Brian Tracy breaks down confidence as an internal state built on clear values, goals, and competence, while arrogance is compensatory behavior rooted in insecurity. Confidence produces high self-esteem; arrogance masks low self-esteem and damages relationships.
Some people ask me the question, what is the difference between confidence and arrogance? And it's a great question. I just finished a book called the Power of Self Confidence. And in that book I say that confidence comes from within. Confidence comes from, first of all, knowing what your values are, what you stand for and believe in, and what you won't compromise. And then it requires that you know exactly what you want in life, your goals. And then it requires that you become very good at doing the things that lead to achieving your goals. If you do that, you'll have a high level of self esteem and self confidence. Arrogance, on the other hand, is a way of compensating for low feelings of self esteem and lack of self confidence. When you really, really like yourself, you tend to be calm and confident and positive with other people. When you don't like yourself or you feel insecure or inadequate, you sometimes overcompensate by being pushy and aggressive with other people. What we find is that nice people are nice people. Nice people like themselves and as a result, they like other people. They like their work and they like their customers. They're kind of happy inside because they know who they are and they know what they're good at and nothing can shake them in that. But arrogant people are different. Arrogant people have low self esteem, they don't like themselves. As a result, they are insecure and they don't like other people. Louise Hay once said that the greatest problem in our society is the problem of people saying to themselves, I'm not good enough, I'm not good enough. Feelings of inadequacy and lack of competence cause us to engage in compensatory behaviors. Sometimes we become pushy and we become loud and we become demanding. Just like I say, the difference between persistence and insistence is persistence is healthy and positive and polite, and insistence is pushy and aggressive. So what you want to do is you want to become a highly self confident person who is good at what they do, who knows what they want, who likes themselves and likes others. And by doing that, all of your arrogance, whether it's real or what people attribute to you, will just disappear and you become one of the most popular people of your generation.
