter) respects herself. Looks are not important to tell us, what social class someone is in. They are important to tell us how well someone takes care of themselves.

Do not be fooled: Appearance does not only include our hair and make up. There is so much more to it. Our level of physical activity, our grooming and our nutrition. A high value woman does not need a personal trainer or a dietitian. She does not need to get a professional to do her hair and nails every other week. But she will take care of her hair, such that it is healthy. She will take care of her diet and exercise such that she is healthy.

She does so, because she values herself. Her routines revolve around staying healthy out of respect. This is the direct counter-action of self-harm. This would not be a blog post of mine, if I would not be mentioning mental health at some point. But I am serious. We cannot be truly high value, if we do not value ourselves. It is not necessary to go crazy with self-care. But it is very much crucial, we communicate to ourselves, that we matter, and that we care.

Knowledge.

A high caliber woman does not only look good and has high standards for her own values and commitments. She also understands the power of knowledge. She understands that there is always more to learn. And she never stops learning. She may not have an interest in every subject out there. But she has respect for every subject out there. Therefore she knows a little bit of everything. And if she meets someone from a field she does not know a lot about she will not be too good to be taught some more about it.

A high value woman will keep reading about the things she cares about. And she will keep growing her knowledge in those fields.

Her relationship to herself.

This may be the most important part of all. A high value woman will always respect herself. This means, she will take care of herself. And she understands that it is her first and foremost responsibility to do so. Every other commitment is meaningless if she does not manage to have a healthy relationship with herself.

A high quality woman knows herself, including her feelings, her likes and dislikes and her needs. she is able to communicate those and take care of herself by satisfying those needs. She will also understand when she is reaching her limit and needs some help. And she will ask for that help.

She keeps herself to high standards and keeps improving constantly. She knows, that once she stops improving she will start loosing her qualities.

Relationships.

Allow me to say one thing: Every woman can be high caliber, if she chooses to. It does not matter whether or not she is in a relationship or not. It would be wrong to state that a relationship is just another commitment, because it is a very special commitment. But a woman does not need to be in a relationship to be high value. I would even go as far as to say that a relationship does not actually affect a woman’s value. Maybe it may seem like her value changes. But that is not the case.

For some women a relationship and the perspective of motherhood is a motivation to improve and grow on an individual level. And that is a good thing. Wanting to improve is always good, no matter where that will is coming from. It does not mean, that her improvement depends on the relationship. It just means, that her relationship makes her better and frankly that is, how it is supposed to be.

But wanting to grow is not tied to relationships. It is not tied to how we grow up. It is not tied to our friends or our environment. It is tied to who we choose to be.