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Too confident

Writer's picture: Meg BearMeg Bear

Updated: Jan 13


For as long as I can remember my stepdad would admonish me for being “too proud“. Well before I was a disaffected teen, I was sent to my room to “pray about my attitude*” and “stop being so proud”.


Of course, the abstract concept of pride was something I really couldn’t wrap my head around at age six. I knew this wasn’t feedback that I fully agreed with, and yet I had no tools to process or even clarity on what I was to be praying about.


I came to the conclusion that being too proud was just going to be one of those things that was wrong about me that wasn’t fixable. I wasn’t sure if the issue was that I didn’t want to fix it or that it wasn’t possible to fix. Unlike the consistent academic feedback of “smart but makes too many careless mistakes” (something I didn’t want to fix), too proud was one of the puzzles that I would ponder from time to time but never solve, a shame based rubik’s cube.


As I reflect back with the benefit lived experience and a better vocabulary, I realize that it wasn’t about pride at all. In fact, it wasn’t really even really about me. It was about the way I made a insecure people feel about themselves. In fact, it was my “healthy disrespect for authority” that was really causing me trouble.


I was was a very confident and outspoken kid. I was eager to learn all the things and willing to stand firm in my perspectives. A bit of a know-it-all and very much stubborn as a rock. Certainly strengths that needed refinement but nothing to be shamed for in grammar school.


Very much a Hermione Granger.


This week as I listen to Burn Book: A Tech love story I keep mentally reflecting on this statement,


Too confident

Something men say to women to shut them up or undercut them. 

– Kara Swisher


It all makes much more sense now. The issue was not my attitude per se but the way I was in the world. The belief that my ideas and perspectives mattered. That the path to changing my mind required my point of view to be considered vs. discounted by power or authority. While I was quick to yield to the “because I said so” rules (I wasn’t stupid and I was not a fan of being spanked) I was not inclined to cede my point.


It’s strange how long you can carry around negative things people say to you as a child. It’s strange how HARD it is to have this conversation with your six year old self. To apologize for not having the tools to protect her better. To tell her not to worry, she would [mostly] learn how to get her needs met without triggering others. That she need not apologize for being smart and having opinions. That in time, she would turn the discomfort she created in others into a superpower, one that challenged AND supported. One that pushed AND cared and yes one that was still too confident, but also comfortable being wrong.


Most importantly she would learn how to find her people and that would be everything.


*An Evangelical time out if you will


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