Humility Is Strength

Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today we're going to talk about humility as a strength. So first of all, what is humility? One definition of humility is that it's the feeling or attitude that you have no special importance that makes you better than others. Now at first you might hear this and humility might sound like a bit of a negative trait, almost like a weakness rather than a strength. But let's look at this from the perspective of its opposite.

A person who lacks humility is usually arrogant and proud. So an arrogant person does see themselves as better or more important than others. Arrogance often also renders us unable to recognize our own flaws and weaknesses. It hinders our ability to listen to others and therefore learn and grow. It also really hampers our ability to truly connect with other people.

So, one place that this can creep in for some meditators is that we can start to build a bit of an identity around the idea of being a meditator or a spiritual person. Maybe someone who's more aware, more mindful, more wise than others. And ego and arrogance can start to take shape around this new identity. And we can start to kind of subtly feel like we're superior to others in some way. Now when we feel like we know how things are and we feel like we have it all together, we can really stunt our mindfulness practice and our personal growth.

Now I remember when I first learned meditation and I felt like I had to tell the whole world about it. And something started to creep in the background. This feeling of, Oh, all these people are so unconscious. I'm sure I sent plenty of nonverbal signals to people where this feeling of me being better than them, because I was a meditator. And I really cringe when I think about this now.

But luckily, as I continued my practice, I was able to see these tendencies. And the truth is, is that awareness itself humbled me because the more I practiced, the more I could see how much I lacked self awareness in so many aspects of my own life. I realized I was much more a student than an expert, and I continue to be humbled in this way, again and again, on this path. What I came to see is that humility is a strength as it makes me more able to see where I'm stuck or need to grow. And humility is like a muscle that can be weakened or strengthened.

So by getting in touch with our modest, non-judgmental and humble side, we become better at embodying humility and we also create a more compassionate, open and awakened mind. So the invitation for us all today and going ahead is, see if you can notice where you might want to bring more humility into your own life and just keep remembering that humility is not a weakness, it's a strength. So as always thank you for your practice and your presence here. And just inviting you now to settle in for today's meditation.