I was really under-confident until high school. Around sophomore year, I decided that I needed to change, so I changed everything about myself... I had long hair, so I cut it short. I switched from glasses to contacts, from wearing the same clothes everyday to actually caring how I looked, from being sedentary to exercising daily, and probably most importantly, I forced myself to actually hold conversations with people. In the beginning, it was hard, but after a while it got easier and easier until there was no apprehension or self-doubt. All you really need to do to become more confident is have the will to better yourself and be willing to try something.
Upon further reflection, I dislike the phrase "over-confident." Really, people are either truly self-confident, or they have a lacking somewhere. Over-confidence is really a result of a lack of confidence; the person exhibiting over-confidence is overcompensating for a lack of confidence elsewhere.
In order to get true confidence, you have to become comfortable and in touch with yourself. You also need to be in control of yourself. Being comfortable with yourself includes admitting and accepting your flaws and weaknesses, and working on them where you can. Truly confident people recognize their shortcomings, but actively work on them if they can, or work around them or in spite of them.
The negative consequence of overconfidence is that you will attempt things and fail at them.
Confidence is great, don't get me wrong, but being overly confident can result in the alienation of others that could aid you in your pursuits and put you in dangerous situations and failures too great to bounce back from. It can also keep you narrow minded and unable to learn, grow, and adapt.
Being confidant, but understanding your current limitations/weaknesses is the key. You can compensate for those weakness and push past these limitations if you are aware of them and take them into account. If you are overly confident, you are blind to your faults and set yourself up for greater failure.
I'm going to go off of what some others have said already, and bring in some of my own thoughts regarding this.
To start, I think it's important to really specify the difference between courage and confidence. A lot of people use these words interchangeably, and they're really not the same thing, at least to me. When I think of courage, I think of Aristotle's definition, which is that courage is the ability to face danger. Nothing more or less than that. When I think of confidence, I really think of it as the ability to defend one's own beliefs. There is a big difference here. And to make another comparison with Aristotle, he views courage as the mean between the two extremes of cowardice and recklessness (that is, never facing danger, and never backing down even when there is no benefit to doing so), as I view confidence to be the mean between insecurity and bigotry.
Taking the under confident person, or the insecure person, they have no real grasp on what it is that they believe in, they don't have a good sense of who they are. This is why they are easy to manipulate and bully, since every single idea that assaults them makes them question themselves. If any person disagrees with them, they cannot do anything because they no longer know what is correct. They constantly doubt themselves. I think you reason you see many of these kinds of geeks is because the population of kids, who are inherently insecure, that are into geeky things continues to grow, and they are very prevalent in certain areas like forums and conventions.
Taking the over confident person, or the bigoted person, they are so sure that what they believe is right, that they will never accept an opposing opinion. They spend most of their time trying to coax and argue with people because they simply don't understand that it's even an option to think differently than they do. They will stubbornly defend their position to their bitter ends. You see these kinds of people in the uneducated masses, both young and old alike. They end up like that because they are ignorant and are usually forced to be that way. You will generally find that people who try to learn or are forced to learn tend to be more open to new ideas.
So to try to answer the original question, I do agree that several people on here do fit into the over confident range. Nobody is bigoted by any stretch, but there are various strains of stubbornness. These will pop up because in many areas, you have to choose one of two sides. Nothing wrong with that, you have to choose a side and be confident in your choice. But there are a lot of times when people here take that too far. I see it mostly in threads relating to politics. I also notice that certain people here do get ripped down in mean-spirited ways more than others. In fact, the main reason I left this forum for almost a year was because my first impressions of the people here were rather negative. "What a bunch of haughty, self-righteous assholes" I believe is what I thought. In same ways, it's still true, but I'm willing to take that over the excessive immaturity of most forums. And even if some people do act like that, I do believe that every one here is good natured and they argue and criticize because they want to improve others.
In that vein, there are a few people in this thread who want to give advice on how to gain confidence. As someone who has swung between both extremes for a long, long time, it takes years to finally get that middle alignment. And even with the amount of progress I've gained in reaching that middle, I'm still insecure in some areas. To that end, I'm not going to give any advice, because I'm not going to assume that I know what anyone's position is. All I know is that for me, the first step was to come to a complete acceptance of who I was, faults and all. After that, then I could determine what I wanted to improve upon, and to that end, I resolved that the best way for me to be the best person I could be, is to put my value into others and improve them. Honestly, once I started doing that, everything else pretty much came to me.
