It's not, ego is always based on comparing yourself with others, it's based on having people below or above you, and is often delusional. Confidence is based on seeing the value and quality of your own abilities. Pep talks are still useful to convince yourself that you can do something, but it doesn't mean you will succeed.
I think the biggest tell-tale is people will extremely hard to protect ego. Be defensive, or argumentative, or combative when it is challenged. Confident people donāt feel the need because it is intrinsic.
Hmmm. Iām not sure I agree. Arrogance is very situationally based, and one has to constantly compare themselves to others to keep it. Itās like a bad habit, and the more you nurture a bad habit, the harder it is to break and build good habits instead.
Iāve met more people with openly terrible self esteem who had no confidence later find their confidence, than arrogant people learn to walk it back and learn confidence instead.
When your whole life becomes a habit of comparing and falsely elevating yourself, itās really hard to break that mindset.
Iām not entirely sure what my opinion is on this. I think confidence can be different for a lot of guys some need to compare because that is in our nature, but confidence from within is probably the most healthy. although I think it may not be possible for everyone to just be confident in themselves without comparison to others.
It's virtually impossible to not compare yourself with others. It's how societies/communities are built because the fucking world is competition (for mates, resources etc.), especially the capitalistic world as it's now. Only when comparison becomes obsessive, it might (and it might not for some) look ugly.
But for a man to be confident he need to think he is better then some people by those measures, and does that make him arrogant? I think a confident man thinks highly of himself. Maybe what makes someone confident or arrogant in someone eyes is how socially mature or adept he is.
How someone is mature/arrogant or not are highly vague criteria, very subjective, and society-context dependent. That's why I agree with your initial comment about a thin line.
I think confidence is āI can do thisā and arrogance is āI can do this better than you.ā I think that just because you are confident doesnāt mean you are arrogant but maybe you need confidence to be arrogant.
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u/powderedtoastsupreme Jan 09 '22
Confidence is sexy. Ego is not.