I Resent People Who Seem Sure of Themselves

I don’t admire people who seem sure of themselves. I resent them. Quietly. Privately. With enough self-awareness to be embarrassed by it, but not enough to stop.

They move through decisions with an ease that feels suspicious. They choose, commit, pivot, speak. They don’t over-explain. They don’t ask for permission disguised as consensus. They don’t narrate their uncertainty in real time like it’s a disclaimer.

And every time I see that, something tightens.

I tell myself I’m just skeptical. That confidence is often performative. That certainty is overrated. All of that might be true. But it’s not the full truth. The fuller, less flattering version is this: their decisiveness reminds me of something I lost.

There was a time when I trusted my own read on things. When my first reaction carried weight. I didn’t need to workshop every decision internally like it was up for peer review. I felt something, thought about it briefly, and moved.

Now everything goes to committee.

Every choice gets stalled by context, consequences, hypotheticals. I can see all sides so clearly that I struggle to pick one. I mistake that paralysis for wisdom. I call it nuance. What it really is, most days, is fear with better vocabulary.

So when someone else acts with conviction, it feels confrontational—even when they’re doing nothing to me.

I watch them say what they want without apology. I watch them take up space without checking whether it’s allowed. I watch them change direction without publicly agonizing over it first. And instead of feeling inspired, I feel irritated.

Who do they think they are, trusting themselves like that?

That thought always lands heavier than I expect. Because the answer is obvious. They think they’re allowed.

Resentment is rarely about the other person. It’s about comparison doing its quiet, corrosive work. Their certainty becomes a mirror, and I don’t love what it reflects back at me—my hesitation, my self-editing, my habit of waiting for enough information that never actually arrives.

I don’t resent their confidence because it’s fake. I resent it because it’s functional.

It works.

They move forward while I weigh. They gain clarity by acting while I try to think my way into it. Watching that play out triggers a particular bitterness—the kind that doesn’t want what they have, but doesn’t want to admit it wants anything at all.

So I downplay it. I tell myself they’re reckless. Simplistic. Overconfident. I frame my own doubt as depth. It’s a neat psychological trick. It lets me feel superior without changing anything.

But resentment is a leak. It seeps out sideways.

I feel it when I dismiss advice I didn’t ask for. When I roll my eyes at people who speak plainly about their goals. When I assume their confidence must be hiding something ugly. I don’t want to believe that someone can trust themselves without paying a price.

Because I paid one.

What really stings is realizing that my resentment is directed at a past version of myself as much as anyone else. I used to be more decisive. Not louder. Not bolder. Just clearer. Somewhere along the way, I learned that clarity invites consequences, and I wasn’t always ready to deal with them.

So I adapted. I softened. I questioned. I learned how to keep options open so nothing could be taken from me.

Including momentum.

People who seem sure of themselves threaten that strategy. They expose the cost of constant caution. They remind me that certainty isn’t about having all the answers—it’s about being willing to stand behind a choice even if it turns out wrong.

That’s the part I struggle with. Not the possibility of being wrong, but the visibility of it.

Resentment shows up when I’m too afraid to claim what I want openly. When I pretend I don’t care, but care enough to notice. When I tell myself I’m above certainty while secretly craving it.

I’m trying not to moralize this reaction. Not to shame myself for it. Resentment is information, even when it’s uncomfortable. It points directly at what I’ve been avoiding: the risk of trusting myself again.

I don’t need to become one of those unshakably confident people. That’s not the goal. What I need is to stop punishing myself—and others—for moving with conviction.

Because every time I resent someone else’s certainty, I’m really just mourning my own.

And noticing that is inconvenient.

But honest.