The difference between self-assurance and arrogance is fairly straightforward. Both types of people have abilities and knowledge. The secret ingredient that makes up the difference is believing in ourselves. The self-assured person is just that. An arrogant person doesn’t truly believe in themselves or their talents and capabilities. They still think they are better than others and have something to prove.
Show you believe in yourself by investing in Yourself
Self-assured people believe in maximum preparation. They work on themselves every day and are constantly improving their craft. The arrogant person is overcompensating and entitled without putting in the work every day. They feel like the world owes them something, and they are entitled to have it because they have certain strengths.
An arrogant person is always competing with others to prove they are the best. A self-assured person has only one opponent, themselves. They make a plan to improve and set a tone for where they are going, and then they work every day to get closer to that goal and be a little bit better than they were the day before. Maximum preparation helps them achieve their goals and sets them on the path to success.
Arrogant people don’t have that sense of preparation. They feel like whatever got them to where they are is good enough. Self-assured people never settle for good enough. But they remain self-assured because they have a plan and a vision and can measure their personal growth.
Your measuring stick should be your own evolution
Arrogant people can only use others as a measuring stick and will always be misguided in whatever they are chasing. They rely on their existing smarts and abilities to get them to the next step. There is a lack of evolution and growth, and to have any kind of sustained success, there has to be growth.
If you take somebody who puts in a couple of hours a day to work on themselves. Whether it’s improving their knowledge by reading and researching, by building and sticking to certain habits that help them reach their goals, or by focusing on their mental strength and resilience, over the course of a year, they have clocked 700 hours of improvement. Over ten years, they have had 7,000 hours focused on self-improvement and growth. They are going to leave the stagnant person who comes from a place of arrogance in their dust.
To pull ahead and become an expert in your field, you need to devote 10,000 hours of learning and immersion. A lot of true thought and industry leaders devote 3 hours a day, meaning in 8 years- they are a leading expert and at the true top of their field. They invest in themselves.
Questions that identify self-assured leaders
Asking some simple questions can help discern if somebody is self-assured: What time do you go to sleep/ get up in the morning? What do you do to work on yourself and reflect? How do you work on your mental health?
Putting in the daily effort to build a better version of yourself is the only way to address your true competitor in life, yourself. When you take somebody who has maximum preparation, abilities, and knowledge and put them up against somebody who has abilities and knowledge but has been too busy competing with others to focus on preparing themselves for what’s next, the person with the self-assurance and preparation is going to come out the true leader.