Humility: A Gift
When you hear the word “humility,” what do you think?
This is my definition: Humility is a state of egolessness. It is a recognition of yourself as equal to the rest of humankind – no better, no less. It is a willingness to admit to flaws and defects. It is an act of submitting to a Higher Power, of admitting that there is a non-human power that is greater than you. It means “to be humble.”
It’s important to make the distinction between “humility” and “humiliation.” In my mind, humiliation is shame, being disgraced, degradation. I believe that humility is an inner state of being, while humiliation is often a reaction to external factors.
I suppose one of the most interesting things I’ve found is that the more confident I am in myself, the more I believe in my own inherent worth, the easier it is for me to be humble. I don’t need the false trappings of the ego to artificially inflate my value. Seems counterintuitive, does it not? And yet, I’ve found my ego and pride to be very shallow pools indeed. Those are things built up (or deflated) by the clothes I’m wearing, the balance in my bank account, the car I drive – or the clothes someone else is wearing, the balance in someone else’s bank account, the car that someone else drives.
Self-confidence, though, runs deep. It allows me to see people around me as my equal. I don’t relate to them from a “one up” or “one down” perspective. We all become precious children of God, each with a special place in the universe with unique gifts to offer. Nobody has to be perfect. They don’t have to be anything other than themselves.
These are the gifts of humility – acceptance, confidence, a sense of serenity. I strive to make it more central to my character. I will be humble. I will be grateful.
Giving Up
Sometimes, the hardest decision to make is when to give up.
In some cases, it’s crystal clear – like when the entrée you were making for a dinner party burns to a crisp and the guests are arriving in 15 minutes. Time to wave a dishtowel at the smoke alarm and grab your take-out menus.
But most things – especially important things – dwell in a shade of grey. Jobs, different kinds of relationships, activities or projects you’ve thrown your heart into … it’s often hard to know when to walk away or when to forge ahead.
I’ve had times when I’ve decided to leave something behind, only to have it come back to me in some manner. In those cases, I look at it as God telling me I still have things to learn from it … even if it still doesn’t work out in the end.
One bit of wisdom I heard about difficult decisions was to think of it like this: Does this situation leave you feeling drained, or can you still derive energy from it? It’s not always cut-and-dried, but something that constantly pulls you down is probably not a great situation for you.
So, as I face a few of my own hard choices, these are the questions and thoughts I’m keeping in mind:
- Is this situation barring me from meeting my goals and having the life that I want, or being the person I want to be? This is for long-range thinking … where do I want to be 5 or 10 years from now? How will this situation affect that?
- Does this decision affect other people, and in what ways? I’ve learned that you should never live your life with the goal of pleasing other people, or of living up to someone else’s agenda. But especially if you’re in a relationship, or if you have children, it’s important to consider a decision’s impact on them. It isn’t selfish to strive for the life of your dreams, but it becomes that way when it happens at someone else’s expense.
- How will I feel tomorrow? This is the “can you look yourself in the eye” question. What decision leaves you feeling proud of yourself?
- If there are certain aspects of this situation that don’t work for me right now, can they be changed – even if it’s just reframing my own attitude? This isn’t to say “put on a happy face” if things are legitimately bad. But especially if an alternative isn’t readily or easily available, sometimes the best you can do is to detach your emotions to the greatest degree possible, and look for happiness in other aspects of your life.
As I walk through these experiences, I also find frequent prayer and meditation are also helpful. If I do my best to turn problems over to my higher power, and genuinely ask for help with a willingness to receive it, I have found it will come to me … sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. But it will come.
On Letting Go
Note: This is a guest post from my beautiful niece Hannah Stanton-Gockel – Ohio University student, world traveler, hoop artist extraordinaire, all-around cool chick!
I very much like to control my life. That might be because there have been so many moments when I have had no control and now I overcompensate. Or because change makes me really nervous (for example: when I was 3 and my parents put in a new backyard fence I felt like my childhood was being ripped to shreds, much in the same way those old wooden fence posts were being ripped out of the ground. I cried for about week.)
Another characteristic I have is that I always push my comfort zone, at the same time relishing and hating the combination of adrenaline and fear I get when I try new things. It’s a sensation I live for and live in fear of. This has had good results in my life though, generally speaking. I’ve traveled more extensively than many of my peers, having spent a total of 17 months abroad as an undergrad. I’ve pushed myself in college to excel, and, while not perfect, I’m graduating with honors, 2 majors and a certificate this year. I make an effort to say yes to challenging new experiences.
Yet, at the same time, I seek out control and try to predict situations. It’s quite the dichotomy.
I spent half of 2012 traveling through Central America, attempting to plan an elaborate 6 month trip that served to challenge my comfort zone in entirely new ways because I’d never traveled alone before… there was a lot on this trip that challenged me mentally and emotionally. Planning this trip was full of anxiety and excitement. I overly planned out every detail because I wanted everything to go in a perfectly predictable way.
I have two experiences I’d like to reflect on in this post that forced my give up my hard fought control and completely give in to the moment.
In Costa Rica, the day before I turned 23, I went bungee jumping with a group of friends. We were all terrified but I put up a front, hiding the anxiety I had felt nonstop for the past few days by smiling and joking and enjoying watching everyone else break a sweat. But inside, this was a huge challenge for me. The day before I came up with a mantra to repeat to myself to calm myself down, something that would allow me to give myself over to the moment and would settle my nerves for just a slight second before jumping. Fittingly, that mantra was “I relinquish control.” It’s a little cheesy but it was exactly what I needed. In the video of me jumping, you can actually see me mouth the words as I said them out loud before jumping. And as you can see, I didn’t just jump, I soared off the platform.
