Humility in the Age of Overconfidence

The other day, I asked 2,200 of my closest friends this question:

Are humility and high self-esteem mutually exclusive? Can they exist together?

Dozens of responses came back and I wanted to share some of them with you because they aren’t what I expected. Here’s a sampling of what people said:

TropicalMBA:

reese:

coffeemanu:

TheEbookEditor:

soultravelers3:

dionetweets:

AHAbraham:

kaarib:

simplifiednow:

joshualong:

lachlancotter:

JerryKolber:

For the longest time, I believed the two were polar opposites: to be humble, you’d have to have a rather low opinion of yourself and never take credit for your accomplishments, or you’d have to be overconfident, taking more credit than you’re entitled to.

I also thought everyone else felt the same way. I learned long ago to be careful thinking that everyone understands the world the same way I do, but I still slip up once in awhile.

The Age of Overconfidence

Every year, universities around the world survey their students to gauge how they feel about themselves and their academic career, and every year, (at least in the U.S.) the findings seem to be the same:

A majority of students believe they’re smarter, more capable, and better looking than their peers. Of course, that’s statistically impossible, but it doesn’t seem to change anyone’s opinion. We’re overconfident about ourselves and our abilities.

On the surface, I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with that – it takes a bit of overconfidence to pursue big, important challenges and face great problems. If you thought yourself only average, it would be awfully hard to ignore the odds that are stacked against you.

On the flip side, I think building a sense of humility and gratitude is one of the most important traits you can foster in yourself – to recognize that no one truly acts alone and be thankful for the work others do to make your own accomplishments possible. How can the two be reconciled?

The Heart of Self-Esteem

Where does confidence come from?

As long as it’s real confidence and not a front for insecurity, I say it comes from a healthy self-esteem. When you feel good about yourself as a person, you feel good about what you’re contributing to the world and what you’re able to accomplish. You exude confidence because you feel good about yourself as a whole.

In most cases, I think this comes from a string of successes. When you set out to do something and you actually do it, it doesn’t just raise your confidence, it boosts your self-esteem.

At the heart of confidence is high self-esteem. At the heart of high self-esteem is confidence – a chicken or the egg scenario to be sure, but the origin doesn’t really matter as long as we know they’re interconnected. What matters, then, is where they differ.

Confidence can be faked, but self-esteem certainly cannot. It’s easy to manipulate how I appear to others, but I can never hide from how I feel about myself. Ultimately, the search for the two is an attempt to feel better about myself and my accomplishments.

The Heart of Humility

What, then, is at the heart of humility?

To be truly humble, it seems, requires a renouncement of your own accomplishments; you sacrifice your own merits in order to build the confidence and self-esteem of others. This is where I experienced dissonance before – how can you build your own self-esteem and confidence when you give away your recognition?

But now, with the help of those quoted above (thanks everyone), I realize that I’ve been looking at the question the wrong way.

At the true heart of humility is also a search to feel better, just as it is in the search for self-esteem. The goal of each is the same and the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

In fact, it’s clear to me now that one can’t truly exist without the other. High self-esteem without humility is hardly self-esteem at all, but instead a cocky confidence. Humility without self-esteem isn’t true humility either, it’s a disguised insecurity about your own worth.

It’s the mediocre who separate the two in search of happiness. It takes someone truly remarkable to build self-esteem by achieving great things and giving away their recognition for it, understanding that nothing is really achieved alone and getting satisfaction by building others up.

It took a long time and a lot of input from others for me to come to this realization, but I’m happy to have the clarity I do now. For that, I really am humbled.

What about you? How do you seek self-esteem? And are you practicing humility in your search?