Ragne's Abyss

Kanye West, P-Diddy, Donald Trump.

These are all individuals who have accumulated extreme amounts of fame and wealth. All of their ways of climbing to the top have their similarities. One thing they all have in common is deluded self-confidence. When they want something, they get it, regardless of what they have to do to get it. Their fortune ultimately came from their overconfidence, but so did their downfall.

So, I came to wonder: Is overconfidence the key to ultimate success?

When looking at the most successful people in the world, you notice something in common. They believed they can achieve their goals. John D. Rockefeller believed that confidence determines success. Warren Buffett had such confidence that he never doubted he’d be rich.

With self-belief, it’s far easier to get out and start doing things. Achieving high aspirations doesn’t seem as difficult because you have this extreme belief that you can reach them. It’s a mindset that leaves no room for doubt. So embarrassment falls flat, and the fear of failing is nonexistent.

Kanye, for example, is an artist who is overly confident in himself. He wholeheartedly believes that he can achieve everything and anything he wants. In an interview, someone asked Ye if there was any limit to what he believed he could achieve. His answer was “no”. He continued by saying, “If I were to quit rapping and say I wanna go to the NBA, I would be in the NBA—cause I think I could do anything.” But there’s a downside to everything. With confidence comes ego.

With his pride, Kanye didn’t just lose billions—he lost connections; undone by the exact thing that created it. In October of 2022, Ye lost an estimated $2 billion in one day due to his antisemitic comments. Antisemitism is classified as a form of racism towards Jewish individuals. Ye’s racist behavior is a public display of how egotism can easily destroy success.

When connecting racism to ego, many have stated that racism is a manifestation of egotism. James E Washington is part of The Race Card Project. He promptly stated in a 2022 article that “The ego thrives on identification and separation.” You can categorize an individual apart from yourself. This is particularly true when you deem that person as less. This process is exactly what egotism and racism do.

People with high egos tend to be narcissistic, believing that they are superior to other people. Psychologists call this Illusory Superiority, which is a cognitive bias where people believe they are better than the average person. Challenges do not exist for them. They simply believe they do not have them. It’s the false sense of invincibility that leads to demise.

Consider Napoleon Bonaparte, the French general who led the military during the French Revolution. Napoleon was an individual known for his excessive self-confidence and arrogance. His military victories fed him the belief that he was undefeatable. This later caused him to approach wars that shouldn’t have been touched with a six-foot pole. His pride led him to act irrationally. This resulted in many losses. These actions included his invasion of Russia in 1812 and the failed Continental System in 1814. With these losses came the fall of his empire and his exile to Saint Helena in 1815.

Overconfidence makes messes that are extremely hard to clean up. It’s like trying to get an oil stain out of a T-shirt. Even though it can help build success, it can easily create a beast that’s hard to tame.

But what about us ordinary people? Is realism better than overconfident delusions when creating success for people who aren’t in the limelight?

Being in the limelight makes it far harder to get away from certain things. One comment and your entire career can be over. Yet, for ordinary people, it’s easier to get away with having delusional levels of confidence.

Delusions are beliefs that fuel us to strive for what we want. It gives us self-belief that we can conquer hard things. Without belief, we are less likely to work as hard. Being realistic with everything can leave us stagnant because realism is like a protective shield. It protects us from the dangers of following our dreams, but also confines us from growing. Though realism can confine us, it can also keep us humble—especially when success has already been made.

If you think about it, humility is a mixture of self-confidence and self-doubt. You believe in yourself, but you are also modest enough to know you may not get what you want. With humility, it’s easier to house realism in our fantasized beliefs, but it can keep a high ego at bay. It’s the mediator that stabilizes narcissism and diffidence. To be stable in one’s self to achieve success, being humble without confidence won’t work. Yet, being confident without humility will only lead to destruction.

So I’ll leave us off with this question: Realism has the potential to hold us back. Overconfidence can destroy us. Are both confidence and humility key in order to grow and maintain success?

Overconfidence helps build success due to the never-ending self-belief, but it feeds our egos. Humility keeps us grounded, managing our egos from overtaking our identities. So, confidence with humility is the key not only to grow but also to keep success.