Do you think you’re special??
The truth is, we all do. Most of us, especially if we have grown up in America, have an innate tendency to believe that we’re special or unique. When we hear scary statistics about something that “most people” do, we instantly feel like we’re one of the few exceptions.
Do you know that the divorce rate for first marriages always hovers around 50% - the same probability of winning a coin toss? Most of us do, yet almost all of us think when we walk down the aisle that MY marriage is definitely going to work because I’m ________ (fill in the word: smarter, more prepared, more in love…) than those other people.
Even as you’re reading this, you might find yourself thinking, “I don’t think that way!” Although this sense of self-confidence can be helpful with creativity and industry, and finding our unique identity, in many ways – especially relationships – this feeling of “specialness,” also known as pride, can be very harmful.
We lose touch with the reality that we ARE often a statistic. Protecting our ego rather than taking a realistic look at ourselves prevents us from opening up to growth and improvement and working hard to be better. We can all benefit immensely from the extremely difficult exercise of humbling ourselves.
Revisiting the marriage example, it is certainly more romantic to believe that your relationship is somehow superior to those 50% that fail, but if you instead face the fact that your marriage, like all others, only has a 50% chance of succeeding, then you will be motivated to find out why many don’t work out and work hard to take precautionary measures to give yours the best shot possible.
Humbling yourself without putting yourself down is one of the most advanced human skills to master. It entails having a general love and respect for everyone, apologizing more freely, being more grateful, and admitting your faults in a constructive way more readily.
Besides the mental work of humbling ourselves, it requires learning technique. Showing humility in a healthy way only makes other people respect us more, rather than giving them the opportunity to walk all over us – but this takes practice.
Try it:
- Find a statistic or problem that could potentially apply to you but you might be in denial about: divorce rate, obesity rate, sobriety success rate, people with bad habits, practices that are harmful to the environment, watching too much TV, etc. Make an honest list of your risk factors and then commit to changing something that will help you prevent the problem.
- When you catch yourself either thinking a bad thought or gossiping about someone, (“She always looks bad!” “He is so lazy!”) honestly analyze your own weaknesses and see if you have any that the person you’re thinking badly of could claim as a strength. If so, then realize that you are equal-but-different and try to feel a compassionate understanding or brotherhood with the person instead of scorn. To take it one step further once you can do that, catch yourself thinking negative thoughts about a person and say something complementary instead.
- Try to notice times that you become defensive – when someone hurts or accuses you, or your competence is challenged – and turn the defensiveness into humility. Most of the time there is some truth to the problem that we feel defensive about, because no one is perfect. So, rather than trying to preserve your false sense of perfection, admit your own faults and you will also be more successful at getting the attacking person to soften to you.
- Apologize more often. If you are a humble person, you probably need to apologize to someone at least once a day, even if it’s not something serious. See this previous blog post for more info on this: Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word
- Feel gratitude in your heart all the time – Learn to look for the silver lining of EVERYTHING. The old exercise of keeping a gratitude journal can be a good start: Write down a few things that you are thankful for every day – big things and small things. Start to notice things that you take for granted and allow them to bring a conscious happiness into your life. Most importantly, make sure that you go out of your way to frequently express gratitude to others. Say it, write thank you notes, return favors and pay it forward.
Remember that becoming a humble person is one of the most ADVANCED stages of human development, so these are not one day changes, and they require having a lot of other good skills in place first. But, if you can move towards a place of humility, you will feel and see your life fill up with much more love.
