Humility : The forgotten virtue

So what's humility in the first place? What does it really mean? This is something I got from a particular website : https://www.berkeleywellbeing.com/humility.html . Popularly it's believed that people with humility is of low self esteem. One thing is ego which is you trying to satisfy yourself through external validation whether that's social media or anything other than that. It's just about satisfying getting validation, whereas, quoting the Berkley blog "It actually means we have a sense of connectedness with the whole world and other people, enabling us to transcend self-preoccupation and helping us not take everything too seriously" . Wow this is actually a great definition. It means a sense of connectedness with the whole world, that enables us to transcend self-preoccupation and thus helping us not to take everything too seriously, life or death. 

Now the blog goes on to talk about what intellectual humility is: Knowing that your knowledge is going to be limited, there's a lot that you don't know helps you develop curiosity and humility at the same time. There are blindspots in our knowledge that we might not even be aware of. 

Another thing spoken about is cultural humility, this is about recognising our biases with respect to our own environment, everyone's grown in a different culture, even when people belong to the same country, there are cultural biases and differences that come along. The idea is to respect and accept these differences as they are. There's a lot of history associated with how cultures also have come into existences and recognising the history behind it, is just as equally important than anything else. 

One of the biggest advocates of humility that we have seen in history is Mr. Nelson Mandela. Humility also allows people to feel safer in your presence, they shouldn't really see you as a threat to them. One of his most beautiful quotes is this: 

I absolutely love this quote of his above. It's just so important that people don't perceive you as a threat and that's when they will fully and wholly embrace you. This will help you lead in multiple facets of life, whether that's work life or your personal life, one of the most important qualities of a leader is to be humble and honest to himself or herself. 

Attaching some more of Nelson Mandela Quotes: 

For honest cooperation of humans around you, you have to make them feel really really important and that too by being genuine and humble. Nothing to expand on this. 

He was in jail for many and many years but what jail helped him to achieve was a lot more than just external accomplishments, he was able to focus on the internal values he mentioned. 

As he says, the step number one is always the most important step and that's being honest with yourself. Your own shortcomings, accept them and work towards improving them. There's no power greater than being honest with your own self, that's where all the humbleness and humility lies. 

At the end of the day, I wouldn't say much here but remember that being honest with yourself, having gratitude for the people that contribute to your life will make your life richer and even greater. 

Caution : Don't confuse humbleness and being timid, when the time comes you also need to be assertive, have boundaries and still you can be humble.