Being Confident Without Being Arrogant

We naturally assume that when someone has problems with confidence, it’s that they don’t have enough of it. But this isn’t always true.

Confidence, like most other traits, is a spectrum. You can have too little, which results in a low self esteem, or you can have too much which results in arrogance.
You can say hubris if you want to sound polite and fancy.

The key is to have a healthy confidence. Like the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears you shouldn’t have too much or too little, but just enough.

Having a low self esteem can make you hate yourself, but being arrogant can make everyone else hate you.

Having a low self esteem can lead to:
Self sabotage, poor relationship and social skills, lack of assertiveness, neediness or dependence, and when it gets really bad it can lead to things like eating disorders and self harm.

But on the other end of the spectrum, arrogance can lead to:
An inability to handle criticism, a lack of empathy, having unreasonable expectations of favourable treatment and delusions of grandeur.

Which are all pretty undesirable personality traits.

Maintaining a healthy confidence is a fine line to walk and you need a lot of qualities. It’s accepting yourself even if you aren’t perfect. It’s having a healthy self-esteem, and it’s having the ability to go through life knowing deep down that for better or worse, you are who you are and that is okay.

So what are the three main qualities you need in order to walk that fine line between self deprecation and delusions of grandeur?

Humility

It can be hard to walk that fine line when you are really good at something. When you are winning your first reaction might be jumping up in the air screaming “Yes! Who’s the best!? I’m the best!”

But that is a sure fire way to look arrogant.

When you win, use humility to make others around you feel good. When you lose, use humility to know that you can always improve next time.

Respect

If you respect yourself and the people around you a healthy self-confidence is sure to follow.

Don’t put yourself in situations you don’t feel comfortable in and try not to put yourself down too often. Respect yourself in this way, as well as the people around you.

It might take time to develop this trait, but start by catching yourself whenever you aren’t showing respect to yourself or the people around you.

Generosity

We tend to have negative self-talk constantly. We spend so much time beating ourselves up that it’s no wonder we don’t have a healthy confidence.

Be generous in giving yourself compliments and pats on the back. And while you’re at it, be generous with others in this way.

A few kind words can go a long way to making your day—or someone else’s—a thousand times brighter.

With these three tips, we can feel good about ourselves without becoming arrogant in the process. We often tend live in one extreme or the other, but true happiness and lasting confidence comes from balance.

So exercise humility, show yourself some respect and be generous with kind words—you’ll build a foundation of self-confidence that will carry you throughout life.

Your Happiness Must Come From Within You

If your happiness comes from anywhere but inside yourself, then it can be taken away.

I’m not saying that you should never allow happiness to come from the things and people around you, what I am saying instead is that you should try to develop a baseline happiness that emanates from inside yourself.

That way when things go wrong in life—and they will, very often—you can take it in stride, learn from it, and become better because of it. 

The goal is to raise our baseline happiness as high as possible, until it is relentless no matter what outside factors may be weighing at our feet.

Everyone Wants To Be Happy

This is a goal that many people never reach, mostly because they try to obtain happiness through money, power, respect, and material objects.

They don’t realize that all of these things can be taken away, and basing the foundation of your happiness on these things instead of yourself, is akin to building a castle on sand.

Even basing your happiness on the love of another person can be dangerous, and unfair to them.

So what can we do to build up a baseline happiness that will remain intact through the trails of life?

Here are my three tips to cultivate a strong foundation and baseline to your happiness.

Only Spend Time On Things You Care About

The theme of today’s society seems to be sacrifice.

You go to a school you don’t care about to work on projects you don’t care about to get a job you don’t care about. All the while you are sacrificing your happiness.

You might spend time with people you don’t care about, read things you don’t care about (AKA: fear-driven news) and go to events you don’t enjoy.

All of this is chipping away at your foundation of happiness and slowly lowering your baseline.

One of the best ways to cultivate a relentless happiness that will stand up to whatever life throws at you is to spend as much of your time as possible with the people you love, doing the things you love.

Treat Your Body With Respect

Whenever I’m in a bad mood I don’t look to the situations in my life for an explanation, I immediately ask myself if I have been treating my body with respect lately.

