Overconfidence is good or bad. Overconfidence

Every day we communicate with people who are different from each other. Some behave modestly, while others try to attract attention to themselves, one willingly carries on the conversation, the other sits quietly on the sidelines. Have you ever interacted with self-confident people? Surely the answer will be positive.

Many of us have the wrong idea about what self-confidence is. We often confuse it with self-confidence, arrogance or inflated self-esteem. Let's figure out who a self-confident person is.

Self-confidence and confidence: what's the difference?

Self-confidence is exaggerated confidence in oneself and one’s own strengths, the conviction that there are no mistakes or shortcomings in one’s character. It is necessary to distinguish self-confidence from self-confidence. Psychologists note the difference between these concepts.

Excessive self-confidence is a sign of an insecure person who hides his complexes under arrogance, aggressiveness, selfishness and arrogance.

Self-confidence is characteristic of people who objectively assess their skills and abilities necessary to achieve their goals. A person who is confident in himself boldly expresses his personal opinion, is not a hypocrite and does not curry favor with anyone. He responds adequately to comments and criticism. A confident person accepts people as they are.

A self-confident individual strives to dominate people. He is characterized by excessive pride and touchiness. He often gets into arguments and finds himself in conflict situations.

Self-confident people are characterized by arrogance - an overestimation of their capabilities, behind which lies self-doubt. Psychologists call arrogance a separate mind that can do everything, knows and understands everything better than anyone else. A self-confident person realistically assesses his capabilities and uses them correctly.

For example, a person with excess self-confidence announces to his friends what an interesting book he will write, but in the end, he never starts it. And a self-confident person will write and publish a book without unnecessary self-promotion.

An overly self-confident person

Numerous studies in psychology have shown that overconfidence can be the cause of many failures.

The negative aspects of this personality trait include:

  • thoughtless actions (a self-confident person first acts and then thinks);
  • inability to notice and correct your mistakes;
  • overestimation of one's abilities;
  • arrogant attitude towards people (a self-confident person considers himself better than those around him);
  • selfishness.

Sometimes excess self-confidence comes with a plus sign. This quality will be useful to those who occupy a high position. It makes a person believe in his own strength and not stop there. In addition, a self-confident person is always confident in the positive outcome of the situation and never gives up. Psychologists say that people with excess self-confidence live more fulfilling lives than people with low self-esteem.

How to increase self-confidence

To boost your self-confidence, follow these tips:


  • spend a lot of time on your appearance (to become a self-confident girl, you need to dress fashionably, have a beautiful hairstyle and manicure; for a man, to increase self-confidence, it is enough to wear clean clothes, wash and shave);
  • walk quickly (self-confident people walk with confidence, energy and purpose);
  • train correct posture: walk with your head raised, keep your back straight;
  • look into the eyes of the interlocutor to make a positive impression;
  • be polite and sensitive in communication;
  • notice the positive things;
  • promote yourself (write a three-minute speech about your goals and strengths and recite it in front of a mirror);
  • give compliments (by noticing the good in people, you indirectly reveal the best side of yourself);
  • stop gossiping;
  • sit in the front row at public meetings (usually people sit in the back due to self-doubt);
  • play sports;
  • Don’t get hung up on your experiences, focus on the world around you.

This behavior will help you become a self-confident person and gain recognition from others.

How to communicate with an arrogant and self-confident person?

People with excessive self-confidence are found everywhere: at work, public transport or the nearest store. One can sympathize with those who constantly encounter them. A person with high self-esteem is accustomed to considering himself two heads taller than those around him.

It is especially difficult to communicate with a self-confident man. His arrogance and assertiveness can disarm anyone, making them feel stupid.

How to behave with a person whose arrogance and great self-confidence are dominant qualities?


  • give your interlocutor a “cold shower” by asking him a specific question from the series “Why are you being rude?”;
  • do not respond to rudeness with rudeness, remain good-natured and calm;
  • ignore the self-confident interlocutor and do not enter into conflict with him;
  • do not give in to provocations (reply to an offensive phrase: "Thank you, I'll take it into account" or "Do you really think so?");
  • do not take what your opponent says as the pure truth.

Overly self-confident people are lonely and unhappy at heart. Their desire to show themselves more successful and smarter than you is only a desire to establish themselves in front of themselves. Do not think that the other person considers himself better than you. Most likely, arrogant and self-confident behavior signals problems in life. Such people are very vulnerable, vulnerable and suspicious. Their ostentatious impudence is a kind of protective shell.

Self-confidence – is it good or bad? I am often told that I am too confident in myself. What does too much mean? Am I supposed to be an insecure wimp? If we talk about my point of view, it is better to be a little more confident in yourself than to walk uncertainly and be afraid of everything - responsibility, dating, business, communication, difficulties, new knowledge and new problems. Each new undertaking, a new project requires preparation and understanding, assessment of resources, assessment of knowledge, skills, and it is better to start a project when we see the correspondence between the required resources and those available. In the same way, you can evaluate your abilities in any activity, without differences in directions or processes. You can always strain yourself and do a little more than you originally planned, so you can always set yourself slightly higher standards.

