Humility isn't denying your strengths; it's being honest about your weaknesses. -Rick Warren
Are you humble?
Humility is not being ashamed of who you are. It is the recognition of your failings and limitations, coupled with a sincere desire to improve without being arrogant or cocky. When we have humility, we're more likely to listen to others and take their advice into consideration before making any decisions.
But how can humility lead us to improve better? In this blog post, I will be sharing how it can help.
When you practice humility you are not afraid to ask for help.
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To be honest, pride is one of the main reasons why we are not asking for help from other people. We think that we can do everything on our own, and we don’t want to look weak or needy. But by not asking for help, you are actually hurting yourself in the long run.
When you ask for help from other people, it allows them to feel good about themselves and they will be more likely to help you again in the future. You will also learn new tips and tricks from them that can help you improve your life even more.
I remember a certain scenario recently, wherein I am not familiar with a certain division. It was my first time handling that region and I am having a hard time fixing the books as in the process that I have prior to that every entry should match until the last cent. It took me a day to work on the excel copy that is somehow close to the discrepancy. Until I send a chat to the previous handler for help as I am going nuts already. He mentioned that the coding is a mess to that division and I just send an email to whatever amount is erroneous on my side and the underwriters will just fix everything. As long as the payment details are there then we are all good.
The work that took me a day, just ended in a short email saying "Hey I have a discrepancy of this amount please fix it. "
When we are proud of ourselves, we tend to think that everything is going great for us. But if we have humility, then we are open-minded enough to realize when something is wrong instead of just pretending everything is fine (even though deep down inside we know that something needs fixing).
When we practice humility we can analyze our weaknesses and then take action.
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This is one of the most important steps you can take. We all have weaknesses, but it’s the people who are willing to fix them that succeed in life. The only way to get better at something is by actually doing it over and over again until you no longer make mistakes.
When we practice humility we can learn to accept the truth without becoming defensive
We are all guilty of it and we hate being corrected especially coming from the people that we think are lower than us. We get defensive because we think that what we are doing is right and we don’t want to be told differently. At times the truth hurts even if it hurts and as a sign of defense we try to stay away from it. We need to be humble enough to realize that we don’t know everything and that there are people who know more than us in certain areas of life. Being humble will allow us to learn from other people and see things from different perspectives.
Humility leads to self-improvement because it inspires us to change.
Being humble also allows us to be authentic. We are able to face ourselves in a way that we would not have done before because we realize that our imperfections are not the end of the world and that we are not perfect beings either. We make mistakes and when we realize that others have made mistakes too, it becomes easier for us to accept them without judging them on their mistakes.
Even though the word humility may suggest that it refers to a person being of low status, it is actually the opposite. The definition of humility is having an accurate, unbiased opinion of oneself. This means that being humble is not a bad thing at all, and even if you consider yourself as someone who needs to be humble, then that is a great thing to admit about yourself.