Being confidant, but understanding your current limitations/weaknesses is the key. You can compensate for those weakness and push past these limitations if you are aware of them and take them into account. If you are overly confident, you are blind to your faults and set yourself up for greater failure.
You discover your limits by trying and failing. Without confidence, you never try. Just push everything to the limit and things will be as good as they can possibly be.
@theknoxinator That was an illuminating post. I agree with most of what you say, almost all of it really. What you say about over confident people is what I was trying to get at with my post. I guess what I wonder is if the over confident people are right and the under confident take insults too seriously, or if the under confident people are right and those who are over confident are being unnecessarily harsh. Honestly, I'm biased towards the second opinion, so I wanted to discuss this.
That's not really the case here. Either the under confident people are insulted too much, or they're not. I see what you're getting at, but it doesn't really work that way. In your case, one side is still more right than the other. I want to figure out which side that is. Dunno why...
It's a bit silly to take personal, internal struggles and make them into a war between factions. Making insults less harsh and not overreacting are both good solutions to the same problem, though.
Either the under confident people are insulted too much
What insults are you talking about?
Times when someone less confident has posted in an unconfident way about something, people have harassed them as emo or annoying and told them to stop pitying themselves. My question is really about whether that's justified. Are our responses emo, or justified? Do we deserve to be called that, or not? I guess that's the issue I'm trying to get at here.
Times when someone less confident has posted in an unconfident way about something, people have harassed them as emo or annoying and told them to stop pitying themselves. My question is really about whether that's justified. Are our responses emo, or justified? Do we deserve to be called that, or not? I guess that's the issue I'm trying to get at here.
I'm really curious to see specific examples of this, because I wonder if maybe you're taking these comments harder than they're intended. In any case, I don't think that being told to stop pitying oneself is an insult -- it's good advice, albeit maybe not phrased as delicately as one would hope. "Emo" is just a silly word, and those who use it can generally be dismissed out of hand.
The one time that comes to mind is when Geoffino was feeling uncertain about his future in the fail of your day thread, I believe was where it was posted. Some had constructive things to say, others...Not so much. They said that he was overreacting and being whiny. In my opinion, he wasn't. I understand what it's like to feel bad after a bad experience and have doubts. I don't find that self-pitying, but just a part of life. It seems unfair to judge them like that. So, am I wrong? Is it self-pity and I'm blinded by my empathy?
So you don't think there's any possibility that one person is right? I just wonder if this difference is solvable. Those with confidence will always be critical of those who don't, and I wonder if either side is right. But I suppose it is all opinion. It just seems like there would be some definite in there somewhere.
Heh, I might get a little long winded again here, but this is one of those topics that I've spent years studying in regards to myself.
I think there is another small distinction to be made. If someone is insulted, and they take it more personally than most people think they should, it's not really because they're under confident (though they are), it is because they have low self-esteem. Again, like courage, these are not the same to me. While confidence is the ability to defend one's own beliefs, self-esteem is the ability to have beliefs in the first place. The problem you see with people who truly have low self-esteem, is that they have nothing to believe in. They certainly don't believe in themselves, but they also have lots of trouble believing in friends, family, God, or whatever else there may be. Under confidence, or insecurity, is directly correlated with self-esteem, and is caused by self-esteem, but not necessarily the other way around. The relationship is basically like this: Confidence cannot rise unless self-esteem rises before it. So, a person who has low self-esteem can never have confidence because they have nothing to believe in. A person, however, can have good self-esteem, yet still not be all that confident. I, personally, fall into this category with certain things. I have a great life, I love where I live and my friends and family around me, but I still get terrified when speaking in front of large groups, or I still get nervous when meeting people for the first time. This isn't because I don't believe in what I am, but because I'm afraid of whether they will attack what it is I believe in.
Anyway, enough of that tangent. I do actually agree in general that people on this forum do not really insult each other very much. They do a lot of yelling, they tell each other that they're wrong all the time, and they accuse each other of doing stupid things, but that's not really insulting. However, I would also state that most people who have never had major insecurities or low self-esteem do not know how much their words can hurt. As I said above, insecure people will instantly start questioning themselves once they are challenged. Questioning turns to doubt. Doubt turns disillusionment. And when a person gets disillusioned enough, they stop believing, which in turn, will lower self-esteem. And that is where the hurt comes from.
