Friday, March 12, 2010

"Eating humble pie"...thoughts on humility

I have a love-hate relationship with humility. On the one hand, I (usually) don't want to be arrogant or condescending, or make myself feel good just by putting someone else down. On the other hand, I believe I got too many messages as a child along the lines of "don't brag" and "don't get too big for your britches" at a time when I should have been hearing, "aim high," "be confident," and "let your spirit soar."

I have a guest post called "Eating humble pie" at Everyday Bliss, where Kathy is engaged in an interesting year-long project. She is focusing on 13 selected virtues for a week at a time, and working through the cycle four times. She researches the topic and seeks specific ways to incorporate it into her life. This week, she has put a lot of religious perspective into her writing.

In my invited post I've taken a somewhat pragmatic look at the role of humility in helping or hindering our life's work. I'll be interested to read your responses (you can go ahead and comment at Kathy's blog).

(In case you missed it, last month I posted and got a lot of comments about assertiveness training.)

5 comments:

DJan said...

I read it over there and am not sure where to put the comment, so I'll just say it: I think humility is the most difficult of the virtues to understand and come to terms with, because we have been taught that Pride is a virtue, and it's not! In fact, pride is one of the seven deadly sins and ALWAYS goes before a fall. Good post, I wrote about my struggle with pride on my blog here.

Allyson said...

What an interesting blog project! WAY better than dating 100 girls in 100 days!! I'll hop over and check it out. And I agree...I should have heard "aim high" a lot more, too. Being humble has not always served me especially well. And now that I own my own business, well...it's an uphill battle. ;)

UberGrumpy said...

Interesting. I think I was taught too much humility as a kid too; but the opposite seems to be true with our kids and their cohort.

Ms Sparrow said...

Like you, I'm ambivalent about humility. I like to think it's one of my virtues, yet I get really tired of people taking advantage of me. I'm the one everybody turns to when they need help--and I've helped a lot of people. Then, it seems I only see them when they need me. It wouldn't be so bad if they would "pay it forward" but that's not the case. So I wind up feeling like a sucker and THAT is very humbling!

Everyday Kathy said...

Nancy, thank you again for your terrific post. I think I kind of surprised myself with all my "religious perspective" this week... hard to talk about Jesus without going there I guess. Anyway, I loved your input and if you ever feel like commenting on any of the other topics please do let me know I would love to hear what you have to say on any of them!

This coming week is SURPRISE ... should be very different then last week!

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