We just saw how important it is to look for motivations in connection with your generosity. We want to stick with that concept—examining motivation—and how your motivation, which drives your actions, affects how your actions may or may not be relational. Being humble has to do with your motivation. When you interact with others, do your actions—what you do or don’t do, and what you say or don’t say—come from your desire to respect others and care about them? Or are you motivated by your desire to promote yourself, draw attention to yourself, or gain accolades? Are you motivated by the appearance of being humble? Are you motivated by self-protection and fear? Are you motivated by your desire to win and maximize your advantage?
Being humble means you recognize when your actions are ego-driven and based in pride, and you choose instead to look for motivations based on care and respect for others and yourself. You take a balanced approach serving both yourself and others because you view both yourself and others as equally part of something larger. Humility involves your struggle with desires that are deep within you for strength and security and recognition. For winners, recognizing our ego-driven motivations is perhaps the most challenging part of being relational. It is what defines servant leadership and is a critical element in the ability of many leaders to achieve exceptional results.
Keeping a balanced focus on both self and other is the challenge. You will know that your ego is asserting itself and your pride is taking over when:
So is being humble just about avoiding the behaviors and attitudes associated with pride? Maybe, maybe not. Humility is not something you can just put on like a coat, not a way for you to act. Rather, true humility comes from within. It is just the way you are. You know your place and you see the truth of your personal significance. You need to cultivate it in the depths of your essence—in your very soul, and if you do, it will bring out the best in you and everyone around you. Let’s look at how you can grow in humility.
Being Humble Is Being Grateful
Humility starts with being grateful. If you are a winner, you live in abundance; you have much to be grateful for. You have probably heard that one of the secrets to happiness is having an attitude of gratitude. Just Google it; it’s a very popular concept. What does it mean? It means that you recognize that there is so much good in your life and it did not come to you because you earned it or deserve it. Yes, you may have worked hard and you strive to be good, but that did not bring you sunsets and flowers and breezes in the trees and friendly smiles from others or so many other simple joys in your life. They were gifts. Being humble recognizes that just about everything good in your life is a gift. This recognition is a key to finding joy because unlike things that you earn or buy or take, there is no transactional aspect to receiving a gift. You can’t get less than you deserve because you deserve nothing. So whatever you receive is something to celebrate and be joyful about—it’s gravy, it’s icing on the cake, pennies from heaven, it just fell into your lap and came to you. As the recipient of many gifts, you have no reason not to be joyful.
Your challenge is to see all of the gifts. You may take many of them for granted. Gifts in your life come from many sources. Some come from the universe, from God—or whatever you might think of as the ultimate creative source in the universe—like the wonders of nature and the miracle of your body and mind. Being grateful means that you, as a winner, do not take it for granted that you have a good sound body and mind. So you take care of yourself and are compassionate to others who have physical or mental challenges. You do not take it for granted that there is good air to breathe and clean water to drink and so you take care to be a good steward of resources and of the environment.
Other gifts come to you by inheritance from those who went before you—like everything that makes your life more comfortable and easier than the life of your ancestors. You do not take it for granted that you had parents to love and support and care for you. So you make the best of the opportunities given to you by your parents and if you receive the gift of children in your life, you love and care and support them and you do your part to help other parents do the same. You do not take it for granted that you have systems that bring you fresh water and affordable food and limitless access to entertainment and information and learning. So you work to improve on them for the next generation and to take those systems to other parts of the world where they might not be quite so well developed. You do not take it for granted that you enjoy centuries of beautiful music and art and so you support those who create beauty in music and art for future generations. You do not take it for granted that you live in a country that is free and democratic and organized and safe and so you want to pass that along to the next generation and make your world an even better place for them.
Some gifts come to you from the generosity of others who give of themselves in ways that enrich your life. You do not take for granted the efforts of those around you in the common effort to make your community a better place—those who volunteer or share their gifts of talent and wisdom, such as giving of their time at your children’s schools, at your church, in your neighborhood association, and those who just do their job with an eye on doing quality work. Humility means knowing the reality of your place in the world, your place in the grand scheme of things, and that starts with the realization that you are the recipient of many gifts.
Take a hard look at your life—what are you grateful for and how do you show it? One of the practices we find helpful is to engage in a quick go-round at the dinner table each evening with a question, “What are you grateful for today?” Often the answer might just be, “Good food!” But other times it goes much deeper, “Time with my brother on our rides to school,” or “My parents’ forgiveness.” Give it a try. Recognizing all of the gifts in your life—every day—helps you find joy and keep your difficulties in perspective. Your attitude of gratitude will lift you up and your joy in turn will lift up others.
Your Posture in Meeting Others -- As Brothers and Sisters
Lifting up others sounds great, but in reality it is likely not the norm in many aspects of your life. As a winner you know how to compete and your success in many ways depends on your ability to promote yourself and gain recognition from others. Your intuition might tell you that humility will not serve you well if you are trying to get ahead. Your instinct might be to do all you can to stand out from the crowd, to get noticed, and show your superior abilities or efforts to others. You want to be an important person, someone who matters. This is part of life in your crowded competitive world, where you live among a mass of strangers. So you feel the need to make a statement and assert your individuality. As a winner, your urge for recognition and attention are probably strong. Your desire to win, to have the upper hand, is strong. That’s how you made it. So you want to meet others in a way that lets them know that you are a force to be reckoned with, someone to be respected.
