The Pride Paradox

People tend to have very good opinions of themselves, have you noticed that? Coincidentally, other peoples’ opinions of them tend to be very different from their own in direct proportion to how egotistical the person is. But why is that?

Self-esteem is an interesting facet of our psyche which essentially dictates what we think of ourselves. Some people think very highly of themselves, which you would think is the smart thing to do. However, it turns out that this is not usually the case. People who think too highly of themselves are considered to have taken it too far - into the realm of being “egotistical”.

As an egotistical person, one will generally be more concerned about everything to do with oneself than anything to do with anyone else. This aggravates other people, especially if there is bragging involved. Most of the time, the annoyance comes from the fact that the person really isn’t as good and talented and muscular and intelligent and lean and sexy and healthy and successful as they claim to be.

Now things start to get complicated; even if the person is as great as they say they are, people are still put off by it. For a different reason though; bragging upsets people even when it’s not a lie. This is because they’re either jealous or they don’t care. Either way, it’s very important to keep this in mind because knowing when to stop praising yourself is a key to developing successful social relationships.

So okay, we get that bragging and thinking too highly of yourself can get you in trouble, so logically, we could assume that doing the opposite would produce favourable results. Ha, we’d be wrong. Turns out that thinking too little of yourself can also be problematic, especially when you voice it because then people get annoyed with that too. You see the paradox now.

So what can you do? Well, there is a solution. Obviously, there is a middle ground between too much and too little self-esteem. But that middle ground can be a little hard to pin-point. Here, it’s important to introduce a new term: “self-confidence”. It’s not quite the same thing in the way I’m using it because I’m using the term to describe thinking highly of yourself without verbalizing it and upsetting people.

So you can be confident in what you know to be true about yourself, without displaying that aggravating amount of insecurity by trying to make the whole world know about it as well - let your actions speak for you and let other people notice it that way. People naturally admire someone who seems to know where they’re at; someone who’s proud what they’re doing and has enough confidence in it not to be concerned with showing it off.

So be confident instead of self-centred and you will have overcome the Pride Paradox!