It has been proven that their are very strong links between sleep, physical/mental diet, exercise and your moods.

If you don’t ever move your body and get your endorphins going, and if you never get enough sleep and constantly take in junk food and junk mental content, you are going to have a hard time keeping good spirits.

I’ve come to learn that the way you treat your body affects your happiness more than almost any outside situation could.

If you eat a little better, sleep a little more, move your body a bit and watch the thoughts you allow into your mental space, your base level of happiness will jump by leaps and bounds.

Share The Positivity

The best way to cultivate something within yourself is to inspire it within someone else.

“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”
-Buddha

When you consistently help others uplift their moods, it will have long lasting effects on your natural level of happiness.

This is why people can lower their stress levels simply by petting a cat. It feels good to make someone or something else feel good.

When you help others find their way to happiness where ever you can, you learn new paths and perspectives that will aid you in your own journey towards happiness.

Writing and researching for these articles has taught me so much that I never would have otherwise learned about happiness, but it’s the responses I get when I’ve helped someone else that make me happiest.

If I can help a couple people every once and a while then I know that I have something to feel good about.

So don’t spend your time doing things you don’t care about, treat your body with respect, and then share whatever happiness you can.

You’ll create a baseline of happiness for yourself that will withstand any outside circumstances.

And isn’t that what we all want, just to be happy?

How The HelpfulGuys Help Each Other

Here at 2HelpfulGuys we cut through distractions, remove illusions and get right to the heart of the subjects that will allow us all to grow to our fullest potential.

In our 130 articles we’ve explored many topics including becoming more confident, pushing through obstacles, changing your daily habits and designing your dream life, to even just getting through a bad day.

Although, it isn’t to often that we discuss how the 2HelpfulGuys operate together to create this optimal environment for our constant growth.

In this article I hope to show you the types of qualities you should look for in your relationships, friendships, and business partnerships. No one can do everything alone, and having the right people around you can be the deciding factor in whether or not you lead a happy and successful life.

Today, I am going to pull back the curtains and discuss my friendship and business partnership with my fellow HelpfulGuy: Leroy Milton.

Strengths And Weaknesses

Leroy and I met as coworkers at a grocery store when we were 16 or 17. Back then we were completely different people. He was reserved and shy, I was over-the-top outgoing.

He was a moral person who treated people with respect, he didn’t let things get to him very easily and always seemed happy. It is embarrassing to admit, but I was not a moral person at all.

Every one thought I was, but I lied a lot and didn’t feel much empathy towards other people. This was especially a problem in relationships, I would cheat and lie constantly. It’s not something I’m proud of.

Over the course of our friendship we learned a lot from our respective strengths.

I exposed Leroy to a lot of ideas and perspectives that he had never experienced before. I remember him saying at one point “I didn’t know people like you existed!” He became more outgoing and confident around me. One of my most cherished memories was when he said “I don’t worry about saying whatever joke is on my mind because when you’re around, I know i’ll get at least one laugh.”

He showed me what it is like to be a good person and how good it feels to be able to respect yourself.

I had ideas and knowledge, but I barely knew how to accomplish the most basic of tasks. He taught me so many life skills: Cleaning, working out, motivating yourself to accomplish things, cooking, and the list goes on and on.

But this isn’t just a feel good story.

Within everyone you meet, you will find that they have strengths and weaknesses. You can learn to emulate their strengths, and learn from their weaknesses.

Lifting You Up

The second quality you should be looking for in any of your relationships is support.

Whether you know it or not, we are all impressionable to a degree. The people you see most often have a great impact on your view of the world, and yourself.

If you keep people around you that doubt your abilities and put you down, their thinking will infect you. If you have people around you that encourage and support you, you will be able to bounce back from anything much faster.

Leroy and I have been through some rough times throughout our friendship. At times where I’ve felt like there is no hope left, he has been there to help me.

We can’t always be happy, or even stable, but if we can lean on the people around us we will never fall.

Respecting Boundaries And Rules

This is a big one. No matter how good a person is or how close you are, if they can’t respect your boundaries then it won’t work out.

