I don’t know, I made a mistake, and I changed my mind

If you were elected into the hall of fame of your profession or industry, would you accept the invitation?

Or would you decline?

I recently read an article about one of my favorite baseball players who was uneasy with this honor. Freese claimed that he always felt somewhat uncomfortable being lumped in with the franchise’s other legendary players. Even though he won multiple mvp awards, and arguably hit the biggest world series home run in our team’s history, he politely refused the induction.

Spoken like a true midwesterner. Cardinal nation loved the guy even more for declining the hall of fame invitation.

This story is a timely one, as humility has been on the decline for some time now. What was once a virtue has been relegated to a vice.

Humility is weakness. It’s a psychological inferiority. We connect a person’s humility to their lack of worthiness, insecurity and confidence. Humility equates to helplessness, being in total dependence upon someone else. The moment someone says any of the following three phrases, I don’t know, I made a mistake, and I changed my mind, they’re toast.

Of course, there is no university that conducted any large scale, longitudinal studies with standardized measures to draw meaningful conclusions about the shifts in our humility levels over time.

But let’s not shit ourselves. Pretending narcissism isn’t our number one societal disease right now is, ironically, a lack of humility in itself.

Take a look at the unfolding horrors around you. Every day we seem to delve deeper into this virtue deficit.

Humility may be recognized, but it’s certainly not being rewarded. We live in the attention economy. The people who earn the most eyeballs, clicks, views, status and money in this world are those who incessantly brag about themselves and their achievements. Period.

Sometimes they even brag about how humble they are, which, as we know, is a big red flag. To quote a verse from my favorite emcee:

Bar none, I am the most humblest, number one at the top of the humble list, my apple crumble is by far the most crumblest, but I act like it tastes bad outta humbleness, the thing about me that’s so impressive, is how infrequently I mention all of my successes, my belly’s full from all the pride I swallow, and I hate compliments, put them in the mortuary, I’m so ordinary that it’s truly quite extraordinary.

The question is, can humility be learned? Are human beings physically capable of learning how to think of themselves less often?

Not exactly. As my father used to say, values aren’t taught, they’re caught.

And so, humility is best acquired through observation, experience, and immersion in an environment that models and reinforces humble behavior.

We’re more likely to embrace and embody humility when we witness and internalize its practice through their surroundings and interactions.