How you meet others in your interactions, however, has consequences. As you encounter others, several things are possible. You can meet them in a superior, dominant posture. You can meet them in an inferior, subservient posture. You can meet as equals, or perhaps as brothers or sisters.
Winners often have a way of assuming a dominant posture. They are superior. This character trait is called hubris, excessive pride. It works as a strategy for getting their way. It helps them sell themselves and their ideas to others. Maybe it even extends beyond themselves, like when it ensures that their children go first, get the first opportunity, as extensions of themselves. They may even bolster their sense of superiority with a condescending attitude, a put-down, a demeaning joke, or withering criticism directed at someone else. They are more important. In dealing with another person, their need is more important than the need of the other. Their problem, their burden, their health issue, the pressures of their life, or whatever else they might experience as their plight or privilege justifies their action toward the other person in getting what they want. Their rudeness, aggression, dismissiveness or lack of caring is often excused by others who expect this behavior from people of power and privilege.
But as we said, assuming this posture as your way of being with others has consequences. The saying goes that you can’t raise yourself up by putting others down. There is a reason why the downfall of the character full of hubris is a classic theme in literature. Seizing a dominant posture in relation to others may work in an anonymous transactional world, but eventually it also leads to isolation and even self-destruction in a community as others reject you and your domineering ways. You might get to the top, but it will be lonely there and chances are you won’t stay there long. Leaders with an ego-driven, self-promoting, dominant style often can achieve short-term results, but those results are not lasting because the foundation of the organization, its people, invariably rejects the leader. Ego-driven leaders sow seeds of discontent leading to sabotage, apathy, and abandonment. People will undermine the leader, do only what is needed to get by and cover their backside, or just quit working with the ego-driven leader entirely.
Then there is the opposite end of the spectrum, the practice of false humility, a subservient posture that is just another form of ego-driven pride. You adopt the attitude of, “Woe is me, I’m just not worthy.” Or “I really did nothing, it was all the efforts of others.” Here you are just fishing for attention and recognition to soothe your insecurity. You are self-absorbed and assert the supremacy of your neediness. Since others quickly see this posture as false and self-serving, just like other ego-driven behavior, it leads to rejection and isolation.
So the preferred choice in being humble might seem to be approaching the other in a genuinely subservient posture. While it is often preferable in the eyes of others, it probably is not natural for you as a winner. Yes, “How may I serve you?” is a good question for you to ask, but being humble does not mean you are there to be a doormat, walked on and stepped over by others. Being humble does not mean you are a slave—to anyone. And yet, clearly there are many situations where you show deference to others. Everyone has bosses to serve and elders to respect. Everyone lives in communities with some form of hierarchy of roles where the respect of others for each person within the hierarchy is essential to good order and a healthy functioning society. A company doesn’t work when the employees don’t respect the CEO. A community isn’t safe when citizens don’t respect law enforcement.
Respect for authority is part of humility and being relational. Quality dialogue, without complaining or triangling, as discussed earlier, is also important. So, with respect for authority, you practice the ways of being relational involved in conflict transformation—being engaged, centered, grounded, and clear. You engage with authority respectfully, with humility, through dialogue.
Does that mean you try to meet others as equals? Maybe, maybe not. “As equals” is just too evaluative. It is not necessary to be equal to others. It is not necessary to demand equality or try to define what equality means with regard to others. Sometimes they are your peers; sometimes they are not. Sometimes you need respect for your authority; sometimes others need respect for theirs. A better way to meet others is as brothers and sisters. You are fellow human beings, inhabitants of Earth. Humility is not being superior and dominant or inferior and subservient to others. It is not demanding equality to others. It values both self and other. It is, “You are my brother. You are my sister. I am your brother. I am your sister.”
What does it mean to meet others as brothers and sisters? If you have a healthy relationship with a brother or sister, then you know. Think about your actual brother or sister—the person in your family who has the same mother you do. We are not talking about your “brother” or “sister” in a religious community. You don’t think of your brother or sister as your equal; that’s an irrelevant concept in the context of family. They are just a person in your family who is like you in many ways and also different than you are. You care about them and want what is best for them because you share a bond with them, a bond of family, a bond of love. You don’t judge them to be lesser or greater than you. You might not like their behavior or their attitudes, but your actions toward them are always in the context of your family relationship, which you want to be strong and good. So you are relational in the way you deal with them, especially in conflict.
Similarly, being humble means you recognize that every person, including yourself, is a unique combination of qualities and none is “better” than any other. You know that any standard by which you might judge them to be superior or inferior to you—wealth, intelligence, appearance, and so on—is looking at only a mere fraction of the fullness that makes up that person. You know that if you knew them from childhood like a brother or sister they would be much more to you than these qualities so you resist looking at others through these lenses. Instead, you are open to the idea that you and the other, together, are part of something larger, an extended family. The family bond means that you value your relationship to the other person just as you would to a brother or sister.
