Staying humble
Read time: 8 minutes
There comes a time in our lives when we’ve ‘made it’.
There is a point in time where we have become so disconnected from what we used to be that we have fully become someone else.
What we had to do to get there was obviously no easy journey.
All of the sweat, hard work and continuous sacrifices make us feel entitled to brag, to feel superior, to beam full of pride.
No matter how right we are to feel entitled, no matter how much we have suffered to be where we are now, pride turned into arrogance will help nobody.
Nobody other than you want you to be that prideful.
No matter how well deserved, bragging about the things you were able to accomplish within your lifetime simply doesn’t help anyone else on their journeys.
It not only doesn’t help them on their journeys, it may even damage their belief that they can do that as well.
What is arrogance?
By definition, the word “arrogance” (according to the English dictionary) means “having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one's own importance or abilities.”.
It is the feeling that you are so much better, so much more entitled, that you’re absolutely invincible.
It is the idea that you are plain greater than others… Which is plain not true.
I repeat feeling like you are much better than others simply does not have a place in daily interactions.
You are a mere human being.
You are both as great and as awful as any other human.
Nobody is more than anyone else, because nobody is (yet) anything other than human.
It is both the blessing and the curse of the human condition.
When we get the false feeling of greatness over others, we risk revealing ourselves to others in an arrogant way.
Whenever we act in such a way, we become unarguably assholes.
We become non-genuine individuals.
Others can even see through this armor.
They can see that this attitude is merely a way of trying to make yourself feel worthy.
Why be humble?
How often did you find it useful when someone boasted right in your face?
How did you feel when someone showed up waving about how awesome they are?
It’s never pleasant to deal with a boastful person.
We’ve all been through at least 1 experience where someone else has been arrogant around us.
Why then would we perpetrate such an attitude?
Why then would we bend over backwards to stroke our egos while harming the self-esteem of others?
Being humble brings about incredible empowerment for the person you are interacting with.
We all know that if we go about our business with a humble attitude, we give others the space to grow and share the good that comes with our achievements.
There’s no need to push people towards getting empowered by your story.
We can give them a very gentle suggestion towards achieving empowerment.
The question is not “why should I be humble?”.
The better question would be “Is there any good reason other than my ego NOT to be humble?”
Being humble DOES NOT mean being weak.
The attitude you reflect upon other people does not need to correlate with your level of self-worth.
Just because everyone is your equal does not mean your achievements, your goals, your aspirations are necessary equal.
It just means that you decide to treat the person in front of you as if they are neither better, nor worse than you are, but rather a friendly equal that you have something valuable to learn from and you have a duty to empower.
How to stay humble
So.
Now you understand the need to be and stay humble, but how do you actually go about having a humble attitude?
1.Keep in mind every day where you started from.
Remember that your accomplishments are not yours.
You are just the culmination of generations upon generations of sacrifices made for a better tomorrow.
You are the byproduct of a lineage that has invested time, money, affection and hard work to do the best they knew how into creating the person that you are today.
2.Remember that everyone has their own path.
Just because you are at a particular place in your journey at a particular age is by no means a good reason to feel more entitled than someone else.
This is your journey, just as they have their own journey.
As I alluded to earlier in this blog post, you are neither worse nor better than anyone else in the whole world.
You are just an individual.
You have both the right to be equal to anyone else in the whole world and the duty to help everyone else feel equal.
3.Life will make you humble
Life will teach you what you still need to learn.
Being arrogant will just make you unable to learn from your mistakes, it will make it impossible to accept the lessons that you need to learn at the turning points in your life.
Even if you don’t take the easy way and humble yourself, the universe will find a way to humble you sooner or later.