On the other hand, if you need to increase your self-confidence, then try to implement several known successful projects. After you easily complete the tasks, your confidence in yourself, your strengths, capabilities, knowledge and skills will increase, and you can easily raise your bar and set more complex goals.

One of the best definitions of self-confidence is that a self-confident person has certain qualities, skills and abilities, and by positively assessing his qualities, he is able to achieve goals and results that are important to him. At the same time, he adequately evaluates his qualities, without overestimation, complacency and false modesty. That is, he considers himself capable of certain actions and is really capable of them.

Overconfidence is the false attribution to oneself of unusual, false, fictitious properties, skills or qualities. There may be several aspects to this case. Excessive self-confidence can temporarily mislead others into a false idea of ​​a person, and mislead the person himself into a true misconception about himself. This is how many people throw dust at others, but in reality it turns out that the king is completely naked.

Entire companies and PR departments work to create an impression on others about public figures and politicians; self-confidence is created through years of intensive training and only works in public. It is very easy to recognize such people. The very first stressful situation plunges them into panic, shock or stupor. The very first difficulties and problems reveal all the hidden “wormholes” in a person.

A self-confident person will act the same in both stressful and normal situations; it can even be said that he will be less effective in normal times, due to the lack of need to use or exert excessive effort.

There is a problem of false modesty when people with outstanding capabilities, abilities and knowledge due to lack of self-confidence and low self-esteem may be less effective or recognized in their professional environment or social activities, simply in society.

Self-confidence has a lot to do with self-esteem. Adequate and correct definitely increase self-confidence.

Self-confidence gives us a lot of advantages and bonuses:

  • We begin to put our own interests first, rather than the interests of strangers. A person who is insecure is easier to manipulate.
  • You increase your self-esteem, and how other people begin to respect you. This includes significance, prestigious positions, and so on.
  • Self-esteem returns. It is much easier for a boor to mock an insecure intellectual than a self-confident person.
  • The ability to prove your point of view, insist on your own, win in negotiations, disputes, conflicts.
  • The ability to open new directions, create new businesses, etc.
  • Arises

Self-confidence is a human quality that reflects a positive attitude towards oneself, one’s capabilities and actions. At the same time, all his strengths are noticed not only by himself, but also by those around him. That is, to explain more simply, self-confidence is when a person’s assessment of his capabilities really corresponds to reality.

But, if a person’s self-esteem is higher or lower than the norm, then this phenomenon is called either self-confidence or self-doubt.

It follows that a self-confident person loves himself very much, believes that all his actions are correct and his possibilities are limitless. But the fact that others may condemn him or not accept his point of view at all due to disagreement with his abilities does not bother a self-confident person at all.

What are the differences between the behavior of a confident person and a self-confident person?

Here are some examples that describe the differences between a self-confident and a confident person:

A self-confident person adequately treats and is aware of his achievements in life, when, like a self-confident person, he takes everything that happens for granted.

A self-confident person knows his strengths and weaknesses very well. At the same time, if something in his life does not work out, he will not play out the tragedy of everything that happens.

A confident person always clearly knows what he is capable of. The goals set always correspond to his real abilities. A self-confident person often sets unattainable goals.

Confident people, when they achieve something in life, are very happy about it. If failure or failure occurs in their life, they do not consider this a reason for frustration. A confident person will show strength and analyze all his mistakes in order to avoid a similar mistake in the future. Self-confident people, on the contrary, when they fail, perceive everything as a personal insult. They often get offended and withdraw into themselves, while not considering themselves to blame for the failure.

Why are all guys so self-confident?.

In our time, meeting a truly confident young man has become almost impossible. Unfortunately, self-confidence in men often appears with age, when he has already achieved something in life and is firmly on his feet.

Ah, the reality is that young guys are often overconfident. This is expressed in manifested rudeness, high ambitions that are not supported by anything.

Paradoxically, self-confident guys, if you delve deeper into their psychological state, can often hide self-doubt with such behavior. Self-confidence often arises from the emergence of shortcomings that a young guy, due to his age, was unable to cope with and overcome.

Very often, girls, with their behavior and excessive love, give a guy the opportunity to develop self-confidence - the confidence that he will not be repeated and there is no one better than him and will not be in the whole wide world. Self-confident guys have a hard time accepting constructive criticism, are very vulnerable and closed off from society.

If your boyfriend is a self-confident person. And, this interferes with both him and you and the development of your relationship, then, in this case, you can choose two ways out of the current situation.

