God calls on us to have “assurance” and “boldness” and “confidence.” Unfortunately, too many times we confuse those words with “arrogance” and “pride” and “conceit.” Some people have the idea that pride is simply “too much confidence” or that “arrogance” is just “when you are TOO assured,” etc. The reality is, there is a big difference (between the two emotions).

Arrogant people have delusions of superiority. Often it comes from an absence of failure. They are the sort of people who have a lack of life experience. You see, confident people have a determination to persist because they have discovered that failure (and success) is an unavoidable part of life itself. They’ve learned that getting knocked down is just a lesson to learn.

Arrogant people are usually the ones who have never learned the lesson. These are the kinds of folks who think there are “two kinds of people in the world: Winners and losers.” And they look down on “losers” for being “inferior.”

Confident people, however, also say there are two kinds of people, but they see it as: (1) people who are both winners AND losers (because when you try you sometimes succeed and fail), and (2) people who are neither winners OR losers (because they are too afraid to try).

People who are arrogant are usually the ones who talk about what they can do that you can not. Confident people don’t talk. They just do. Whether you do it too or not is irrelevant. They will do. Sometimes they will try and fail, but sometimes they will try long enough that they will succeed. And when they do, they will have grown. They will have gained confidence.

The arrogant person will just continue sitting on the sideline, resting on his laurels, afraid to do more because he might fail. To him, winning is all that matters. Because winning means “I’m better.”

The confident person knows that it’s not about winning or losing; it’s not about “being better,” it’s about “getting better.”