I will give an example from this forum, since it was requested. Also as I said above, my initial impressions of the people here were not great the first time around. And it really all came to a head when I (foolishly) decided to give my two cents regarding the presidential debates last year. I say (foolishly) because I do my best to stay out of politics. The thread was going back and forth arguing over who, Obama or McCain, did better during the debate. I did watch it and I personally thought both men were poised, collected, and got their points across. At that point, whoever wins is really whoever you already believe in more. So, I just made a comment about why can't people see the positives in both candidates. What did I get? Something along the lines of, "What the fuck? Why are you even talking? If you're not going to come down on one side or the other, shut the fuck up and go away. Any person who cannot make a decision is not worth speaking to."
Really? Not worth speaking to? Just because I thought both candidates did well, I'm suddenly not worth speaking to? To me, at the time, that was basically equivalent to saying that I am not good enough to even speak to these people. I am beneath them. So, I left the forum. Over the last year I advanced by leaps in bounds in both self-esteem and confidence, to the point where I decided to give this place another shot. And I'm glad that I did.
Now, is that really a case of someone being over confident yelling at someone who was under confident? No, not really. It was really just a case of someone being an arrogant dick towards someone who had very low confidence. But to answer Axel's question, I place more of the fault on people who do the insulting than I do on the people who take it for one reason. People who have low self-esteem and are insecure, that is the way they are, and they can't help how much something hurts them, no more so than a person can help how much a bullet hurts them. The people who are insensitive and stubborn, they can help what they say, they can just not do it. This is not to say that the former cannot help themselves because they can, they can build up the armor necessary to stop words from hurting them all the time, but until they can do that, I don't blame them. I blame the harassers because they have the power to shut up.
EDIT: A little more based on what was said while I wrote this. For me, there is a definite, and it has nothing to do with how much confidence one has. You could be that guy in the corner who never talks to anybody, or you could be the guy who is rallying people to a cause, it doesn't matter. The person who is right is the person who does not care about the difference. The person who is right, is the one who includes others regardless of how people fall in the spectrum. Any person who looks down on somebody because they are insecure is always wrong. Any person who avoids someone just because they will never budge on an issue is always wrong. There are exceptions to this of course, as I do think that any person who is so stubborn as to be a bigot should be avoided, but confidence itself should not be a deciding factor.
That's always been what I thought too, if the person doesn't like what we're saying, ignore us. But do we need that wake up call that we're being "emo?" Is what we're doing really bad? There's nothing good about having low confidence, I won't deny that, but it seems unfair to attack someone who's feeling bad because of low confidence. But is it? I know I'm asking the same question over and over again, but it's something that piques my curiosity because it has so many angles to it.
So you don't think there's any possibility that one person is right? I just wonder if this difference is solvable. Those with confidence will always be critical of those who don't, and I wonder if either side is right. But I suppose it is all opinion. It just seems like there would be some definite in there somewhere.
Nope. That's the problem with people, you can come to a general consensus on a handful of things, but 99% of things, there will always be people who think differently, and no absolutes of right and wrong in opinion.
So you don't think there's any possibility that one person is right? I just wonder if this difference is solvable. Those with confidence will always be critical of those who don't, and I wonder if either side is right. But I suppose it is all opinion. It just seems like there would be some definite in there somewhere.
I think I'll be a little more specific since my edit is a little hard to understand. My opinion, and I think most people should agree with it, is that if you truly are a confident person, you shouldn't have to criticize anyone. If you have to criticize someone because they are different in some way, then you are still missing something yourself. In that case, they are not in the right.
That's always been what I thought too, if the person doesn't like what we're saying, ignore us. But do we need that wake up call that we're being "emo?" Is what we're doing really bad? There's nothing good about having low confidence, I won't deny that, but it seems unfair to attack someone who's feeling bad because of low confidence. But is it? I know I'm asking the same question over and over again, but it's something that piques my curiosity because it has so many angles to it.
To reiterate again, it is absolutely unfair to attack someone because of insecurity. Remember that I said confidence is the ability to defend your beliefs, there is no attack in there. People who attack do so because they lack something else. And being insecure is not in itself bad. It's only bad if you think you should be better than that. And if that's how you feel, then work to change it.