This quality of meeting others in an attitude that is neither superior nor inferior can be captured by the physical stance of ORANS, an open posture toward others, with an openness to what may transpire, believing it can be good. Jump to the very end of the book if you are curious about that.
Being Humble Is Having a Grounded View of Yourself
Meeting others as a brother or sister requires you to have a grounded view of yourself. In fact, the Latin root of humility, humilis, implies lowliness, literally on the ground, humus. You don’t necessarily consider yourself lowly, but you are in touch with the reality of who you are in the grand scheme of things. Yes, you feel good, and yes, you shine. You are not such a big deal however. Part of that is being grateful for all the gifts in your life as we discussed above, but it goes beyond that. It means recognizing that you are far from perfect. You’re not Mary Poppins—“practically perfect in every way.” That realization adjusts your attitude and your behavior.
With a grounded view of yourself, you know that you have a lot to learn. You might know a lot, but you don’t know it all. You are not puffed up. You aren’t complacent with your understanding of yourself and your world. Others know more than you about many things and you want to learn from them. You are a lifelong learner. You engage with others with curiosity. You listen. You don’t assume that you know better about things. Even in being generous, when you see someone’s need, you don’t assume that you know what is best to do for them or that you are more capable of fixing their situation or addressing their need than they are.
You accept criticism and don’t let it make you wither. You want to improve because you, like everyone, are flawed—wonderfully, uniquely flawed in fact. So it is okay when you get feedback on how you might improve. You check your work and do a job thoroughly. You acknowledge your failures and weaknesses. You ask for forgiveness. That doesn’t mean you go around saying you’re sorry all of the time. That is often dishonest, and you want to be clear so dishonest apologies are something you reject. “I’m sorry” are precious words. You do not utter them in a reflexive, willy-nilly way. You do not utter them from a stance of arrogance. If you say, “I’m sorry,” then you really mean that you won’t do it again and that if you could turn back the clock you wouldn’t have done it in the first place. If you can’t or don’t want to say that then you just ask sincerely, “Can you forgive me?” and you engage in dialogue about your failure with the other person. You don’t blame others for your failures because you know that even if they contributed to a failure or problem, you did too.
You also know that others have gifts and talents that you don’t have. You have the capacity to admire others, not just seek their admiration of you. You are good, but you don’t make a big deal about it because others are good too. No matter what the field of human endeavor, there is always someone better. Talents and capacities to perform ebb and flow and there is always someone who is the next big thing. That doesn’t make you depressed, jealous, and frustrated because it is just a reality that you accept.
You also know that you can’t do it all. You need others. You ask for help. You ask for prayers. You offer help and prayer, well wishes and positive intention to others. They need help too. Why doesn’t the proverbial man-in-charge want to ask for help? It’s his pride, being afraid to admit to another that he is lost, afraid to appear weak and stupid. Being humble means you know that sometimes you are indeed weak and stupid in the sense that you don’t have the ability to take care of things yourself and you don’t know how to take care of things yourself. You can’t do it alone. So you ask for help.
That doesn’t mean that you view yourself as helpless. You are very capable and you do your best. Quality is important to you. You do your best not because you want to gain recognition and rewards. Those serve only your ego and when they come you receive them as gifts. You strive for excellence because that is the natural way for you to be. When you do something, you want to do it well. You want to create beauty and goodness because it brings you joy and it brings joy to others, not because it elevates you above others.
The challenge comes when you achieve success. You begin to think pretty highly of yourself. You start to project into the future and think of all that you could be and should be. This future oriented thinking is a delusion that takes you away from the moment, the now. You begin to make big plans for yourself. Your ambitions take over. You think about all that you can gain in fame and fortune. Suddenly, others become your means to achieve those expectations. Suddenly, when you create, you claim credit for the creation. When you interact with others, you look to control and use them to serve your goals. Your head has swollen. Your hat size is no longer in the one-size-fits-all range.
Being humble means that you have a grounded view of your success. Yes, it has to do with you and your efforts and talents. But it also has to do with luck and timing and gifts from God and others. Many, many others have contributed to your success—your parents, mentors, colleagues, competitors, friends, family, and everyone who is part of the web of community that you live in. In many ways, your success might just be an accident of fate. Maybe, maybe not, but being humble means you know it is never completely of your own making.
Being Humble Is Pitching In
When you are grateful for the gifts in your life, when you meet others as brothers and sisters, when you have a grounded view of yourself, you will be motivated to act—for yourself and for others. Action in humility involves service. You want to contribute to the common good because you see yourself as a part of something larger. Being humble means seeking first to serve rather than be served. It finds greatness in sacrifice and effort without the need for recognition. All around you there are opportunities for service, opportunities you might have passed up in the past.
