Confidence and Honesty

Post Reply New Topic

Here's where your problem lies: your customers (or whoever) are not expecting you to be God. They only want to have some idea of how long it will take so they can plan everything else they need to do while they wait for you.

They will take your best guess - but as was mentioned upthread, because they are arranging themselves around your estimate, they will appreciate it if you "underestimate and overperform."

First, I am sorry this is so upsetting to you

Second, you can look at it a different way once you have been able to calm your system. There is good news: You can fix this. The problem is your perception, so you can alter your perception. I know from experience that you are more than willing to change your thinking when you have sufficient proof that your thinking is flawed. No reasonable person expects perfection in something as complex as decision making. You are allowed to be confident, even though it is technically possible for you to be mistaken. It is one of the "givens" in the many rules of social exchange. An axiom, if that helps you.

If anyone expects you to project with absolute certainty and never make an error, then the flaw is in their logic, not yours. They are expecting something that is not only improbable, but from a reasoned point of view, is impossible.

Regarding the videos, no neither is confidence. First of all, neither is intended to be taken seriously. The first is an exaggeration of the common stereotype of a used car salesman. The second is an exaggeration of the common stereotype of, well...a pompous, arrogant, a**. I would not recommend you act like either of these examples.

It is hard to find video examples of self-confidence because most are too exaggerated or corny.

If you watch the tv show Criminal Minds, I think the main characters on that show do a good job of displaying what self-confidence looks like in real life. They do not believe themselves to be infallible, but they have enough confidence in their ability that they are able to make decisions and move forward with them without being riddled and distracted by second-guessing and self-doubt. If they come to a place where they realize they were mistaken, they do not get hung up on it. They simply take in the new information, readjust their POV, and continue to move forward. They do not look back at their mistakes and berate themselves, wallow in pity, or beat themselves down. They incorporate what they learned from the mistake to make them even MORE confident instead of less confident.

If you haven't seen the program and have cable TV, Criminal Minds is regularly played during the evening on weekdays on the channel called ION.

Ah, I think I see my logical flaw. I thought confidence was synonymous with arrogance and pomposity. I thought they went hand in hand. When I was thinking confidence my thought was arrogance.

This means I am having issues with the semantics and pragmatics of what humility, confidence, arrogance, pomposity, and lack of confidence truthfully mean in an in depth manner. I think this is where my father, my wife, others and I are having issues.

How does one be humble and confident and get rid of arrogance, pomposity and lack of confidence? I think my issue lies in discerning what is what. Can you all help me to clarify these terms if you all don't mind.

Try watching Criminal Minds and let me know what you think. The character Derek Morgan can come off as cocky at times, but if you watch the show enough, you come to realize he is not. Hotch shows a great deal of confidence. But all of the characters demonstrate confidence.

Arrogance and pomposity arise from believing you are better than others. You can be confident in yourself without believing you are better than others. You can be both humble and confident at the same time. Dr. Spencer Reid on Criminal Minds is an example of being both humble and confident at the same time. He is a genius and has an eidetic memory. But even though he is clearly smarter than the rest of his team and can recall vast amounts of information at the drop of a hat, he never gives the impression that he sees himself as any better than anyone else. He is humble, despite his remarkable gifts. But he is also confident.

Try thinking of confidence as trust/belief in yourself and lack of confidence as lack of trust/belief in yourself.

Humility is the opposite of arrogance and pomposity, but they are not necessarily related to confidence. I have known plenty of people who act arrogant who really, at the core of it all, lack any real self-confidence so the arrogance is a costume that they wear to cover up the fact that they really do not believe in themselves at all. I guess that would mean that they truly do not possess arrogance as they do not actually believe themselves to be better than others, rather that they use that as a type of mask.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WpOAjuimmE[/youtube]

This video's content may not be pertinent, but the guy in it is showing the kind of confidence people expect in business communication. He's talking like he has studied the subject matter carefully.

Here's another example, just to listen to what confidence sounds like and looks like in terms of pragmatics:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YadHVjXIl_E[/youtube]

Here's a video that starts with the speaker correcting a mistake (humility)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NNelDf0F-o[/youtube]

I think what you call humility, other people might simply say is a willingness to be open to other ideas and to listen to other people. This is not in conflict with confidence in any way. One would assume that any of the speakers in these videos, while they are all confident in their subject matter, would be willing to learn from someone else.