So you don't think there's any possibility that one person is right? I just wonder if this difference is solvable. Those with confidence will always be critical of those who don't, and I wonder if either side is right. But I suppose it is all opinion. It just seems like there would be some definite in there somewhere.
I think I'll be a little more specific since my edit is a little hard to understand. My opinion, and I think most people should agree with it, is that if you truly are a confident person, you shouldn't have to criticize anyone. If you have to criticize someone because they are different in some way, then you are still missing something yourself. In that case, they are not in the right.
Sure, if you feel the need to criticize others merely for self-satisfaction, you need to work on that, but that doesn't mean it's inherently wrong to criticize others.
That's always been what I thought too, if the person doesn't like what we're saying, ignore us. But do we need that wake up call that we're being "emo?" Is what we're doing really bad? There's nothing good about having low confidence, I won't deny that, but it seems unfair to attack someone who's feeling bad because of low confidence. But is it? I know I'm asking the same question over and over again, but it's something that piques my curiosity because it has so many angles to it.
To reiterate again, it is absolutely unfair to attack someone because of insecurity. Remember that I said confidence is the ability todefendyour beliefs, there is noattackin there. People who attack do so because they lack something else. And being insecure is not in itself bad. It's only bad if you think you should be better than that. And if that's how you feel, then work to change it.
Without attacking another person's position on an issue, there can't be any debate. I'm willing to agree that attacking others' beliefs isn't entirely correlated with defending one's own (though there is some correlation), but attacking another's beliefs is not inherently a bad thing.
To reiterate again, it is absolutely unfair to attack someone because of insecurity. Remember that I said confidence is the ability todefendyour beliefs, there is noattackin there. People who attack do so because they lack something else. And being insecure is not in itself bad. It's only bad if you think you should be better than that. And if that's how you feel, then work to change it.
Let me bring up a specific example, one of fundamentalist believers. Axel, this example has nothing to do with you, so don't take it personally - you're not a fundamentalist anyway.
I hear a lot of people say "I'm happy to let you hold your own beliefs, as long as you don't try to shove them in my face." Well, I'm not so sure I agree with the sentiment there. Let me demonstrate by giving my personal ranking (in terms of morality, not intelligence) people associated with religious fundamentalism, from worst to best:
Those who don't really believe what they're saying, but do it for personal gain.
Those who disagree, but just "go along with it" anyway.
Those who have complete conviction, and are willing to sit idly by while many people all around them are condemned to eternal suffering.
Those who have complete conviction, and attempt to convert others because they believe that's the only way to help them.
Those who aren't really fundamentalist.
Obviously, those who don't really believe but have other reasons for involvement with fundamentalism are the worst kind. However, when it comes to people who really do believe, it disturbs me to think that someone is willing to write me off as "just another one bound for eternal damnation".
If one honestly believes that one's beliefs are beneficial, or even more so that someone else's are harmful, then not only is it acceptable to attack another's beliefs, it is, I should think, the only right thing to do.
Okay, I do not disagree, I would just use a different term than attack. If I feel that somebody is wrong in their beliefs, and I want to convince them that they're wrong, I would consider that challenging, not attacking. To me, attacking is opposing in a mean, unrelenting way in a way that is meant to bring people down. To challenge someone's beliefs is more akin to opening a debate. In those cases, I wholeheartedly agree.
And when I said criticize, I meant that in the same way as attack. Probably not the best term because criticize is on the same level as challenge to me. But even then, I relate criticism with acts and products, not beliefs.
The way you said it was misleading, considering you linked the terms "attack" and "defend". I would say that you're looking for a term more like "deride".
Comments
In order to get true confidence, you have to become comfortable and in touch with yourself. You also need to be in control of yourself. Being comfortable with yourself includes admitting and accepting your flaws and weaknesses, and working on them where you can. Truly confident people recognize their shortcomings, but actively work on them if they can, or work around them or in spite of them.
Being confidant, but understanding your current limitations/weaknesses is the key. You can compensate for those weakness and push past these limitations if you are aware of them and take them into account. If you are overly confident, you are blind to your faults and set yourself up for greater failure.
