Get Over Yourself

Courtesy of Fabio Bruna (flickr)

Humility is a tough one.

On one hand, we all need to maintain a respectable level of self-esteem.  It’s healthy and serves as a protection in many respects.  I would never advocate otherwise.

As a matter of fact, I think it’s a great thing to be able to “blow your own horn” to some extent, especially from a marketing perspective.  God knows I do enough of it!

But there’s another side of the coin too: pride, arrogance and a self-righteous attitude can destroy a person’s relationships with friends and family and can leave them miserable and alone.

It’s that serious.

So how does one cultivate a healthy level of self-esteem while maintaining their relationships?

Enter the timeless principle of humility.

Although they are two separate terms, each with their own nuances, for the sake of this post I’m going to call humility and modesty synonymous.  For the sake of clarity, here are the official definitions, because I know sticklers are likely to try to point out that they are not synonyms (although the thesaurus disagrees with you…)

Humility: -noun- the quality or condition of being humble; modest opinion or estimate of one’s own importance, rank, etc.

Modesty: – noun – 1.the quality of being modest; freedom from vanity, boastfulness, etc.  2.regard for decency of behavior, speech, dress, etc.  3. simplicity; moderation.

When we’re discussing the basic principle of being modest and humble, we’re talking about the same thing: being aware of your own limitations, holding a reasonable opinion of yourself, and portraying that attitude when interacting with others.

We all know humble people, and invariably, we like them.

Maybe it’s because they make us feel better about ourselves.  Or because we assume them to be better than they assume themselves to be.  Or maybe because they always seem to pleasantly surprise us!

Whatever it is, it’s inescapable, and it’s universal: we like humble, modest people.

So why aren’t they more prevalent?

Like we’ve discussed here before, the world in general looks down on a lot of positive personality traits, like kindness, goodness, love.  These are considered signs of weakness, or naivety.  Unfortunately, humility and modesty fall right into the same category in many peoples’ minds.

You know these folks when you see them.

On the playground, they were bullies or henchmen, always trying to intimidate and push other kids around, laughing and calling them “chicken” if someone tried to walk away.

As they got older, they turned into middle managers, bureaucrats and low-level politicians, making sure to step on every hand they can to climb faster up the ladder of success.

But, interestingly enough, you very rarely find them at the top.

It’s very rare, indeed, to find a truly arrogant, self-absorbed person sitting in a CEO position, or maintaining lasting celebrity in the entertainment field, or leading a nation.  It happens, on occasion, but not often.  (The one exception seems to be academia, but that might be a subject for a different post…)

There’s a reason for that.

You see, those folks who started out as bullies and grew up to be supervisors are full of themselves.  They feel it’s their way or the highway, and they’re willing to run down anyone who gets in their way or disagrees.  They consider themselves superior to everyone around them, and they’re often truly mystified, and not a little pissed, when someone has the audacity to prove them wrong.

That kind of person surrounds themselves with others like them, false friends one and all, who either blindly agree with the individual, or backstab him blatantly behind his back.  No true friends are going to be there to support him, no network of business associates willing to stick their neck out to help him out.

And you just can’t get very far like that.

The humble person, on the other hand, realizes (accurately) that they can’t do everything themselves, so they find awesome people who can do what needs to be done and they build a strong, mutually beneficial relationship with those people.

The humble person understands that other people will definitely have interesting, if opposing views, and may very well be able to improve a situation by having the freedom to put their ideas in action, so the humble person empowers them to do so.

The humble person shows gratitude and encourages this team of friends/family/co-workers rather than putting them down to make himself feel better.

And what do they do in return?

Anything he wants.

Literally.

These are the Steve Jobs’ and the Bill Clintons of the world: strong leaders, intelligent thinkers, doers capable of incredible things, who nonetheless realize and act on the fact that they would be nothing without the support and help of those people who believe in them and make their visions come to life.

Their humility makes them great.

Humility and modesty are difficult to teach and difficult to learn.  They are very much habituated from childhood on. You see, children, especially little babies, are naturally humble.  They realize as a matter of course that everyone knows more than they do, and everyone is more capable than them.

And they aren’t bothered by it until we parents start telling them things like, “come on, you know that.”  Or, “no, I’m not going to do that for you, you know how to do that!”  Then they start deciding they know more, until (around the age of 14 or so,) they realize they no more than we ever did.  But I digress…

But if you truly care for other people, respect their thoughts and feelings as you would like your thoughts and feelings respected, and truly desire to bring the best out of them, you will automatically be cultivating humility in your personality.

So get over yourself.

And let yourself be great.

What do you think?  Is humility a sign of weakness?  Or a sign of strength?

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