Why didn’t you serve? Because you didn’t have to. It was the easiest thing to do. You were a free rider. A free rider enjoys benefits without contributing—someone who rides the bus without paying the fare. It is an economic concept that has been proven to affect individual decision-making with regard to cooperating—or not. Anytime responsibilities or resources are shared, there are opportunities for free riders. A free rider is the roommate who never does the dishes, or who drinks all the beer in the fridge and never buys any. A free rider is the person who walks his dog in the park everyday and never cleans up the poop. A free rider lets the alley behind his house get overrun with trash and weeds. A free rider drives aggressively, runs a red light and parks his Mercedes between two spaces in the parking lot to make sure it won’t get hit. On a larger scale, the free rider is the nation that over-fishes the seas and endangers the supply of fish for everyone, or a nation that enjoys the benefit of global security through its reliance on the power and resources of other nations. If a responsibility belongs to a group, then it’s easy for some members of the group to do nothing. If a resource is freely shared in a group, it’s easy for some members of the group to take more than their share. If a rule exists for the general good of all then it’s easy for a few to ignore it.
Being a free rider is another form of pride, placing yourself in a special category where you deserve special treatment. You don’t need to contribute or help out because someone else will and you can get away with it. You don’t need to follow the same rules as others because there is no harm done if only one or two don’t comply. As we discussed in connection with being clear, you can be dishonest because you trade on the fact that most people are honest.
You might say, “Free rider problems—yes, that’s why we have laws and government and taxes.” You would be right. Societies can organize and use laws and law enforcement resources to compel members to participate in doing collective good. Governments can tax citizens and use taxes to pay workers to take care of common responsibilities, to pay for law enforcement and to pay those who regulate citizens’ use of common resources. But using law to govern behavior, to make sure everyone contributes, is very difficult. Laws have to be agreed upon in order to be enacted, and then government resources have to be allocated to enforcement of those laws. Often either or both of these are too insurmountable and as a result, free rider problems are everywhere. Communities simply can’t use laws to compel people to do good. If those who don’t comply or contribute are not likely to face negative consequences, then many are likely to neither comply nor contribute.
In a wealthy society, it is easy for free riders to take advantage of the good will of others. A free rider doesn’t bring a food dish to a pot luck meal or the school class party because “It won’t be noticed; there will be enough from everyone else.” So, in an anonymous, transactional world, it is easy for free riders to take advantage of the good will of others. Being relational means you aren’t anonymous and you aren’t a free rider. Instead you are someone who recognizes situations where opportunities exist to be a free rider and you choose not to take advantage of the good will of others. You choose to contribute to the common good. With generosity, you choose to pay more, to do more, than what might be considered your fair share. You pitch in. You volunteer. You do your part. You pay your taxes, but you don’t just assume that, because you pay taxes, you have done all that you need to do.
We’re not saying, “Get out there and take it upon yourself to fill in potholes on the county road.” That would call too much attention to yourself, wouldn’t it? Maybe, maybe not. You just do more, you give more—cheerfully. You choose to take the time to sort and donate gently used goods rather than pitching them in the trash. You know that what you do for the common good, for the good of yourself and others, makes your community, your world, a better place.
Being Humble Is Being Quiet and Lifting Up Others
Come back to where we started in looking at humility—your motivation. Your motivation drives your actions. When you pitch in, are you motivated by a desire to respect others and care about them. When humility is the foundation of your motivation, the way you are, both alone and among others, is different than the way you would be if your motivations were self-promotion, gaining attention and recognition, or winning. You are quiet.
What is being quiet? You are thoughtful, calm, maybe even shy or reserved. Maybe not. Being quiet does not mean you are invisible. Yet, you are not noisy, both in the sense of not vocally loud and forceful, but also in the sense of not making a big effort to draw attention to yourself. You don’t spend a lot of time talking about yourself. You never boast. You are good, but you’re not going to make a big deal about it. We are not saying that everyone should just wear a grey jumpsuit and surrender their individuality, but you also don’t express yourself routinely, vocally or otherwise, in a way that shouts, “Look at me!”
“But hold on,” you might say, “I care about my appearance and what people think of me. I take care of myself and I want to make a good impression.” Yes, it is healthy to take care of yourself and care about how you look. That is modesty and positive self-regard. You can be both a part of the community and also be an individual. You might paint your face and put on a crazy hat when you go to see your favorite team and cheer them on heartily, you might sing loud and dance hard at your friend’s wedding, you might have your hair and nails done and put on your best suit for a public appearance—you express yourself, but you are an individual whose individuality is expressed in context with others.
Being quiet also doesn’t mean that you are not active. You have energy, but it is not frenetic. You are determined and willing to work hard--alongside others. Your desire is for group success, the group that you are part of—your family, your team, your company, your community, your nation, your planet. You are open to working for the betterment of something greater than yourself.
In humility, your means of achieving group success, for yourself and for others, is not through elevating yourself to power and prestige, but through elevating the group by elevating its members. Being quiet is part of that. You ask about others—not just a routine, “How are you doing?” but, “How are you doing, really?” from the heart, looking them in the eye. Then you listen without advising, interrupting, stealing their story, and without aligning and triangling. You give them space to speak and respect their ideas even if they aren’t expressed forcefully. You encourage them. You make them feel important—meet them as brothers and sisters as we discussed earlier. You inspire their belief in themselves by your belief in their capacity to make a positive difference. You challenge them to go ahead and make it. Being humble, being relational, means you lift up others, knowing that when you do, you are part of transformation, lasting positive change. You empower others and use your power wisely in relation to them, which leads us to our final way of being relational—being kind.
