Don’t Mistake Confidence and Cockiness

In today’s information age our thoughts and comments are commonly misinterpreted, which is limiting our natural inclination to be genuine to ourselves and others. I want to address the distinction between being cocky and confident, we commonly mistake the two and are often too humble about ourselves due to this common misinterpretation. Remember, confidence is to believe you can do it and cockiness is to believe you can do it better than everyone else. To simplify, cockiness requires advertising but confidence speaks for itself.

After watching a truly emotional documentary Amy about the musical prodigy Amy Winehouse, I took some time to reflect. One part that particularly caught my attention was an interview she conducted with Jonathan Ross in 2004. Amy was asked, “have they tried to mold you in any way, those people asked you to do things to change the way you look or speak or behave”? Her response, “I got my own style. And I wrote my own songs, and you know, if someone has so much of something already there is very little you could add”. Watch on YouTube.

With the conviction and candidness in her voice, my reaction was to admire her self-confidence related to her musical talent.

Now, I want you think about the last time you devoted a tremendous amount of time and effort to something you were passionate about. Then, when you were asked about your performance, you felt the social pressure to be humble rather than confident in your response due to the potential misinterpretation as being perceived as cocky. It is commonly said that one of the greatest challenges in life is being yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you like everyone else. Therefore, it is important for us to be confident in ourselves when we deserve it, encourage confidence among others and not mistake confidence for cockiness.

To conclude, please ponder this quote. “It’s very dangerous to wave to people you don’t know because what if they don’t have hands? They’ll think you’re cocky.” — Mitch Hedberg