The Wisdom of Vices

It's a Monday, a Saturday, a Thursday - and that “Vincent guy” is me. The setting is a lecture theatre somewhere in the University of Benin, or a room, a class or the front of Tchad somewhere in NLS Kano. The assailant is male, female, friend, foe. If I got a coin for every time someone called me cocky!

Entry One - What I learnt from arrogance

“That Vincent guy is so damn cocky!”

It's a Monday, a Saturday, a Thursday - and that “Vincent guy” is me. The setting is a lecture theatre somewhere in the University of Benin, or a room, a class or the front of Tchad somewhere in NLS Kano. The assailant is male, female, friend, foe. If I got a coin for every time someone called me cocky! ( I’d probably have ruptured a disk plate from carrying too much weight around.) "How they misunderstand me!", I would think to myself whenever I heard. I wasn't cocky, I'd insist - I was just supremely assured of my abilities. Looking back, they were right. I was cocky as hell. 

The thing about being cocky though is that, it gets you through; it gets you in the door or in the right spot - particularly if it is backed by some substance. If you're that convinced of yourself, chances are you may cause anybody else to be convinced of you. Hell, you may convince the universe to be assured of you too. I used to jokingly tell friends, whenever I finally admitted to being cocky, that it had been said cockiness that got me that far. It wasn't far from the truth. 

The other thing about being “supremely assured” of your own abilities is that it could leave you blindsided, exposed; open you up to mistakes and leave you utterly gutted when you fail. I learnt that the hard way. It's like how they say that pride comes before a fall. They should have added that the fall of pride has to be the most painful. It's a fall that leaves you stunned and gasping for air. 

The trick though, as I have learnt, is to be completely “cocky” and completely “unassured” at the same time. I’m guessing that does not make any sense. I am hoping it doesn't. 

Being “cocky” allows you to reach for the most. It allows you to take the moon-shot, to sell yourself, to brace up to challenges. When America thought up the moon landing that led to the Apollo 11, that was cocky. When Eliud Kipchoge assured the world that he would break the world record at INEOS 1.59, that was some bit of "cocky." Being that confident, gives you lease to dream the dreams that make people question your sanity. But like I mentioned, it leaves you exposed. To counter this, the trick is to find the middle. By ‘not being cocky’, on the other hand, you can introspect and access yourself, you can learn and unlearn and importantly, you can fail.

Being “unassured”, (although not to the extent of docility) helps cushion you, and helps you really grow. It offers you a chance to admit your own shortfalls when you fail; it allows you to cut yourself some slack and it gives you the capacity to accept that you may sometimes not be enough, yet. So instead of shock and miserableness, when you fail, it helps you get over yourself, it reminds you that you are limited. It asks you “just who the hell do you think you are anyways!” It assures you that you not infallible.

Steve Jobs once said that getting sacked from Apple, the company he started, was the biggest kick in the gut he ever experienced. Such a massive fall. He went on to start Pixar and NeXT and came to become the CEO of Apple after Apple bought NeXT. In his commencement speech at Stanford in 2005, he stated that that singular incident help ground him in some ways that continued success would not have and came to become the fulcrum for much of his more remarkable achievements in later years. That is what the middle gives you - minus the fall; the means to go head first and take a fall, and come back even stronger having learnt.

As an ambitious professional, you need to be cocky, over confident, arrogant; whatever you call it. If you're in the corporate world, and say in a cut-throat business like Legal Practice, then even more so. Ambition, it is said, should be made of 'sterner stuff' - there are few things sterner than reckless confidence. But you would also need to be teachable, flexible and adaptable. If you can somehow find the middle, you're set. Rudyard Kipling said to trust yourself when all men doubt you, but leave allowance for their doubting too. I always found those lines fraught with meaning.

When I was younger (and cockier), whenever I was confronted with a question about my hopes for success in any endeavour, I would respond, tongue-in-cheek, with the quote “I have not failed before and I don't plan on starting now.” These days, I respond with the same quote, only with a different perspective. The emphasis now being on the second part of that sentence, while the first part remains, just for effect. In my own way, I am still looking for the middle.