Being humble means you recognize when your actions are ego-driven and based in pride, and you choose instead to look for motivations based on care and respect for others and yourself. You take a balanced approach serving both yourself and others because you view both yourself and others as equally part of something larger. Humility involves your struggle with desires that are deep within you for strength and security and recognition. For winners, recognizing our ego-driven motivations is perhaps the most challenging part of being relational. It is what defines servant leadership and is a critical element in the ability of many leaders to achieve exceptional results.
Keeping a balanced focus on both self and other is the challenge. You will know that your ego is asserting itself and your pride is taking over when:
- Your problem or need is more important than the other person’s.
- Your problem or need is an excuse to be rude, pushy and demanding.
- You believe that you deserve special treatment that others don’t deserve.
- You look down on others, judging them to be lesser than you in some way.
- You see yourself as a big wheel and others as cogs.
- You aren’t grateful for what you have; you deserve more.
- You don’t check your work.
- You don’t accept any criticism or input. You’re sure you are right.
- You are complacent with things as they are and satisfied to “just get by.”
- You’re a free rider.
- You are a doormat and let others literally walk over you without speaking up.
- You give to get, expect a public thank you, and crave recognition.
- You encounter a needy person and assume you know what they need and how you can help.
So is being humble just about avoiding the behaviors and attitudes associated with pride? Maybe, maybe not. Humility is not something you can just put on like a coat, not a way for you to act. Rather, true humility comes from within. It is just the way you are. You know your place and you see the truth of your personal significance. You need to cultivate it in the depths of your essence—in your very soul, and if you do, it will bring out the best in you and everyone around you. Let’s look at how you can grow in humility.
Being Humble Is Being Grateful
Humility starts with being grateful. If you are a winner, you live in abundance; you have much to be grateful for. You have probably heard that one of the secrets to happiness is having an attitude of gratitude. Just Google it; it’s a very popular concept. What does it mean? It means that you recognize that there is so much good in your life and it did not come to you because you earned it or deserve it. Yes, you may have worked hard and you strive to be good, but that did not bring you sunsets and flowers and breezes in the trees and friendly smiles from others or so many other simple joys in your life. They were gifts. Being humble recognizes that just about everything good in your life is a gift. This recognition is a key to finding joy because unlike things that you earn or buy or take, there is no transactional aspect to receiving a gift. You can’t get less than you deserve because you deserve nothing. So whatever you receive is something to celebrate and be joyful about—it’s gravy, it’s icing on the cake, pennies from heaven, it just fell into your lap and came to you. As the recipient of many gifts, you have no reason not to be joyful.
Your challenge is to see all of the gifts. You may take many of them for granted. Gifts in your life come from many sources. Some come from the universe, from God—or whatever you might think of as the ultimate creative source in the universe—like the wonders of nature and the miracle of your body and mind. Being grateful means that you, as a winner, do not take it for granted that you have a good sound body and mind. So you take care of yourself and are compassionate to others who have physical or mental challenges. You do not take it for granted that there is good air to breathe and clean water to drink and so you take care to be a good steward of resources and of the environment.
Other gifts come to you by inheritance from those who went before you—like everything that makes your life more comfortable and easier than the life of your ancestors. You do not take it for granted that you had parents to love and support and care for you. So you make the best of the opportunities given to you by your parents and if you receive the gift of children in your life, you love and care and support them and you do your part to help other parents do the same. You do not take it for granted that you have systems that bring you fresh water and affordable food and limitless access to entertainment and information and learning. So you work to improve on them for the next generation and to take those systems to other parts of the world where they might not be quite so well developed. You do not take it for granted that you enjoy centuries of beautiful music and art and so you support those who create beauty in music and art for future generations. You do not take it for granted that you live in a country that is free and democratic and organized and safe and so you want to pass that along to the next generation and make your world an even better place for them.
Some gifts come to you from the generosity of others who give of themselves in ways that enrich your life. You do not take for granted the efforts of those around you in the common effort to make your community a better place—those who volunteer or share their gifts of talent and wisdom, such as giving of their time at your children’s schools, at your church, in your neighborhood association, and those who just do their job with an eye on doing quality work. Humility means knowing the reality of your place in the world, your place in the grand scheme of things, and that starts with the realization that you are the recipient of many gifts.
Take a hard look at your life—what are you grateful for and how do you show it? One of the practices we find helpful is to engage in a quick go-round at the dinner table each evening with a question, “What are you grateful for today?” Often the answer might just be, “Good food!” But other times it goes much deeper, “Time with my brother on our rides to school,” or “My parents’ forgiveness.” Give it a try. Recognizing all of the gifts in your life—every day—helps you find joy and keep your difficulties in perspective. Your attitude of gratitude will lift you up and your joy in turn will lift up others.
Your Posture in Meeting Others -- As Brothers and Sisters
Lifting up others sounds great, but in reality it is likely not the norm in many aspects of your life. As a winner you know how to compete and your success in many ways depends on your ability to promote yourself and gain recognition from others. Your intuition might tell you that humility will not serve you well if you are trying to get ahead. Your instinct might be to do all you can to stand out from the crowd, to get noticed, and show your superior abilities or efforts to others. You want to be an important person, someone who matters. This is part of life in your crowded competitive world, where you live among a mass of strangers. So you feel the need to make a statement and assert your individuality. As a winner, your urge for recognition and attention are probably strong. Your desire to win, to have the upper hand, is strong. That’s how you made it. So you want to meet others in a way that lets them know that you are a force to be reckoned with, someone to be respected.