It was complete exhilaration. As you fall, you forget you’re falling, because all you can feel is the wind on your face (it’s like sticking your head out a car window). But four seconds later, the rope tightens and you snap back, realizing that you did not die, that you’re totally invincible and that yes, you must pay again for a second jump because bungee jumping is instantly addicting.
Very literally, I had to give up my desire to control and predict this situation. Of course I wanted to feel somewhat safe and not at risk of the rope snapping but people don’t go bungee jumping in order to feel safe. It was a cathartic moment too, because, although my time in Costa Rica was ending, I had another five months of travel ahead of me and I was intimidated… downright scared. I didn’t know if I could do it. But as I learned from this jump, I certainly could.
About a month later I was traveling through Nicaragua when I found myself spontaneously visiting the Corn Islands. I decided to stay there for a week and take a little vacation on Little Corn- an island so small that there are no roads and no cars. I stayed at a place called La Iguana right on the beach. One day the sea was so calm that the water looked like glass. I got some snorkel gear and went, by myself, half a mile out into the bay to explore the reef. I was swimming with schools of hundreds of fish of all sizes. I explored a sunken ship wreck. For a while I was the only human in this vast eco-system. My back got the worst sunburn it’s seen in years and I loved every second of it.
Little Corn Island and the bay where I swam with hundreds of fish, a stingray and sharks.
After about an hour I ran into (swam into?) a Frenchman who was also out in the big blue by himself, enjoying the perfect snorkeling weather. We snorkeled in the same general area for a while and then decided to go along the reef’s drop off to see if we couldn’t run into any of the hammerhead sharks we heard lived in the area. Being in water with so many other creatures creates this feeling of safety after a while. I was completely at ease. And I had already gone bungee jumping so why not look for hammerheads?
Perhaps luckily, we didn’t find the hammerheads but I did spot a massive stingray on the ocean floor. It was completely hidden by sand and I would’ve missed him if I hadn’t noticed the sand kicked up around near him. He swam out from under all the sand and as it slid off his back, his full size was recognized. He had a fin-span of about five feet, my own height, from my best estimates. But I was 15 feet above him so he could have been larger. I swam right on top of him, gazing down at his size and grace and beauty. The Frenchmen and I watched him for awhile and then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. A four foot long baby nurse shark was swimming by the edge of the reef. Nurse sharks can grow to be more than 20 feet in length but are completely harmless.
What happened next was unforgettable. The nurse shark spotted us and swam straight towards me, as if in slow motion. It wasn’t so much slow motion as the fact that the shark was just ambling along at his own calm pace. I actually was quite scared because well, SHARK. But he was just curious and wanted to know what these strange creatures were. He swam right up to my face, a foot away from me, and looked right into my eyes. My nerves then got the better of me and I twitched my muscles and the little guy turned and darted away. The Frenchmen then popped his head out of the water and said in a heavy accent “Oh I love nature! I just love it!”
In this moment, surrounded by these incredible wild animals, I had to give in to the fact that I was in their environment. The stingray and the shark knew the water much better than I and I was at their mercy. Luckily, both were harmless that day but it served as an important lesson to me in the value of relaxing in the moment, giving up control, and just living.
Now, whenever I am stressed, I bring myself back to the cool Caribbean waters and the friendly nurse shark. I feel the sun on my back and the flippers helping me to float and the perfectly clear water and the little shark swimming up to me, just wondering who I am. It’s a good metaphor for all of life, really. Be calm but enjoy the adrenaline at the same time, be in the moment, and let go of the control you thought you had.
I’ve learned that there are many things we can’t control in life but if we give ourselves over to the moment, we don’t need to worry about control. And by doing so we live much more fully than we ever thought possible.
Your Emotions on the Job
When it comes to work, it often requires a delicate emotional balancing act. Most of us who care about our work performance find ourselves getting emotionally invested in outcomes. But, you’re tasked with finding appropriate ways to express that – or face the consequences.
Last week, I posted a link on Facebook to an article about how emotional intelligence is your “secret weapon” at work. Coincidentally, my workplace is undertaking its own emotional intelligence project right now. I haven’t gone through it yet, and I’ll admit I’m a bit skeptical (I feel the power to change lies mostly within individuals and their willingness to do so), but I also figure it can’t hurt.
For me, I’ve found I need to grab a healthy dose of detachment around work. I care very much about my performance and strive to do the best I can. But, there’s also a lot of it that’s out of my control. I can’t force someone else to act or react the way that I want them to. I also have to be mindful of this when I make mistakes, or when things don’t go perfectly – the only thing I can do is to try my best next time.
If you’re looking to advance in your career, building emotional intelligence can only help you. Think about some of the best leaders you’ve known on the job – someone who was your manager, or someone else. What characteristics did they have? If they were demanding, did they balance it with appropriate praise? If they made a mistake, did they own up to it honestly, rather than placing blame? Did they give credit for your work and ideas, rather than keeping it for themselves?
If you answered “yes” to those questions, chances are you were dealing with someone who is confident, emotionally skilled, empathic.
They are characteristics we can all strive to have for ourselves.
Young Spirit, Old Soul 