{"id":423,"date":"2007-08-30T09:35:10","date_gmt":"2007-08-30T16:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2007\/08\/30\/the-power-of-humility-why-confidence-is-overrated\/"},"modified":"2018-04-04T03:21:22","modified_gmt":"2018-04-04T10:21:22","slug":"the-power-of-humility-why-confidence-is-overrated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2007\/08\/30\/the-power-of-humility-why-confidence-is-overrated\/","title":{"rendered":"The Power of Humility: Why Confidence is Overrated"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Zen<\/p>\n

Any good self-help book will tell you to be confident. Stand up straight, see past your critics and believe in yourself. I\u2019d like to break tradition and argue the opposite. That humility is a useful tool and confidence can be overrated.<\/p>\n

Deluded by Your Own Hype<\/h2>\n

Whipping yourself into a motivational frenzy may temporarily make you feel better, but it has hidden side effects. The major disadvantages from false confidence are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Inability to Learn.<\/strong> Too much confidence and you can\u2019t acknowledge faults, weaknesses or ignorance. Learning needs to start from a place of ignorance, and you can\u2019t do that when you already know what is best.<\/li>\n
  2. Avoid Humbling First Steps.<\/strong> In this article, I wrote about how \u201cI Suck\u201d moments can create positive changes. The reason is that to get better in a lot of areas, you have to take a step back. A pay cut to work a job you love. Dating failures to find the right relationship. Confidence can actually pull you away from these humbling first steps.<\/li>\n
  3. Arrogance Swingback Effect.<\/strong> Faked confidence has an emotional backlash. A tendency of people with low self-esteem is to go from thinking they are fantastic to feeling miserable, all after a minor mistake. Building a house without a foundation won\u2019t create a stable structure. Similarly, building up your ego without the foundation of competence and skills can lead to an emotional collapse.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Humility Is Not Low Self-Esteem<\/h2>\n

    Humility does not imply low self-esteem. If confidence is often faked by positive affirmations about yourself, humility is not created through negative ones. Humility is simply about focusing on the unknown rather than the known.<\/p>\n

    To illustrate this, take a look at the following diagram:<\/p>\n

    \"Confidence\/Humility<\/p>\n

    I\u2019m separating all information into three broad categories. The things you know that make you positive, the things you know that make you negative, and the things you don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

    Confidence would come from focusing on the positive things you already know. In contrast, humility isn\u2019t focusing on the negative information as it is focused on the overwhelming amount of information you don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

    This might sound a little vague, so let me give an example. Let\u2019s say you are planning to start a business. There are three ways you can view the problem:<\/p>\n