Arrogant or Confident?

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:01]Namaste and welcome back to waking up with Mindful Serenity. We're going to continue the answering of questions from the jar. I know it's been a while. I've been busy with other endeavors or seeking other endeavors and I've been putting aside this little exercise that I do to help me assimilate my knowledge.

[00:00:18]I'm just reaching behind trying to find the find the jar. It's hiding on me.

[00:00:26]Gracious. Where did it go?

[00:00:29]What am I phrasing?

[00:00:32]There it is.

[00:00:34]This is not meant to be perfect.

[00:00:37]And we're going to reach in. Okay, I am going to take a deep breath, get my watch ready. My cat is on my lap and you'll see her tail flashing across my face every now and again.

[00:00:50]She just wants me to know that she is there.

[00:00:57]So the question I received was, could you explain the difference between arrogance and confidence?

[00:01:06]Could you explain the difference between arrogance and confidence?

[00:01:14]I just wrote something on arrogance and confidence a few days back because it has been on my mind too. The difference between arrogance and confidence. I want to stress first of all that when we talk about arrogance it is the ego that is involved. Confidence is that which exists beyond the ego. I think that's one of the major differences we'll know between uh we'll see between arrogance and confidence. An individual who's acting arrogantly is acting based on ego needs. A person who is acting authentically confidently is not depending on ego is going beyond ego. is depending on the higher self and we'll see that often in in these two distinctions.

[00:02:00]The arrogant person like I said is based basing arrogance is basically based on two things fear and shame. I believe anyway though there are individuals who have this core belief that they were entitled that they're superior that for whatever reason that they're better than other people most times arrogance is a result of not feeling like enough. Okay.

[00:02:27]So it's not if it's not a delusion of grander where the person has a fixed for fixed false belief believing that they were superior to others and able to act according to their own needs then it is usually based on a fear and shame or on this idea that we are not enough and we're trying to compensate for not being enough. An arrogant individual may be triggered samscara wise have deep shamebased ideology within them. Core beliefs that come back from years earlier where they feel like they were told they were not enough and began to believe they were not enough and it stuck especially before that age of seven where most of our core beliefs will stick to form our personalities or the major foundation of our personality.

[00:03:11]And if that shamebased u ideology was became a part of our personality identity, we may begin to do whatever we can to compensate for it. If I truly believe in the core of me that I am not worthy, then that is an awful feeling to have personally. So I don't want to have it. So I may do what I can to hide from that feeling by building up a sense of worthiness, an image, a false mask, a persona of worthiness. So I may partake in activities that please others. I may become very very people pleasing uh very accommodating very very nice so that I can uh stay away from having to face the reality of my own sense of unworthiness that's just too painful right so it's a samscara the unworth is a samscara deep inside and I'm constantly pushing down through my redemption tendencies my redemption tendencies or ego redeemer redeemer ego that comes in and says okay I'm going to do something so I feel better inside and I don't have to feel the shame. So we start doing activities, we start succeeding, we start becoming very dependent on the outside world and our our ability to manipulate and control it. So it keeps us from experiencing the shame. So that arrogance comes when we're so intent on redeeming ourselves, we lose our authenticity. We lose our sense of heart and feeling and caring and compassion.

[00:04:46]And we're more focused on people not seeing or us not experiencing the shame and creating an image so people don't realize how unworthy we are because there's always that fear, right? The fear of being exposed and sent out of the pack and we have this inherent neededness that we need to belong to the pack for our survival. So we're going to do whatever we can to appease everybody so they don't recognize our unworthiness. So we hide it under these false selves of of success roles we've taken on you know higher achievement higher education higher incomes higher whatever we can do to feel better than that shamed individual we see ourselves are. So arrogance of course is this idea that we are better than other people that we have disdain for other people that are not at our level. So when we're being arrogant in this role of redeemer, all we're doing is we're looking down and we're seeing this little pathetic me that's unworthy and we're trying to escape that. So we're doing doing whatever we can so we don't have to experience that and so nobody nobody else sees that. So we adopt the impostor syndrome role and we become imposters. So the arrogance we experience at those times is very very false, very very fleeting, very very unstable and unpredictable. We know in our hearts when we're doing the redeemer role that it's not going to last, right?