The first way is to try to help the young man gain self-confidence. Try to bring him back to earth and teach him to perceive his capabilities more adequately. At the same time, it must be taken into account that too radical measures - such as constant criticism - can greatly offend a person. Therefore, try to be more tactful, truthful, show maximum attention and love.

The second way out, as you might already guess, is to break off the relationship. The fact is that not every girl can tolerate the behavior of a self-confident guy.

Excessive self-confidence is, of course, good, under certain conditions it can be a big plus in any business, however, you have to pay for such luxury, and this payment is expressed in an escape from reality. Of course, finding a middle ground between uncertainty and too much self-confidence is not easy, however, this can be done through a balanced analysis of one’s own capabilities and the search for adequate self-esteem. The most important thing when assessing your own capabilities, and I have noticed this many times, is not to have a negative attitude towards failures and mistakes, and of course, mistakes should also be taken for granted by us. It is the fear of crossing the line, when failures have a negative impact on self-esteem, that forces people to pump up their psyche and often pump it up. If you choose between two evils, then of course it turns out that it is still more profitable to be self-confident, this is how people rise to unprecedented heights, but this also helps to displace them.

Perhaps you have had this in your life, or perhaps not, then imagine a situation where you always succeed every time, you do everything right, you don’t make mistakes and you defeat everyone and everything. Of course, in order to imagine this, you need to have a rich imagination, however, it is obvious that the sense of reality in this case can begin to leave a person, and this is incorrectly perceived information, incorrect data for analysis and, accordingly, the beginning of an inadequate response to the situation, which is unacceptable. Being a realist is not easy, I would say that here it is necessary, first of all, to be able to control your emotions, to get rid of them almost completely so that they do not tip the scales either towards low self-esteem or towards high self-esteem, maintaining some kind of objective balance. Moreover, making a preference for yourself and saying that it’s better for me to win for the time being than to constantly be a victim of circumstances is also an expression of an inadequate analysis of the situation with excessive self-confidence.

You can win and be at the top without playing with your psyche, I have written about composure and equanimity many times, look at the people sitting at the top of the pyramid, they are realists in the full sense of the word. I often dealt with people for whom any such conversations were perceived as just another maxim, that is, a kind of moralizing aimed at lowering their self-esteem, possibly due to envy. But as a psychologist, this is of no use to me, and without that I can find opportunities to be perceived properly by others in order to engage in the dewinging of others. No, friends, this is all the kind of thing where you can clearly see from the outside how a person whose self-confidence is off the charts begins to get carried away. I repeat, everything has its price, and high self-esteem, when a person is so confident in himself that he takes on a burden beyond his strength, also has a price, and we must remember this.

Many psychologists, mostly coaches, pump up the psyche of, for example, athletes in such a way that he has high self-esteem, so that he is not afraid of his opponent, and believes in his strengths, even those that he does not have. Such athletes can and do achieve great results, but if we remember the rationalism of Muhammad Ali, without a doubt the greatest boxer in history, it becomes clear that sobriety of thinking is not inferior to, but significantly exceeds, excessively inflated self-esteem. I will not give all such examples, there are many of them and any of you, after thinking about it, will be able to remember something similar, and besides, sport is still not an indicator, there are more priority comparisons with similar conclusions. If you, dear readers, are one of those who perfectly live with your excessive self-confidence, if your inflated self-esteem has never let you down, well, this is certainly good, nevertheless, pay attention to those points that you may miss or not give them meanings, along with their meaninglessness in their own eyes.

Move a little towards realism, just look at what is there and requires attention, otherwise it can become a secret door to your opportunities, in order to weaken your position. After all, this is exactly how those who sit on and overthrow the powerful from their throne act, because paying attention to a booger unworthy of your attention, and even more so being afraid of it, is something inappropriate for a self-confident person, but in vain.

The question of why some achieve success, fulfilling all their desires, while others, no less talented and worthy, “remain behind,” is still relevant. The reason is most often simple: the first category is self-confident people; for the latter this is precisely what is lacking. The article will discuss what self-confidence is, how it can be increased, and why you should be careful with the “dosage” of a useful trait.

What is self-confidence

Self-confidence- this is confidence in one’s own abilities; the desire to move forward, develop, eliminate weaknesses, without self-flagellation. Quality, like other human qualities, is acquired and not innate. Its formation is influenced by various factors, including upbringing, material and spiritual benefits, status in society, environment and others.

Self-confidence can be compared to a medicine - in large “doses” it cancels out the benefits, bringing only harm. People suffering from its excess rarely achieve heights, because they lack the ability to be skeptical about themselves and the results of their activities.

Overconfidence

This quality does not help to achieve anything - more often it interrupts good endeavors. A person with excessive self-confidence cannot be critical of himself and what he does. It seems to him that any of his creations are a priori beautiful, do not require corrections, and critics are simply jealous. In this case, it is almost impossible to admit to yourself the mistakes you have made.

