Quite often people ask me how they can be confident and what is the difference between confodent and arrogant. I will explain it by outlining the features of confident people first.

Confident people:

1. Feel they are not better or worse than others. Nobody is perfect and confident people accept themselves and others with strengths and weaknesses, therefore they are friendly with all people.

2. Have good listening skills. They use 3D listening which means they are paying attention to how people perceive their messages, understand who they are speaking to, and establish a rapport. It is important to pay attention to the intonation and voice. They respect others’ opinions.

2. Do not ask anybody's opinion about their appearance. People, who constantly ask: “Do I look good? Do you like my hair?” demonstrate self-doubt which is the opposite of self-confidence.

3. If they do not like something say it right then and there in a calm respectful way. You can learn to do it with the app Power,Pitch, Pace,Pause.
Often when people feel emotional they tend to raise the voice. It would be very effective to do the opposite. If they drop the pitch and slow down it will help them to be more in control and project authority.

4. Do not try to prove anything to anybody. When people try to prove themselves they often speak fast and try to say all they know in a short period of time. Confidence people do not speak a lot, answer only those questions that are being asked of them. They make their answers clear and stress the key messages. You can learn about it with the apps Get Rid of your Accent and Fluent English Speech.

Arrogance is the opposite of confidence. It is just a shield to hide insecurities. “Arrogance can be defined as the personality trait whereby a person has an obnoxiously elevated sense of self-worth”

Arrogant people use arrogance as their defence mechanism because underneath they suffer from low self-esteem. They compensate their inner inferiority at the expense of others:

1. They worry what others think about them, as a result, they act so that they can stand out and feel that they are better than others

2. They ignore other people opinions, talk over others and cannot accept feedback. Often, when they talk to others, they do not have the patience to listen. They hear a few words and very quickly they start thinking about what they can say to dominate that person and appear more clever.

3. They do not try to connect with people, as a result, their relationships are superficial.

This morning I went horseriding. One of the ladies who was on our group hack did not say “hello”, I felt her attitude was rather arrogant and unfriendly. During the hack, she fell off her horse. That was the lesson that arrogance was punished.

Accent reduction blog