With the confidence of a fool….

Of all the characteristics I find distasteful in other people, arrogance has to be at the top of the list. I ran across an article talking about confidence and how it differs from arrogance. Some things they talked about were that arrogant people desperately seek approval from others. They also need to “one up” other people and make other people feel badly about themselves in order to feel good about themselves.

This differs from confident people. Confident people make others feel good. They seek to lift others up by being positive and encouraging. While most confident people appreciate compliments, they don’t need other people’s approval.

With this in my mind, I’ve been trying to observe people in my world who I perceive as confident or arrogant and listen to what they say and how they react to other people. And I noticed that when someone is confident, accepting compliments and being themselves DOESN’T come across as arrogant at all.

I know who I want to be. I don’t believe that I am arrogant. But I’m not exactly confident either.

So my attempt at evolution continues. In my new spirit of doing my best and realizing that everyone has flaws and just trying to be positive, I am going to pretend to be confident.

Yesterday I ran at lunch. My legs were a little tired and I was going slow. As I passed a parking lot, someone had pulled across the sidewalk and when they saw me heading towards them, they hurriedly threw their truck into reverse to clear the path for me. I looked over to give a wave and saw 2 women in the truck - both maybe in their early 30's - who gave me a thumbs up and clapped as I passed in front of them.

In the past I might have thought that they were making fun of me. But I immediately forced myself to think that I’m pretty awesome - here I am out running on my lunch hour and I bet they appreciated that.

Last night I was looking at myself in the mirror and saw how bright red my freshly dyed hair is. I know some people hate it. But I think it looks pretty outrageous and cool. I love it.

When I went to bed last night I celebrated the fact that I ate really healthy yesterday. That’s something I should be proud of.

I got up this morning, put on my dress and thought - geez, I look pretty good. I avoiding looking for fat rolls and flaws. Instead I looked at my overall picture. Despite everything, I’m NOT a disaster.

Exercise some, eat well most of the time, love yourself and your life. Make changes if you need to. That’s what it’s about, right?