How you meet others in your interactions, however, has consequences. As you encounter others, several things are possible. You can meet them in a superior, dominant posture. You can meet them in an inferior, subservient posture. You can meet as equals, or perhaps as brothers or sisters.
Winners often have a way of assuming a dominant posture. They are superior. This character trait is called hubris, excessive pride. It works as a strategy for getting their way. It helps them sell themselves and their ideas to others. Maybe it even extends beyond themselves, like when it ensures that their children go first, get the first opportunity, as extensions of themselves. They may even bolster their sense of superiority with a condescending attitude, a put-down, a demeaning joke, or withering criticism directed at someone else. They are more important. In dealing with another person, their need is more important than the need of the other. Their problem, their burden, their health issue, the pressures of their life, or whatever else they might experience as their plight or privilege justifies their action toward the other person in getting what they want. Their rudeness, aggression, dismissiveness or lack of caring is often excused by others who expect this behavior from people of power and privilege.
But as we said, assuming this posture as your way of being with others has consequences. The saying goes that you can’t raise yourself up by putting others down. There is a reason why the downfall of the character full of hubris is a classic theme in literature. Seizing a dominant posture in relation to others may work in an anonymous transactional world, but eventually it also leads to isolation and even self-destruction in a community as others reject you and your domineering ways. You might get to the top, but it will be lonely there and chances are you won’t stay there long. Leaders with an ego-driven, self-promoting, dominant style often can achieve short-term results, but those results are not lasting because the foundation of the organization, its people, invariably rejects the leader. Ego-driven leaders sow seeds of discontent leading to sabotage, apathy, and abandonment. People will undermine the leader, do only what is needed to get by and cover their backside, or just quit working with the ego-driven leader entirely.
Then there is the opposite end of the spectrum, the practice of false humility, a subservient posture that is just another form of ego-driven pride. You adopt the attitude of, “Woe is me, I’m just not worthy.” Or “I really did nothing, it was all the efforts of others.” Here you are just fishing for attention and recognition to soothe your insecurity. You are self-absorbed and assert the supremacy of your neediness. Since others quickly see this posture as false and self-serving, just like other ego-driven behavior, it leads to rejection and isolation.
So the preferred choice in being humble might seem to be approaching the other in a genuinely subservient posture. While it is often preferable in the eyes of others, it probably is not natural for you as a winner. Yes, “How may I serve you?” is a good question for you to ask, but being humble does not mean you are there to be a doormat, walked on and stepped over by others. Being humble does not mean you are a slave—to anyone. And yet, clearly there are many situations where you show deference to others. Everyone has bosses to serve and elders to respect. Everyone lives in communities with some form of hierarchy of roles where the respect of others for each person within the hierarchy is essential to good order and a healthy functioning society. A company doesn’t work when the employees don’t respect the CEO. A community isn’t safe when citizens don’t respect law enforcement.
Respect for authority is part of humility and being relational. Quality dialogue, without complaining or triangling, as discussed earlier, is also important. So, with respect for authority, you practice the ways of being relational involved in conflict transformation—being engaged, centered, grounded, and clear. You engage with authority respectfully, with humility, through dialogue.
Does that mean you try to meet others as equals? Maybe, maybe not. “As equals” is just too evaluative. It is not necessary to be equal to others. It is not necessary to demand equality or try to define what equality means with regard to others. Sometimes they are your peers; sometimes they are not. Sometimes you need respect for your authority; sometimes others need respect for theirs. A better way to meet others is as brothers and sisters. You are fellow human beings, inhabitants of Earth. Humility is not being superior and dominant or inferior and subservient to others. It is not demanding equality to others. It values both self and other. It is, “You are my brother. You are my sister. I am your brother. I am your sister.”
What does it mean to meet others as brothers and sisters? If you have a healthy relationship with a brother or sister, then you know. Think about your actual brother or sister—the person in your family who has the same mother you do. We are not talking about your “brother” or “sister” in a religious community. You don’t think of your brother or sister as your equal; that’s an irrelevant concept in the context of family. They are just a person in your family who is like you in many ways and also different than you are. You care about them and want what is best for them because you share a bond with them, a bond of family, a bond of love. You don’t judge them to be lesser or greater than you. You might not like their behavior or their attitudes, but your actions toward them are always in the context of your family relationship, which you want to be strong and good. So you are relational in the way you deal with them, especially in conflict.
Similarly, being humble means you recognize that every person, including yourself, is a unique combination of qualities and none is “better” than any other. You know that any standard by which you might judge them to be superior or inferior to you—wealth, intelligence, appearance, and so on—is looking at only a mere fraction of the fullness that makes up that person. You know that if you knew them from childhood like a brother or sister they would be much more to you than these qualities so you resist looking at others through these lenses. Instead, you are open to the idea that you and the other, together, are part of something larger, an extended family. The family bond means that you value your relationship to the other person just as you would to a brother or sister.
