Friday, August 1, 2008

Confident or just too sure?

Confidence and sureness (if that is a word) are two different things. Sureness or cockiness if you will-is being certain or opinionated about everything. It often shows not maturity but rather a certain narrowness of perspective or even just good ol’ bliss blooming out of ignorance.
Specimens that exhibit such characteristics do not acknowledge an alternate perspective for as long as possible and then when confronted by overwhelming evidence simply find themselves completely lost!
Confidence or true self-belief on the other hand is an approach which accepts the ambiguity and risk present in every situation and tries to continuously adjust and modify thoughts and actions.
This is probably quite closely related to cognitive dissonance and I think a truly confident individual is one who is completely cognizant of his cognitive dissonance ( too heavy maybe) and is constantly trying to get a better understanding of his self and his environment.
Thus the quote for today: Confidence is the cognizance of uncertainty and cockiness is the absence of cognizance. (quite good if i say so myself!)
Or to borrow from the quote of a well-known politician: “I wish I was as sure of something as he seems to be of everything”

6 comments:

Natasha M said...

cognitive dissonance??!!! I'm impressed!

Let me give you an alternate quote on confidence by Cicero, which, I hope, will serve as a corollary to your post -

"If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won before you have started."

Abhishek Bhide said...

Great comment, but then i expected nothing less from Sigmund's chela! However the reason for this post is the apparent misunderstanding about the meaning of the word 'confidence'

Natasha M said...

Ahh...ok.

Well, I only intended to follow up on the quote for the day.

Only those who are cognizant of the uncertainty of life, would be confident (in the context of the quoted quote...heh heh)of success in their endeavors.

Just my two cents.

Deepak Chembath said...

Hey...What about the sureness that comes from confidence? Where does that fit? :)

Aadil said...

i'm both confident and sure i dont understand what cognitive dissonance means..

Abhishek Bhide said...

Deepak- Sureness is now a registered trademark kindly use (T) next to it. LOL

Aadil- You are confidently sure that you dont know what cognitive dissonance is and that is good enough ;-)