Humble and Fearless

July 1, 2025

Hello! How is each and every one?  We are on the first day of the 7^th month of the year.  We are half way through the year 2025 and we are making it through the year 2025 with deep gratitude and hope that is full of joy.  How else can we live through it all? Our hope is in the Lord in whom we trust and depend on.  Without Him you and I can do nothing. He is our strength.   It is He who is eternal, all-good, omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnipresent (present everywhere).  He is deserving of all our love.  Nobody else loves you and me the way He loves-  suffering and dying on the Cross for you and me who are sinners?

Let us do our best to seek Him, to find Him, to know Him, to love Him and to serve Him with all the talents and capabilities He has given each one of us.

Let us ask ourselves at the end of each day if and in what ways we did love God and serve Him. In fact our day starts by a grateful offering for the day ahead and its activities and work.  If we do start our day this way, we can be sure that at the end of the day we have done just that we sought Him, we found Him, we loved Him and we served Him in and through the others.    

It is worthwhile then to keep God present in us, while doing our work with Him amongst others in the home, in the street, in the office, wherever you and I may find ourselves in at a given moment of the day.  As long as God is with us, life is meaningful and worth all our while.

Following now is the superhabit of humility that is perfectly exemplified in the persons and lives of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, our supermodels,  perfect and holy in every way (From SUPERHABITS, The Universal System for a Successful Life by Andrew V. Abela, PH.D., Dean, Busch School of Business, The Catholic University of America, 2024).

Humility is the superhabit that makes sure we don’t cross that line between acting boldly and having a haughty spirit.

Epictetus, an ancient Stoic philosopher wrote, “If you undertake some role beyond your capacity, you both disgrace yourself by taking it and also thereby neglect the role that you were unable to take.”

Does humility require downplaying our talents?  This is a common misconception.  Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer, a long-time faculty member at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business (GSB), teaches a highly acclaimed GSB Organizational Behavior elective course, OB 377 “The Paths to Power.”  He has written several books on the topic, including 7 Rules of Power, which explores the ambiguity many people feel toward seeking or exercising power.  But as Pfeffer says frequently, “If power is to be used for good, more good people need to have power.”  If you want to change the world for the better, you will need to acquire and exercise power.

Pfeffer’s first rule of power is “Get out of your own way.”  We frequently sabotage our own best efforts by discounting our own abilities, either publicly or just to ourselves.  Downplaying or hiding your desire to do great things is a form of getting in your own way.

An alternative path, is to think of yourself and your work more positively – and more accurately.  It works.  Downplaying our gifts and accomplishments is not humility.

There’s a problem with the word humility.  To paraphrase Inigo Montoya’s immortal line in the Princess Bride:  “This word, I do not think it means what you think it means.”  For many people, words like humility, meekness, forgiveness and even virtue, indicate weakness.  They connote being submissive and mild, having a low view of yourself, letting others get away with things, being passive.  These connotations are false.

Humility is not “touchy-feely.”  It is a clear-eyed, cold-blooded, accurate assessment of yourself and your abilities.  Downplaying your abilities and overplaying them are both opposed to Humility.  (Indeed most superhabits are the mean between two extremes, too much and not enough.  These extremes are bad habits, or vices.

The superhabit of Humility is about managing our desires to do great things within the constraints of reality.  The way we do that is by holding and presenting an accurate assessment of ourselves, succumbing neither to an inflated view of our abilities nor to the false humility which Professor Pfeffer’s first Law of Power urges us to guard against.

In a sense, what you’re doing is trying to look at yourself as an impartial observer would.  As British author C.S. Lewis put it:  to be able to design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more – or less – glad at having done it than you would be if someone else had done it.  It’s a tough standard, but a worthy one to pursue.

Humility is a superpower.  It clearly belongs on our list of superhabits.  Extensive research indicates that it is linked to greater optimism, positive growth, decisiveness, comfort with ambiguity, stronger social bonds, less relationship conflict, and lower stress.

Entrepreneur Kim Landi explains it this way:  “Great leaders understand that they are not the best at everything, but rather realize their greatest asset is deciphering valuable information and how to action it quickly.  Business owners have to be able to make tough decisions, but they need good reliable facts.  Leaders who listen to their teams come out ahead and complete a better execution vs. leaders who only believe their way is always the right way.”

The key to the superhabit of Humility is an ongoing effort to know and accept yourself and your abilities.  It also helps to have honest friends.  And starting early is a good idea, too.  W.J.King, in his classic Unwritten Laws of Business, wrote, “Many young businesspeople feel that minor chores are beneath their dignity and unworthy of their college training. They expect to prove their true worth in some major, vital enterprise.  Actually, the spirit and effectiveness with which you tackle your first humble task will very likely be carefully watched and may affect your entire career.”

Growth in humility happens, like growth in any other habit or superhabit, by making tiny changes and repeating them often. It’s helpful to think of the growth in any superhabit as passing through the following four stages of development.

1.   1. Unconscious Incompetence

 

In this first stage, you’re not even aware that you lack the superhabit. You routinely and contentedly do its opposite.  In the case of Humility, this would be either pridefulness or false Humility. 

 

2.      2. Conscious Incompetence

In the second stage, you become aware that you lack the superhabit.  You try to correct it, but the force of bad habits is so strong that you frequently fall back into your old ways of doing things. 

3.      3.  Conscious Competence

In this third stage, you are starting to succeed.  You begin acting with Humility more often than not.  You still have to think about it, though, consciously, every time.  Making career choices to impress other people?  Instead be willing to do something to change.

A sign that you are moving from the third stage to the fourth is that you act on the superhabit more promptly and more easily.  You may even start to enjoy it.  It is starting to become part of who you are.

4.      4. Unconscious Competence

In the fourth and final stage, you now live this superhabit.  You easily, promptly, and joyfully act with Humility, without even having to think about it.

Here are three “Humility hacks” that research shows will help you grow in the superhabit of Humility:

a.       When you’re analyzing a challenging situation, force yourself to think about it from a hypothetical third-person perspective, that is, “How would another person think about this situation?”  This creates some psychological distance, which allows you to become more objective about the situation. 

b.      Have a “growth mindset” about your intelligence.  If you believe that you always have the potential to increase your intelligence (which you do), then you’re likely to feel more comfortable admitting that you don’t fully understand something; that someone else might understand it better than you do right now; or that you’ll understand it better in the future, as you get smarter.

c.       Make a critical assessment of the limits of your knowledge on a particular topic.  Writing down what you don’t know will help your Humility.

After all, as legendary basketball coach John Wooden used to say, “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”

But is it really that simple?  For this, and for all the other superhabits – is it really the case that all we have to do is just keep practicing?  Don’t I need some significant willpower, at least to get going? 

I don’t remember if I ever mentioned in the previous post of my upcoming seminar which starts today.  I am presently in Laguna finishing this post.  I arrived this morning at 10:30.  The first activity will start at 5:00.

Keep me company with prayers and offerings as I do the same.  The above topic is rich with many little challenges to get going every step of the way. Let us ask the Holy Spirit to help us grow in whatever aspect of our life that He may point out to us.

See you in the next post, “May tomorrow be a perfect day; may you find love and laughter along the way; may God keep you in his tender care; ‘til He brings us together again.”

Affectionately,                    

Guadalupinky