Why Humility Is Essential for a Healthy, Happy Life
Humility is a foundation for a strong, healthy life.
Humility is believing others are just as important as yourself, and that you are just as important as others. This means you can acknowledge your weaknesses and limitations because you value yourself and recognize that your (and others’) worth is not diminished because you are weak in some ways. Humility also allows you to experience the freedom and joy of not worrying about others’ judgments or what they have, because you are thinking about yourself less.
A Simple Truth about Happiness
An 80-year Harvard study concluded that the number one contributor to a happy life is cultivating meaningful relationships. Humility affects every relationship, including how you view yourself. Living the golden rule is a natural extension of being humble. Because you view others as just as important as yourself, you are more likely to give others the benefit of the doubt. You are less inclined to take offense, hold grudges, and let resentment fester. This means that humility is a potent antivenom for the poisons of unforgiveness and hatred. Imagine a world filled with people choosing to be humble, who are not guided by anger and hatred!
The Number One Cause of Self-Created Suffering
Pride is the cause of most self-generated suffering. How much pain, frustration and anxiety could be avoided if you stopped constantly comparing yourself to others, worrying about what they others think of you, and yearning for things that don’t really matter? It is pride that says you are worth less because you do not have what others have, or because you have weaknesses and limitations.
Humility is not simply the absence of pride, but it is the antidote for pride. Thus, humility prevents most self-generated suffering. Humility acts like an immune system that keeps pride at bay. Your body may be free from a virus (pride) that makes it ill. But if you lack an immune system (humility), you will be defenseless when the virus returns.
When you are proud, you puff yourself up. You try to obtain praise and recognition so you can stand above others, even though you likely have not accomplished anything of real or lasting value. Like a hot air balloon, you inflate yourself to look larger, but there’s nothing substantial creating the size – it’s all for show and will collapse when pressure is applied.
Humility and Forgiveness are Cornerstones for Emotional Health
Humility helps you have strong mental and emotional health because it helps you forgive others and ourselves. Humility encourages you to recognize that while bad behavior is not okay, we all act badly at times and we all need forgiveness.
Pride causes you to judge others quickly and harshly. It tells you that holding onto grudges is an effective way to injure those who hurt you. But as the old saying goes, “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”
Pride may not be the only reason you hold onto grudges. Fear can also cause you to not forgive others because you mistakenly believe that if you forgive someone, it will make you vulnerable to being hurt again. But forgiveness is not giving a “free pass” to other’s bad behavior. It is a gift you give yourself so you are no longer shackled to the person who hurt you.
Fear of Vulnerability
There is another reason you may avoid humility: Perhaps you fear that it will make you vulnerable to people who would take advantage of you. It is true that humility, compassion and love encourage you to make appropriate sacrifices – including being vulnerable – but this is where wisdom and courage are needed. Because a humble person believes that each individual has equal worth (including themselves), they can say no when they are the one with the greater need, or when they think they are being manipulated or exploited.
Humility, compassion and love require courage because you must be somewhat vulnerable in order to develop and keep meaningful relationships.
A happy, fulfilling requires the courage to be vulnerable, so you can experience what makes it truly worth living: rewarding relationships and the joy that comes from being humble, compassionate and loving.
Humility is a Foundation for a Healthy Life, Community and World
Humility, compassion and love are closely connected. Humility allows you to stop comparing and competing with others, which paves the way for compassion and love. Compassion motivates you to lift others out of suffering. Love motivates you to lift others, even above yourself, regardless of their circumstances.
Pride, on the other hand, makes you want to keep others worse off than yourself, because pride says you can only feel good when you use some arbitrary measure such as beauty, wealth, influence, “followers,” or even going through hardship or trauma, to say you are better than someone else. Can there be an uglier, more destructive trait than this – destructive to families, friendships, communities and nations?
A Life Worth Living
Humility opens doors to a balanced and fulfilling life. By recognizing the value of yourself and others, you can face challenges without the burdens of judgment or comparing yourself with others. As you grow in humility, you are freed from the chains of pride and ego, find greater peace inside, and harmony in your relationships.