You are so terrified of appearing arrogant because you’re bright, that you end up playing it small – a lot. Oh, which brings you an extra benefit: Like this, they don’t catch you with a skill “you shouldn’t even have and can’t explain” and so they don’t get to call you out as the fraud you secretly fear you are.
You are smart and you know it – or aren’t you?
There are these moments in your life when everything clicks and seems just right. Your knowledge provides what you need and you create exactly what you want. It honestly feels like magic how things come together. You catch on patterns and mould them into the solution no one else could see. Those are your genius moments, when everything flows and you tap into the incredible resource of your intellect.
Until stuff goes wrong (cue wah wah wah sound). Someone doesn’t like your solution. They don’t understand it. You can’t explain it, at least not in a way that they catch on. When you tell them you just know, you’re arrogant. And when they find a flaw, you feel stupid and you regret that you got carried away at all. It doesn’t even matter if the flaw was small or big or just exists in their head: Your secret fear that it’s all just a fluke, and you a fraud, just waited to be confirmed, once again.
Here’s what’s going on: When you run this pattern, you oscillate between between being self-absorbed (and yes, arrogant) in your own genius on the one hand, and diminish yourself to a fraud on the other hand.
You avoid the pattern, at all cost – yet the cost is high
Because this pattern is super uncomfortable, you have learnt to avoid and manage this problem as much as possible. It has made you and your intellect more digestible and fitting in. You try to always be fathomable, hit the right step width, make sure you please those around you.
But you pay a price and it’s pretty high: You don’t tap into your full potential, you expand a lot of energy on hiding and managing, and worst of all: It has never fully resolved the underlying issue. You’re still afraid of getting caught in the act and being exposed as a fraud.
no one is perfect
Even the smartest people on the planet have the “problem” that they are human and as such a mixed bag with an exceptional skillset in some areas and some others where they show up mediocre at best.
never realistically looking at their actual capabilities AND their limits. lack of confidence and communication in terms of what they can’t and cannot do. Exploitation.
Arrogance is about them and not about you
asdf being able to show the genius and be confident, workaround past the arrogance bit, wihthout losing touch with the fact that they can’t know it all
the humanity of no matter how brilliant, it’s never in all areas and being stupid is unavoidable. The nuanced, layered complexity is easy to spot somewhere else, but it also GETS YOU inevitably. the echo chamber is real.
dare to appear arrogant, remain humble inside
really look at the shadows, really own both bits, brilliance and “stupidity”, accept being slow in some areas, look at and get to love yourself as a well-rounded human being; deal with guilt and other gifted-specific issues