To start, I think it's important to really specify the difference between courage and confidence. A lot of people use these words interchangeably, and they're really not the same thing, at least to me. When I think of courage, I think of Aristotle's definition, which is that courage is the ability to face danger. Nothing more or less than that. When I think of confidence, I really think of it as the ability to defend one's own beliefs. There is a big difference here. And to make another comparison with Aristotle, he views courage as the mean between the two extremes of cowardice and recklessness (that is, never facing danger, and never backing down even when there is no benefit to doing so), as I view confidence to be the mean between insecurity and bigotry.
Taking the under confident person, or the insecure person, they have no real grasp on what it is that they believe in, they don't have a good sense of who they are. This is why they are easy to manipulate and bully, since every single idea that assaults them makes them question themselves. If any person disagrees with them, they cannot do anything because they no longer know what is correct. They constantly doubt themselves. I think you reason you see many of these kinds of geeks is because the population of kids, who are inherently insecure, that are into geeky things continues to grow, and they are very prevalent in certain areas like forums and conventions.
Taking the over confident person, or the bigoted person, they are so sure that what they believe is right, that they will never accept an opposing opinion. They spend most of their time trying to coax and argue with people because they simply don't understand that it's even an option to think differently than they do. They will stubbornly defend their position to their bitter ends. You see these kinds of people in the uneducated masses, both young and old alike. They end up like that because they are ignorant and are usually forced to be that way. You will generally find that people who try to learn or are forced to learn tend to be more open to new ideas.
So to try to answer the original question, I do agree that several people on here do fit into the over confident range. Nobody is bigoted by any stretch, but there are various strains of stubbornness. These will pop up because in many areas, you have to choose one of two sides. Nothing wrong with that, you have to choose a side and be confident in your choice. But there are a lot of times when people here take that too far. I see it mostly in threads relating to politics. I also notice that certain people here do get ripped down in mean-spirited ways more than others. In fact, the main reason I left this forum for almost a year was because my first impressions of the people here were rather negative. "What a bunch of haughty, self-righteous assholes" I believe is what I thought. In same ways, it's still true, but I'm willing to take that over the excessive immaturity of most forums. And even if some people do act like that, I do believe that every one here is good natured and they argue and criticize because they want to improve others.
In that vein, there are a few people in this thread who want to give advice on how to gain confidence. As someone who has swung between both extremes for a long, long time, it takes years to finally get that middle alignment. And even with the amount of progress I've gained in reaching that middle, I'm still insecure in some areas. To that end, I'm not going to give any advice, because I'm not going to assume that I know what anyone's position is. All I know is that for me, the first step was to come to a complete acceptance of who I was, faults and all. After that, then I could determine what I wanted to improve upon, and to that end, I resolved that the best way for me to be the best person I could be, is to put my value into others and improve them. Honestly, once I started doing that, everything else pretty much came to me.
EDIT: Sometimes, I think too much...
That was an illuminating post. I agree with most of what you say, almost all of it really.
What you say about over confident people is what I was trying to get at with my post. I guess what I wonder is if the over confident people are right and the under confident take insults too seriously, or if the under confident people are right and those who are over confident are being unnecessarily harsh. Honestly, I'm biased towards the second opinion, so I wanted to discuss this.
Making insults less harsh and not overreacting are both good solutions to the same problem, though.
My question is really about whether that's justified. Are our responses emo, or justified? Do we deserve to be called that, or not? I guess that's the issue I'm trying to get at here.
So, am I wrong? Is it self-pity and I'm blinded by my empathy?
I think there is another small distinction to be made. If someone is insulted, and they take it more personally than most people think they should, it's not really because they're under confident (though they are), it is because they have low self-esteem. Again, like courage, these are not the same to me. While confidence is the ability to defend one's own beliefs, self-esteem is the ability to have beliefs in the first place. The problem you see with people who truly have low self-esteem, is that they have nothing to believe in. They certainly don't believe in themselves, but they also have lots of trouble believing in friends, family, God, or whatever else there may be. Under confidence, or insecurity, is directly correlated with self-esteem, and is caused by self-esteem, but not necessarily the other way around. The relationship is basically like this: Confidence cannot rise unless self-esteem rises before it. So, a person who has low self-esteem can never have confidence because they have nothing to believe in. A person, however, can have good self-esteem, yet still not be all that confident. I, personally, fall into this category with certain things. I have a great life, I love where I live and my friends and family around me, but I still get terrified when speaking in front of large groups, or I still get nervous when meeting people for the first time. This isn't because I don't believe in what I am, but because I'm afraid of whether they will attack what it is I believe in.