This quality of meeting others in an attitude that is neither superior nor inferior can be captured by the physical stance of ORANS, an open posture toward others, with an openness to what may transpire, believing it can be good. Jump to the very end of the book if you are curious about that.
Being Humble Is Having a Grounded View of Yourself
Meeting others as a brother or sister requires you to have a grounded view of yourself. In fact, the Latin root of humility, humilis, implies lowliness, literally on the ground, humus. You don’t necessarily consider yourself lowly, but you are in touch with the reality of who you are in the grand scheme of things. Yes, you feel good, and yes, you shine. You are not such a big deal however. Part of that is being grateful for all the gifts in your life as we discussed above, but it goes beyond that. It means recognizing that you are far from perfect. You’re not Mary Poppins—“practically perfect in every way.” That realization adjusts your attitude and your behavior.
With a grounded view of yourself, you know that you have a lot to learn. You might know a lot, but you don’t know it all. You are not puffed up. You aren’t complacent with your understanding of yourself and your world. Others know more than you about many things and you want to learn from them. You are a lifelong learner. You engage with others with curiosity. You listen. You don’t assume that you know better about things. Even in being generous, when you see someone’s need, you don’t assume that you know what is best to do for them or that you are more capable of fixing their situation or addressing their need than they are.
You accept criticism and don’t let it make you wither. You want to improve because you, like everyone, are flawed—wonderfully, uniquely flawed in fact. So it is okay when you get feedback on how you might improve. You check your work and do a job thoroughly. You acknowledge your failures and weaknesses. You ask for forgiveness. That doesn’t mean you go around saying you’re sorry all of the time. That is often dishonest, and you want to be clear so dishonest apologies are something you reject. “I’m sorry” are precious words. You do not utter them in a reflexive, willy-nilly way. You do not utter them from a stance of arrogance. If you say, “I’m sorry,” then you really mean that you won’t do it again and that if you could turn back the clock you wouldn’t have done it in the first place. If you can’t or don’t want to say that then you just ask sincerely, “Can you forgive me?” and you engage in dialogue about your failure with the other person. You don’t blame others for your failures because you know that even if they contributed to a failure or problem, you did too.
You also know that others have gifts and talents that you don’t have. You have the capacity to admire others, not just seek their admiration of you. You are good, but you don’t make a big deal about it because others are good too. No matter what the field of human endeavor, there is always someone better. Talents and capacities to perform ebb and flow and there is always someone who is the next big thing. That doesn’t make you depressed, jealous, and frustrated because it is just a reality that you accept.
You also know that you can’t do it all. You need others. You ask for help. You ask for prayers. You offer help and prayer, well wishes and positive intention to others. They need help too. Why doesn’t the proverbial man-in-charge want to ask for help? It’s his pride, being afraid to admit to another that he is lost, afraid to appear weak and stupid. Being humble means you know that sometimes you are indeed weak and stupid in the sense that you don’t have the ability to take care of things yourself and you don’t know how to take care of things yourself. You can’t do it alone. So you ask for help.
That doesn’t mean that you view yourself as helpless. You are very capable and you do your best. Quality is important to you. You do your best not because you want to gain recognition and rewards. Those serve only your ego and when they come you receive them as gifts. You strive for excellence because that is the natural way for you to be. When you do something, you want to do it well. You want to create beauty and goodness because it brings you joy and it brings joy to others, not because it elevates you above others.
The challenge comes when you achieve success. You begin to think pretty highly of yourself. You start to project into the future and think of all that you could be and should be. This future oriented thinking is a delusion that takes you away from the moment, the now. You begin to make big plans for yourself. Your ambitions take over. You think about all that you can gain in fame and fortune. Suddenly, others become your means to achieve those expectations. Suddenly, when you create, you claim credit for the creation. When you interact with others, you look to control and use them to serve your goals. Your head has swollen. Your hat size is no longer in the one-size-fits-all range.
Being humble means that you have a grounded view of your success. Yes, it has to do with you and your efforts and talents. But it also has to do with luck and timing and gifts from God and others. Many, many others have contributed to your success—your parents, mentors, colleagues, competitors, friends, family, and everyone who is part of the web of community that you live in. In many ways, your success might just be an accident of fate. Maybe, maybe not, but being humble means you know it is never completely of your own making.
Being Humble Is Pitching In
When you are grateful for the gifts in your life, when you meet others as brothers and sisters, when you have a grounded view of yourself, you will be motivated to act—for yourself and for others. Action in humility involves service. You want to contribute to the common good because you see yourself as a part of something larger. Being humble means seeking first to serve rather than be served. It finds greatness in sacrifice and effort without the need for recognition. All around you there are opportunities for service, opportunities you might have passed up in the past.
