"Always hold your head up, but be careful to keep your nose at a friendly level."--Max L. Forman
It is important to work at building up our self-confidence, but we must make sure that we don't try to take a shortcut and build ourselves up by tearing others down. In the words of Israel Salanter, "Promote yourself but do not demote another." It is difficult to strike the proper balance between too little self-confidence and too much. We must have confidence in ourselves and our abilities in order to be productive and happy. We must know and believe that we are important and special. And we must be on guard against those who would put us down for their own purposes. The old Russian Proverb, "Make thyself a sheep, and the wolf is ready," is sound advice. If we put ourselves down and demonstrate too much self-doubt, we make ourselves targets for those who would demote us.
On the other hand, a little self doubt is healthy for all of us. It keeps us on our toes and helps us to make the most of what we are. We must be careful that in building up our self-confidence we don't go too far and appear arrogant to others. We must all remember that we are neither better nor worse than others. We are only different. George Shelley wrote, "Disdain not your inferior, though poor, since he may be your superior in wisdom, and the noble endowments of mind." It is not our business to judge others. Our primary objective should be to work at improving ourselves. We should aspire to be the best we can be and avoid comparisons with others.
There is no reason why we can't feel good about ourselves without hurting others. We are entitled to feel good about ourselves so long as we don’t stray too far from reality. But we are not entitled to needlessly hurt the feelings of others as part of the process of building up our own self-esteem. In short, it's all right to feel good about ourselves, but we don't have to tell the whole world how good we feel.
Copyright 2014 Allen W. Smith
TB-102—Posted 07/02/2014
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