It would seem that there is nothing wrong with excessive self-confidence - many would do well to become more persistent and be able to brush aside useless criticism. But there is still a problem. Criticism is not always useless; it is important to listen to it, to be able to notice the shortcomings of what has been done. It is important to adhere to the golden mean - respond to reasonable comments and ignore malicious comments.

How to increase self-confidence

People who achieve heights in what they love are not only talented and purposeful. They are confident in themselves, and this quality helps them achieve their goals. An artist who paints brilliant paintings will remain unknown if, instead of organizing exhibitions, he is tormented by thoughts of his own mediocrity. No one will know about a talented writer if he folds his manuscripts at home, in a secluded corner.

Self-confidence is needed for an adequate response to criticism: readiness to correct mistakes and dismiss unconstructive statements from others. Complexes prevent you from moving on, prompting you to give up your favorite activity after a couple of negative comments. Confident individuals continue to study with double zeal, while considering the main goal to achieve goals, and not to prove to others their own talent.

There are some effective tips to help boost your self-confidence. They are more global than the recommendations to choose clothes according to your figure, take more photographs and remember compliments, but they work much more effectively.

Understand the essence of criticism

Criticism is considered destructive, intended to belittle. But in fact, it just represents an assessment of something (appearance, result of activity, etc.). Critical assessments can be both positive and negative. Listening to everyone's opinions is a useful skill along with developing critical thinking. Remaking everything for others is not an option, but considering yourself and your stories/drawings/photos to be flawless is also a bad idea. Criticism can be aimed at improving, correcting shortcomings; it is useful in moderation.

Celebrate your own victories

If in a month you managed to get rid of a bad habit, learn to go to bed earlier and wake up without an alarm clock, switch to a healthy, balanced diet - this can already be considered a great achievement. Some things go unnoticed because the results are not lightning fast. But they are worth highlighting.

A complete image is made up of little things; personality is formed through seemingly small changes. It is worth encouraging yourself even for minor achievements, but not stopping, but moving on. By setting the right direction and taking even small steps, you can reach heights that previously seemed unrealistic.

Be able to laugh at yourself

Nothing boosts self-esteem like the ability to smile at your own mistakes. Everyone at least once in their life has put on ugly things, gone out into the street looking sloppy, smiled in front of the man/woman of their dreams with dill or poppy seeds stuck between their teeth, said stupid things, confused directors and their films, made the wrong number, fallen out of the blue, cried from -for nothing. It's not scary at all, and most often it's even funny. It’s just that your loved ones don’t have the strength to laugh at themselves.

Adults are used to being serious and equate such irony with humiliation. But only self-confident people can joke about their own mistakes. They don’t need to maintain the status of untouchables and glare at everyone who makes a joke at the expense of the “royal person.” It's worth keeping it simpler. Those around you will not consider someone who knows how to sincerely laugh at themselves to be stupid - on the contrary, they will appreciate the ability for self-irony, which is rarely found.

Don't be afraid to make mistakes

The advice partially continues the previous one. Some events in life make us feel disgusting - a breakup with a loved one, dismissal, an unsuccessful project, cutting off contacts with old friends... It often seems that other people are not to blame for this, all responsibility is shifted onto ourselves. But everyone makes mistakes, you shouldn't be afraid of that.

An unsuccessful relationship is a bad reason to spend the rest of your life alone, avoiding attractive women/men a mile away. After dismissal, it is advisable to look for a new job or rest (if possible), and not tear your hair out shouting “how to find your dream profession, it’s unrealistic.” Taking into account the experience of past mistakes and shortcomings, it is easier to prevent them in the future.

A familiar fear is the fear of not doing everything the way you would like. Because of the fear of “imperfection,” you can fold your hands, forgetting that you need to act. Without trial and error there will be neither experience nor results. It is more effective to do everything imperfectly, incorrectly, but learn from it, than to spend your life thinking “nothing is better than bad.”

Focus on your desires

The thought that peers have become presidents of companies and earned money for a foreign car and a yacht will not increase confidence. But you can maintain self-esteem by thinking about whether this is really the ultimate dream. Many are not ready to take on responsibility when leading a company - they are much more comfortable and interested in an ordinary position, even if it is less profitable. And a yacht can only be associated with seasickness. A person who follows other people's dreams, focusing on others, is doomed to lose self-confidence. When he stops watching others with envy, switching to his own desires, life becomes more comfortable, brighter, fuller.

Refusal of derogatory comparisons is the beginning of a new path. Confidence in strength strengthens the spirit; It is much easier for a person to come up with new projects, communicate with others, generate ideas, and achieve goals. It is impossible to stop him with angry statements like “you won’t succeed”, ridicule and other dishonest means. Self-confidence provides tangible benefits that are worth taking full advantage of.