Why didn’t you serve? Because you didn’t have to. It was the easiest thing to do. You were a free rider. A free rider enjoys benefits without contributing—someone who rides the bus without paying the fare. It is an economic concept that has been proven to affect individual decision-making with regard to cooperating—or not. Anytime responsibilities or resources are shared, there are opportunities for free riders. A free rider is the roommate who never does the dishes, or who drinks all the beer in the fridge and never buys any. A free rider is the person who walks his dog in the park everyday and never cleans up the poop. A free rider lets the alley behind his house get overrun with trash and weeds. A free rider drives aggressively, runs a red light and parks his Mercedes between two spaces in the parking lot to make sure it won’t get hit. On a larger scale, the free rider is the nation that over-fishes the seas and endangers the supply of fish for everyone, or a nation that enjoys the benefit of global security through its reliance on the power and resources of other nations. If a responsibility belongs to a group, then it’s easy for some members of the group to do nothing. If a resource is freely shared in a group, it’s easy for some members of the group to take more than their share. If a rule exists for the general good of all then it’s easy for a few to ignore it.
Being a free rider is another form of pride, placing yourself in a special category where you deserve special treatment. You don’t need to contribute or help out because someone else will and you can get away with it. You don’t need to follow the same rules as others because there is no harm done if only one or two don’t comply. As we discussed in connection with being clear, you can be dishonest because you trade on the fact that most people are honest.
You might say, “Free rider problems—yes, that’s why we have laws and government and taxes.” You would be right. Societies can organize and use laws and law enforcement resources to compel members to participate in doing collective good. Governments can tax citizens and use taxes to pay workers to take care of common responsibilities, to pay for law enforcement and to pay those who regulate citizens’ use of common resources. But using law to govern behavior, to make sure everyone contributes, is very difficult. Laws have to be agreed upon in order to be enacted, and then government resources have to be allocated to enforcement of those laws. Often either or both of these are too insurmountable and as a result, free rider problems are everywhere. Communities simply can’t use laws to compel people to do good. If those who don’t comply or contribute are not likely to face negative consequences, then many are likely to neither comply nor contribute.
In a wealthy society, it is easy for free riders to take advantage of the good will of others. A free rider doesn’t bring a food dish to a pot luck meal or the school class party because “It won’t be noticed; there will be enough from everyone else.” So, in an anonymous, transactional world, it is easy for free riders to take advantage of the good will of others. Being relational means you aren’t anonymous and you aren’t a free rider. Instead you are someone who recognizes situations where opportunities exist to be a free rider and you choose not to take advantage of the good will of others. You choose to contribute to the common good. With generosity, you choose to pay more, to do more, than what might be considered your fair share. You pitch in. You volunteer. You do your part. You pay your taxes, but you don’t just assume that, because you pay taxes, you have done all that you need to do.
We’re not saying, “Get out there and take it upon yourself to fill in potholes on the county road.” That would call too much attention to yourself, wouldn’t it? Maybe, maybe not. You just do more, you give more—cheerfully. You choose to take the time to sort and donate gently used goods rather than pitching them in the trash. You know that what you do for the common good, for the good of yourself and others, makes your community, your world, a better place.
Being Humble Is Being Quiet and Lifting Up Others
Come back to where we started in looking at humility—your motivation. Your motivation drives your actions. When you pitch in, are you motivated by a desire to respect others and care about them. When humility is the foundation of your motivation, the way you are, both alone and among others, is different than the way you would be if your motivations were self-promotion, gaining attention and recognition, or winning. You are quiet.
What is being quiet? You are thoughtful, calm, maybe even shy or reserved. Maybe not. Being quiet does not mean you are invisible. Yet, you are not noisy, both in the sense of not vocally loud and forceful, but also in the sense of not making a big effort to draw attention to yourself. You don’t spend a lot of time talking about yourself. You never boast. You are good, but you’re not going to make a big deal about it. We are not saying that everyone should just wear a grey jumpsuit and surrender their individuality, but you also don’t express yourself routinely, vocally or otherwise, in a way that shouts, “Look at me!”
“But hold on,” you might say, “I care about my appearance and what people think of me. I take care of myself and I want to make a good impression.” Yes, it is healthy to take care of yourself and care about how you look. That is modesty and positive self-regard. You can be both a part of the community and also be an individual. You might paint your face and put on a crazy hat when you go to see your favorite team and cheer them on heartily, you might sing loud and dance hard at your friend’s wedding, you might have your hair and nails done and put on your best suit for a public appearance—you express yourself, but you are an individual whose individuality is expressed in context with others.
Being quiet also doesn’t mean that you are not active. You have energy, but it is not frenetic. You are determined and willing to work hard--alongside others. Your desire is for group success, the group that you are part of—your family, your team, your company, your community, your nation, your planet. You are open to working for the betterment of something greater than yourself.
In humility, your means of achieving group success, for yourself and for others, is not through elevating yourself to power and prestige, but through elevating the group by elevating its members. Being quiet is part of that. You ask about others—not just a routine, “How are you doing?” but, “How are you doing, really?” from the heart, looking them in the eye. Then you listen without advising, interrupting, stealing their story, and without aligning and triangling. You give them space to speak and respect their ideas even if they aren’t expressed forcefully. You encourage them. You make them feel important—meet them as brothers and sisters as we discussed earlier. You inspire their belief in themselves by your belief in their capacity to make a positive difference. You challenge them to go ahead and make it. Being humble, being relational, means you lift up others, knowing that when you do, you are part of transformation, lasting positive change. You empower others and use your power wisely in relation to them, which leads us to our final way of being relational—being kind.