[00:06:20]We know that this impostor that I've become so that I can appease other people and, you know, hide from my own sense of shame and so that nobody else discovers how unworthy I am so they won't pack, you know, kick me out of the pack. We see how unstable that is, how fleeting and impermanent that is. We know that at any time we're going to be exposed. Anytime we're going to be exposed as the imposters we are. So, we're extremely cautious and nervous and neurotic in keeping that mask on so people don't see our unworthiness.

[00:06:52]But while we're doing that, we're not focusing on the heart and caring and compassionate and seeing everybody as equal and unity. Because you know if we're not equal, if the shame based person is way down here that we think we are, then we're not seeing equality in everybody, equinimity in everybody.

[00:07:10]We're seeing some individuals who are less than and some individuals who are greater than. And our role to be in the greater than group makes us perceive others other than me that are less than.

[00:07:22]So there's a cross referencing going on.

[00:07:24]as we look down at this little pathetic me, we're going to assume there's other people like me down there as well. And that's when the judgment comes in and the disdain for others comes in and a sense of superiority over others comes in. It's very fleeting, very unreal, very neurotic. Um, but it is a protective mode that we take on. So that arrogance is often a protective personality layer that we wear so that we don't experience a shame. we're actually feeling in our sense of unworthiness and and so that others don't notice it because we need to belong.

[00:08:00]So that arrogance is really based on fear and shame. It's based on ego, the shamer ego and the redeemer ego battling it out, right? And that it's when redeemer is in charge, we have arrogance, right? But shamer is always down there ready to pull redeemer down. So as soon because we're so if many of us are so shame based that when we recognize that we've been arrogant when we recognize that we were thinking highly of ourselves shamer comes in and pulls us right down with how could you think that you're better than somebody else how could you think that you're even important let alone more important than somebody else you know so we get that chastising from shame or ego redeemer will try to pull us up again with with another achievement another role another sense of success us but redeem shame or ego will just pull us right back down again into the pits of that unworthiness until we eventually let go of ego altogether. So that's arrogance. What is confidence then? Confidence is just it's you see sometimes you'll see a confident person and assume they're arrogant because they just don't seem to care what you think about them. They don't seem to care that uh you think they're arrogant.

[00:09:16]um they're operating from a deeper level where their ego is not easily inflated or easily um diminished. They are not operating from ego. They're operating from an authentic self that says this is who I am. I know who I am. I know what I'm capable of. I'm going to express it because this is my human right and my human need to express. So, I'm going to allow that expression to happen and this is what I'm doing and this is how I'm acting and what you think of me is not that important. So when we get to that level, we're at the level where ego has worn away. This very prickly uh reactive ego has worn away to some degree and it's not reacting to everything out there. You know, our shame is not getting triggered. We're aware of our shame. We can be openly vulnerable.

[00:10:04]We're aware of our feelings that are less than perfect when you're confident, but you're not necessarily, you know, always reacting according to them. We're not building up a false sense of self so we feel better. We're simply living in the sense of self we have, who we truly are. So that's confidence. And these individuals, you'll notice, they just don't seem to care what people think. They live their life authentically. They're happier, more joyful. They're not people pleasing. They're not afraid of being kicked out of the pack.

[00:10:38]They um know their strengths authentically and really. And they have no need to put on costumes or masks. And that's confidence. And these people may speak clearly and articulately. They may walk in front of crowds of people and do whatever most of us are terrified of doing and fear that shamer or redeemer will get into that battle again. and they don't have the shamer and the redeemer because they don't have ego anymore. They're not operating by ego.

[00:11:06]They're operating by true self. Well, that to me, dear friends, is how I see the distinction between arrogance and confidence. Let's all try to be confident individuals.

[00:11:18]Let's put aside our ethos and act from the authentic self.

[00:11:23]Thank you so much for joining me.

[00:11:25]Namaste.