False self-confidence is associated with an excess of self-presentation, which is manifested as an attitude: See! I’m awesome! If you’re very confident, but you have inadequate self-esteem, you may try to camouflage it by the excess of self-presentation. A necessary condition to ensure that the strategy of self-presentation in excess works is the audience, which mission is to be delighted.

Apart from the fact that you make the impression of being bold, sooner or later you will fall prey to being manipulated by someone, who recognizing your false attitude may send you a Trojan horse.

When do you become a victim of manipulation? Always when you lose self-vigilance and are not able to manage your self-regulation (EQ). The hormone responsible for such a behavior is dopamine, which excess changes your perception of possible threat in your brain. Whatever it was, what you previously recognized as too risky, may seem very easy. In other words, you lose the ability to evaluate reality rationally. In contrast, having solid self-confidence is based on self-awareness constantly analyzing surrounding reality. The brain, in spite of influencing the public, remains in hormonal balance all the time and none of the hormones is in excess. Speaking the human language, although it does not make such an impression, the role is played perfectly and behavior is controlled, but still impacting the emotions of others (the audience). This small difference in physiology makes it easy to identify people with false or solid self-confidence.

Sun Tzu in “The Art of War” wrote: “Give the enemy young boys and women to infatuate him, and jades and silks to excite his ambitions. Keep him under a strain and wear him down”. Less subtle, but nonetheless very clearly Mike Tyson put it: “Everyone has a plan ’till they get punched in the mouth”. That is why the pride walks before the fall!

Tomasz Piotr Sidewicz