Have you ever hesitated to say that you’re good at something or been scared to think you’re good looking? Are you tired of people looking at you a certain way for being confident?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, it could be because you are dealing with the confusion many people have when it comes to the difference between being confident and being conceited.
The two words – confident and conceited – have some key differences. According to Webster’s Dictionary the definition of confident reads as “having or showing assurance and self-reliance” whereas the definition of conceited reads “having or showing an excessively high opinion of oneself.”
The key differences one should note here are that conceited people are more insecure than those who are confident and they carry themselves in a manner that is arrogant rather than assured.
Someone can easily be confident without being conceited; the only thing needed is the ability to be humble. People who are confident are aware that they are not the absolute best at everything because they are self-aware, which means that they are not going to be humiliated if they aren’t the best. In contrast, someone who is conceited would deny that there is anyone better than themselves, and, when this is proven wrong, feel humiliated. The inability to humble oneself can lead to the need to always feel that they have to prove to others that they are better than the rest.
Confident people don’t need to tear people down. No person that is secure within themselves gets any mood boosts by tearing other people down in any way. Becky Storey, in her article “6 Signs of a Conceited Person and How to Deal with Them,” attests to this as she states that conceited individuals bring a lot of negatives to the table towards others and, in some cases, can develop narcissistic tendencies, which can be draining to those around them. According to the Mayo Clinic, “Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental health condition in which people have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance.” This sounds awfully similar to the definition of conceited, so it is important to understand that when in any kind of relationship with someone that shows obvious traits of conceitedness you must take into account the toll it can and probably will take on your emotional well being.