One of the reasons that Leroy and I never argue is that accept each others lines in the sand.

An example of this is “The Box.”

Whenever there is someone or something that one of us doesn’t want to talk about, all we say is “Let’s just put it in the box.” and after that it is never mentioned again.

The best way to ensure a long lasting friendship or business partnership is to respect each others boundaries over all else. Even one step over the line can taint a relationship for good.

Leroy and I have been friends for a long time and I’ve learned a lot about friendship. I’m not saying that if you look for these qualities in a person that all problems will disappear, but with these qualities you can be assured that you will make it through any obstacles that come your way.

Our relationships with the people around us shapes us so much more than we can comprehend. I hope that you take a look at the relationships in your life and ask yourself if they are the quality you deserve.

What other qualities can you think of that foster amazing relationships?
Discuss in the comments below!

FORGET MOTIVATION, REMEMBER DISCIPLINE

Motivation is overrated.

With every goal I try to reach and every habit I try to internalize, I always start off motivated and eager to climb the ladder to success.

But where is my motivation three months later at 5:45am, looking up at a long day of work after a sleepless night?

Where is my motivation during a horrible week, wrought with upsets and disappointments?

I curl up in bed, knowing full well what I have to do, but my motivation is no where to be found.

Motivation is a feeling. It is sand in your palms, sensitive to even the slightest breeze.

So what force do we use to accomplish our goals if not motivation?

Discipline.

Courage is not the absence fear, but the ability to go on despite it.

Discipline is not the absence of avolition, but the pledge to push forward regardless of it’s presence.

Discipline is the force that will be with you no matter what you are thinking or how you are feeling at the time.

No matter what you try to achieve, you will need it. From dieting, to writing a book, to cutting back on your swearing, discipline is the greatest force behind all improvement.

Here are a couple of things I have learned about discipline and how to cultivate it.

Discipline is one day at a time.

I have a little green book in the drawer beside me that I haven’t opened since last august, until today.

This book was my first conscious attempt at developing my discipline, although I had no idea what I was doing at the time.

It has a check list. Read, Write, Gym, 10 Ideas, 8 Hours of sleep.

When I started this book I hadn’t turned any of these things into concrete habits. I tried doing it all at once.

Every day I would put check marks beside what I did and rate myself out of 5.

It started off well, but quickly got ugly.

What I didn’t know at the time is that it is impossible to completely change your life overnight.

Developing your discipline is a life long pursuit. One that most of us don’t consciously pursue.
We aren’t all monks.

Every day try to exercise your discipline just one time. Pick the smallest habit you can and start there. Mine was making breakfast every morning.

That single habit, that single discipline workout every morning, changed my life.

For best results, treat your body with respect.

Everything that you accomplish in your life will stem from your mind. Your mind and the various states you put it through can decide whether you get closer to a better life, or slip further away.

If you are hungry, tired or stressed it will affect everything you do.

You should always make it a priority to get the proper amount of sleep and eat regularly. If you treat your body with disrespect, you will not get anything good from it.

Eating breakfast changed my life because it gave me energy in the morning and encouraged me to get more sleep so that I could wake up early enough to cook.

Your body doesn’t need to be a temple, but don’t let it turn into a garbage dump.

Forgive yourself and move on.

This is another major theme in life. If developing your discipline is a life long pursuit, then it only makes sense that every once and a while you are going to falter.

If you beat yourself up, you are more likely to spiral out of control and end up right back at square one.

Getting angry at yourself will solve nothing. If you fall, get back up as soon as possible and move on.

Today was an exercise in discipline for me.

I didn’t really have the motivation to write today. I have two days off, I’m tired, and it’s thanksgiving. If I wanted to I could have used these things as excuses to skip writing.

But this is where discipline, that little muscle that could, comes in. I know the exact moment that I don’t want to do something when I know I should, is when I have to call upon that little friend.

I have a lot of other things I plan to do today. Some of them will get done, but maybe I’ll miss a few.

That’s okay. I’m not perfect. But I’d like to believe I’m better than I was yesterday.

Happy thanksgiving to my fellow Canadians.
As always, I’ll see you next Sunday.