The Road to Confidence is Fraught with Cockiness and Arrogance

Cockiness – The Shield

Cockiness is a shield to hide low self esteem.  Scrawny, pimply-faced high school boys are often cocky.  After all, it is an age of awkwardness.  You’re not a child anymore, but yet you don’t quite know how to be an adult.  There is also a menacing cloud constantly looming overhead: the fear of being the last one to lose your virginity, if at all.  High school girls might be fooled by cockiness, but a mature woman will see right through it.

Female cockiness, sometimes called a “bitch shield”, is often the domain of fat chicks.  And who can blame them?  They were probably teased as children and weren’t very popular in high school.  Then there’s the traditional media constantly telling them that they are ugly and worthless.  The bitch shield is their way of telling the world to go fuck off.  I approve of that message.

Cockiness is not, however, limited to those two demographics; everyone is susceptible.  Even confident people can find themselves being cocky sometimes.

Arrogance – The Delusion

Rich men and hot women are both notorious for being arrogant.  It’s a dangerous stage to be in, because when you start to believe in the shield that you hold up, you can easily mistake it for confidence, and you get stuck in the arrogance stage.  The feeling of confidence that arrogance brings is only an illusion, because it is still rooted in how other people look at you and treat you.  People in this situation are not much different from those who are timid, shy and self-conscious.

When the cocky boy grows up to be rich and successful, he wields a power that he never had in high school.  The air that he put on in his younger years is no longer just an air.  He can actually see and feel the effects of his new power.  People show him respect, want to be his friend, and women flit around him vying for his attention.

With our fat chick, perhaps one day she gets tired of maintaining the shield and decides to go Balboa: she works out like a madwoman, loses the weight and gets a makeover.  Men start to give her attention and like her schoolboy counterpart, she starts to actually feel and believe what was before only a front.

Arrogant people risk having their world crumble around them when they start to lose their looks, or take an unfortunate hit to whatever gives them power.  They will always carry this risk around them unless they are able to propel themselves to the next stage: confidence.

Confidence – The Real Deal

Unlike cockiness and arrogance, which are self-serving, confidence is Self-serving.

Enter the cougar: a woman who’s been through all the bullshit, pretending to be what everyone else thinks she ought to be.  Now she says, “Screw that.  I’m smart and successful and I want 20 year old cock.  Got a problem with that?  Didn’t think so.”  (Not that you have to be a cougar to be confident, it’s just an example.)

The confident man has shed his peacock gear and no longer needs to spend $150 on a T-shirt to validate himself.

Confidence comes when a person truly understands and is comfortable with their life.  The confident person cannot be undermined by personal attacks, not because of pigheaded self-absorption as in the arrogance stage, but because they recognize that a person on the attack is a person who is scared — animals hiss and growl when they feel threatened, while an animal on the hunt remains deadly silent.  The confident person sees their former self in cocky and arrogant people and the attacker is no longer an enemy, but a friend.  The confident person does not put down, or make fun of cocky and arrogant people.  After all, a confident person doesn’t need to put others down in order to feel good.