I've looked at the videos I've put up and momsparky has put up. Well, I only watched the 1st 12 minutes of the last video momsparky put up. I did see all of the others though. I'm going to have to stand corrected. It is no wonder I have had misunderstandings about the nature of our American society. I will reevaluate my conclusions of American society then. I have thought American society was evil and filled with all kinds of hypocrisy but I think I am concluding this from erroneous premises.

I will definitely correct my point of view on this and come to sounder conclusions. It is not confidence I am repudiating with reasoning and logic but arrogance and pomposity. Where I went wrong was that I thought all employers and a lot of Americans were arrogant when they projected confidence and I thought these two things were the same thing. By looking at the social pragmatics I can see they are not the same thing. They are completely different.

Confidence means projecting that you know your stuff and if you're wrong and then take that stride. Accept that you're wrong, laugh and make a joke about it, integrate it and move on.

As a side note, I've been reading online about necessary vs. sufficient conditions.

Necessary means that in order for one to have A it is required to have B.

Sufficient means that if one has A then it will guarantee condition B.

When I went to elementary, middle and high school we were all told that one had to go to college in order to succeed or get a good job.

What they were saying was that going to college was a necessary condition for one to succeed or get a good job. This is not true as there are jobs that do not require a college degree but pay well. This is beside the point.

Where I misunderstood was that it was not a sufficient condition. Going to college is not a sufficient condition to succeed or get a good job even if it is necessary. I believe this is where a lot of college students went wrong.

How does this relate to confidence? Because I am starting to understand certain things a lot better my confidence is starting to build a little. Because of our discussions and my discussions with my father my confidence levels, my belief and trust in myself is going up but slowly. I still have major doubts about myself.

For my confidence to go up, I will need more discussion and instruction to correct certain erroneous premises that I may have so I can entail sounder conclusions. I believe if I have sounder conclusions about things I believe my chances of success will improve.

Last edited by cubedemon6073 on 11 Apr 2013, 8:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You got it!

Thanks I wrote more by the way.

What I wrote above tells me one thing that I have concluded. I think students in elementary, middle and high school need to be taught more critical thinking and more in depth especially necessary vs. sufficient. This in turn would've enabled me and others to ask better questions concerning our career paths and career choices. If educators and administrators do not know enough critical thinking I think they need to be taught as well. I think when they go in their education fields they need to have more critical thinking and philosophy classes.

My father thought that in college, high school, middle and elementary students should receive a more rounder education meaning students should be taught a wider variety of subjects including philosophy, more literature,etc. When I was 18-20 and younger I thought my father was being silly about this. I've come to the conclusion my father is so right about this. My father is on target about this and he really knows what he is talking about. My mother believes the same way as well and they are geniuses in my opinion. As I age more I come to realize the wisdom of what my parents believe. My parents were both big proponents of critical thinking. This is why I am a rational dependent aspie as Zette described in one of the three sub-types of aspies that she put up. I was nurtured to be rational dependent. http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt201969.html

It is helpful to have it reinforced about how important it is to have precise definitions for things. I always try to be precise, but It is hard to proactively know what the misunderstandings might be ahead of time. My son at this point does not ask, so I only know if I see him blatantly misapplying and mislabeling something. It is good that you question things.

Actually, this guy's first method for building the "skill" of self-competence is practice.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-HYZv6HzAs[/youtube]

You have been "practicing" here for some time. You should have confidence in your ability to gather relevant information and draw sound conclusions. Note, this is very different than saying that you have confidence that you know a lot. So, even though you may not view yourself as "knowing a lot," you can still project confidence in yourself because you recognize that you are successful in gathering information and drawing conclusions from it.

I concur - and I think, if you can learn to express that, you would be a valued asset to an employer.

I can try to give a possible explanation coming from my own experience. I am able to ask my questions because of the critical thinking skills I have developed in college and my expanding of knowledge of them with internet research.

More than likely his critical thinking skills are not as developed as mine so he may not have the bandwidth to ask you questions to identify problem areas or even establish that he is misinterpreting, misapplying or mislabeling or even have the concepts of these things. My opinion is you need to thoroughly teach him critical thinking skills.

My critical thinking skills has been an excellent asset for me to obtain answers to my questions.

He is seven, so we have not been able to introduce too much, yet. I did teach him what circular reasoning is (because that is a simple logical fallacy) and the other day he told my husband he was using circular reasoning. I was pretty proud.