Let's say you're great at basketball and are studying something like engineering in college or you're already an engineer trying to move up in the company.
When you go to play basketball and destroy all your engineering friends, you're going to have a small group or maybe just 1 or two individuals say some crap about "Wow, you're a great athlete, but what does that mean when it comes to academics?" In some real twisted way they're trying downplay what you did to them on the court.
Don't feel bad about that, not in the slightest and especially don't settle or take it down any notches. It's like Bruce Lee said,"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life."
In other words you'll train yourself to tone down your intensity in every single thing you do. fukk all that, be proud of what you can do, no matter what it is. You're training yourself for ultimate confidence that way.
If it comes to blows even vs your 'friends', then you're defending your birth right to embrace your greatness. What's wrong about that? For some reason people think this is wrong. But what you end up doing is polarizing people. That means you're left with a) true friends and/or b)people who will look to you as a leader.
You keep toning down your victories, humbling yourself (for other people) and being modest too often and you'll have zero confidence in everything you do very soon. You can be humble and confident. Humble is when you know you're in the process of becoming a master and you're open to learning from mistakes.
Sure when you're confident and fall, people will laugh. But think about that: it's like in sports everyone wants to shut down the loudmouthed team. When you look at it even further, who's really calling the shots though? The quiet team is reacting to the brash team. Who's really leading and setting the tone? The confident team.