Anyway, enough of that tangent. I do actually agree in general that people on this forum do not really insult each other very much. They do a lot of yelling, they tell each other that they're wrong all the time, and they accuse each other of doing stupid things, but that's not really insulting. However, I would also state that most people who have never had major insecurities or low self-esteem do not know how much their words can hurt. As I said above, insecure people will instantly start questioning themselves once they are challenged. Questioning turns to doubt. Doubt turns disillusionment. And when a person gets disillusioned enough, they stop believing, which in turn, will lower self-esteem. And that is where the hurt comes from.
I will give an example from this forum, since it was requested. Also as I said above, my initial impressions of the people here were not great the first time around. And it really all came to a head when I (foolishly) decided to give my two cents regarding the presidential debates last year. I say (foolishly) because I do my best to stay out of politics. The thread was going back and forth arguing over who, Obama or McCain, did better during the debate. I did watch it and I personally thought both men were poised, collected, and got their points across. At that point, whoever wins is really whoever you already believe in more. So, I just made a comment about why can't people see the positives in both candidates. What did I get? Something along the lines of, "What the fuck? Why are you even talking? If you're not going to come down on one side or the other, shut the fuck up and go away. Any person who cannot make a decision is not worth speaking to."
Really? Not worth speaking to? Just because I thought both candidates did well, I'm suddenly not worth speaking to? To me, at the time, that was basically equivalent to saying that I am not good enough to even speak to these people. I am beneath them. So, I left the forum. Over the last year I advanced by leaps in bounds in both self-esteem and confidence, to the point where I decided to give this place another shot. And I'm glad that I did.
Now, is that really a case of someone being over confident yelling at someone who was under confident? No, not really. It was really just a case of someone being an arrogant dick towards someone who had very low confidence. But to answer Axel's question, I place more of the fault on people who do the insulting than I do on the people who take it for one reason. People who have low self-esteem and are insecure, that is the way they are, and they can't help how much something hurts them, no more so than a person can help how much a bullet hurts them. The people who are insensitive and stubborn, they can help what they say, they can just not do it. This is not to say that the former cannot help themselves because they can, they can build up the armor necessary to stop words from hurting them all the time, but until they can do that, I don't blame them. I blame the harassers because they have the power to shut up.
EDIT: A little more based on what was said while I wrote this. For me, there is a definite, and it has nothing to do with how much confidence one has. You could be that guy in the corner who never talks to anybody, or you could be the guy who is rallying people to a cause, it doesn't matter. The person who is right is the person who does not care about the difference. The person who is right, is the one who includes others regardless of how people fall in the spectrum. Any person who looks down on somebody because they are insecure is always wrong. Any person who avoids someone just because they will never budge on an issue is always wrong. There are exceptions to this of course, as I do think that any person who is so stubborn as to be a bigot should be avoided, but confidence itself should not be a deciding factor.
I hear a lot of people say "I'm happy to let you hold your own beliefs, as long as you don't try to shove them in my face." Well, I'm not so sure I agree with the sentiment there. Let me demonstrate by giving my personal ranking (in terms of morality, not intelligence) people associated with religious fundamentalism, from worst to best:
- Those who don't really believe what they're saying, but do it for personal gain.
- Those who disagree, but just "go along with it" anyway.
- Those who have complete conviction, and are willing to sit idly by while many people all around them are condemned to eternal suffering.
- Those who have complete conviction, and attempt to convert others because they believe that's the only way to help them.
- Those who aren't really fundamentalist.
Obviously, those who don't really believe but have other reasons for involvement with fundamentalism are the worst kind. However, when it comes to people who really do believe, it disturbs me to think that someone is willing to write me off as "just another one bound for eternal damnation".If one honestly believes that one's beliefs are beneficial, or even more so that someone else's are harmful, then not only is it acceptable to attack another's beliefs, it is, I should think, the only right thing to do.
And when I said criticize, I meant that in the same way as attack. Probably not the best term because criticize is on the same level as challenge to me. But even then, I relate criticism with acts and products, not beliefs.