Humility and Confidence

What does humility mean to you?
What does confidence mean to you?
How can humility and confidence coexist?
Which comes more naturally for you - humility or confidence?
How do you stay humble / practice humility?
How have you built confidence?
What does it look and feel like to be humble and confident at the same time?
What kinds of environments do you feel most confident in? Where are you? Who are you with?
What makes it difficult to be humble?
What makes it difficult to be confident?
Is it possible to be too confident, or too humble?
How might learning to be more humble help us become more confident?
What's something you want to take from this conversation into this weekend?

Google says:
Humility - a modest or low view of one’s own importance
Confidence - feeling or belief that one can rely on someone or something

Which do you feel most drawn to in this moment in time? Most of the group touched on the importance and necessity of having both humility and confidence present in their lives. There is a balance between the two depending on the situation. Confidence is knowing your boundaries, and humility is knowing when to ask for help.

How many of us can relate to either being or knowing when someone else was appearing to be falsely confident? This misplaced confidence stems from the “fake it ‘til you make it” mentality. These people show all signs of confidence - good posture, clear and steady speech, strong voice, stable eye contact - but what they were saying or demonstrating was obviously wrong. We agreed it was easier to spot this false confidence in people. This is how confidence is often portrayed in modern society. But why is that? why do we often tell ourselves we need to be confident or they’ll know I’m a phony?

We do have people in this world who are self confident, meaning they really do understand themselves, the situation, an idea, etc. but often looked down upon or seen as bad. We as a society have a tendency to merge true self confidence with this false confidence into one group and view these people as assertive and arrogant. Thinking of people in my own life who I view as self confident, I tend to feel threatened or jealous and resort to seeing them as “better than” me. Why is that? This could be because I feel I lack confidence in my own self as do many others who share my views.

Okay, so lets say you have some lack of confidence in some aspect of life - professionally, in relationships, in yourself, in your abilities - how can we surpass this and gain more self confidence? We can all agree that in order to gain confidence in external situations we must first build up that confidence within ourselves. For example, we want to build up the confidence to join this dance group or sports club. The people already in these groups are great, they seem positive, capable, excited, involved, everything we associate with a confident person in this activity, right? Great but how come we feel we are different from them? What do we feel we are lacking? Where can we improve on confidence?

Taking this example of joining a dance group or sports club, we often find that we feel inadequate to do so because we lack things like clear communication, accepting our body image, ability to perform in dance/sport, or connecting with our peers. It could be anything. But what might be underlying is all of these possible lacks of confidence here or there are really things we do not feel we have within. Do we communicate well with ourselves? Do we feel beautiful? Do we feel we can do this? Do we feel connected with who we are? If the answer is no to any of these, maybe start there.

For those who have all the self confidence in the world, you probably went through many experiences of growth towards that confidence. You are very grounded in true awareness of who you are and how you show up in situations. Maybe you are a tenured professor who is confidently teaching a topic s/he has spent years researching and teaching already. Your students recognize that but they also recognize you for your humility. This humility might show up when a smart student really grasps the concepts and is able to outsmart or challenge the teacher. The teacher might experience humility in the sense that s/he has achieved something greater than himself/herself - s/he has partaken in advancing knowledge within a student.

It might be harder to notice at first but we are all humbled throughout different experiences in our lives. Situations from unfortunate events like school shootings or earthquakes, to the first time you lay eyes on your newborn child, to staring at the vast expanse of the universe, we can experience the sense of something greater than ourselves. This might be a motivator for us to do and be more in this world, or not.

David Goggins of “Can’t Hurt Me” and Adam Grant of “Think Again” and “Originals” were two leaders who came up as great examples of confident and humble leaders. Similarly to last weeks topic of Unconditional Love, we are able to experience full humility once we are able to unconditionally love someone or something. So to be confident in oneself as to be confident in the situations and people around you so to must you be humbled by them as well. For everyone is our greatest students and our greatest teachers. Remember that even though you have it all together and feel grounded, you are one of eight billion humans on this planet. Never lose sight of that.

Thank you to my group of Dawn, Gemma, Douglas, Brian, and Reid

“I know that I know nothing.” - Plato