Are you annoyingly over-confident?

All of us have encountered over-confident people at some point or the other — whether it's a relative, friend, colleague, boss or even an acquaintance. Such individuals are constantly bragging about their knowledge, achievements and their ambitious plans for the future.

They tend to overshadow others around them. Does this sound like you? If yes, then you seem to be brimming with over-confidence. Though over-confidence may seem to be a positive thing, it can have undesirable repercussions.

Causes

There are various factors that cause over-confidence to creep into people's psyche. Affluence, higher education, higher positions of parents or natural personality make people over-confident. Our own abilities and a high success rate triggers over-confidence in general. Narcissistic personality types have been found to be more over-confident.

They gauge their self-worth based on their achievements. Also, the upbringing of a person can lead them to becoming an over-confident individual — especially when their parents never criticised them as children or praised them excessively.

Effects

Since people who are over-confident by nature see themselves as know-it-alls, they are generally not liked by many people. An air of arrogance and superficial confidence envelopes them. They are often difficult in their interpersonal encounters and find it hard to get along with people.

Their ego is easily punctured and they feel slighted easily. On the one hand they project superiority but actually, they are fragile and vulnerable.

Coping

Being full of oneself is not a desirable trait and this tends to affect their relationships with their family, friends, colleagues and even acquaintances. And since this behaviour has its own set of repercussions, it needs to be checked. Most of the time, over-confident people are not aware of their behaviour. Therefore, the family and friends of such individuals need to make them aware of it.

Here are some more tips:

• Acknowledge that each individual has their own respective skills and qualities. One should not think that they are the only ones who know and do everything right.
• Don't take things for granted, even if you have had a high success rate in business or personal decisions.
• Be flexible and open to learning. No individual can possibly know everything about anything.
• Be practical and realistic about your goals and dreams.
• Accept your weaknesses. Yes, even you can make a mistake. Just because you are good at one thing, it does not make you good at everything else.
• Appreciate others for their abilities — one may be better than you at certain situations and work methods. Know that the efficiency of the situation is vital.