I had been so excited to write this essay!  I knew I wanted the word Humility for the letter “H” since I started this Abecedarium.  I have felt that I finally “get” the concept of humility, something that had eluded me for much of my adult life.  So why have I struggled these last couple of weeks to figure out how I want to approach the topic?  The irony has not been lost on me that I have become so proud of my obsession with humility.  There is a reason that hubris is one of the seven deadly sins.

I am writing the first draft of this essay on the morning that it is due to publish—that’s how much I have been struggling with this topic.  I decided to do what I often do when the words don’t come easily:  I sat down at the keyboard and started to type, trusting in the process that the words will come.  (Technically, that’s not totally true.  I started The Process in the shower this morning which is where I usually start pulling thoughts together.  Thank goodness I don’t write for a living.  Our water bill would be enormous.)

I wrote before about the importance of humility in an essay entitled The Most Important Leadership Quality.  In that essay, I talked somewhat about my evolution as a leader and what I learned to value in a leader.  Those lessons are just as relevant—if not more so—to our broader evolution as human beings.  I’ve been thinking about all the times in my life that humility has smacked me in the face.  Time and again, I’ve gotten just a little too proud of myself and the Universe “took me down a peg”.  At least, that tends to be how we refer to it:  being taken from a higher level that we thought we were on to a lower level that is more representative of where we are in reality.  When we talk about being “taken down a peg,” this “level” we are thinking of means something along the line of our personal development or achievement.  I remember when I was first promoted to the Director level.  I was so proud of myself!  But what I was proud of was the title, to be honest, and not the effort I put in to get there.  Many thought I hadn’t put in the effort or earned the title.  When I look back now at what that job entailed and my knowledge of what I had to do to be effective in that role, I can tell you “they” were right.  I had no idea what was really required in that role.  I learned as I went, as most people have to do, but that initial hubris came back to bite me.  I learned the hard way that I couldn’t grow until I accepted that there was so much I didn’t know that I didn’t know.  I needed to be humble first to be open to learning what I needed to learn.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about humility a little differently.  Being humbled isn’t about being taken DOWN a peg.  It really is about being boosted UP a peg.  The endpoint is something like enlightenment or true understanding but we’ll never get there.  The goal is to keep moving closer.  To me, being humble is all about remembering that I am a flawed and beautiful human being, surrounded by other flawed and beautiful human beings, and we all need constant grace and understanding.  The visual that I have when I think about being humble is that of a bowed head.  Don’t think that this bowed head is about shame!  If anything, it’s about deferring to a higher power.  It’s recognition that I am not better than anyone else or more enlightened or smarter or anything.  I am just trying every day to be a little bit gentler toward myself, toward other humans, and toward the world.

I had a recent example of humility that I must share in the name of honesty.  My regular readers suffered through months of the ups and downs of our recent home renovations.  The grand finale of that months long process was The Great Bathroom Sink Fiasco.  I put the blame squarely on the builder who, I reasoned, should have not ordered sinks without checking that they would fit in the vanity we had purchased months before the job even started.  In my Corporate Smugness, I suggested that after the job was complete that Trish and I sit down with the builder and project manager and have a “Lessons Learned” discussion like we did after big projects at work.  My hubristic self figured I could teach them something about their work processes because clearly my first time through a project like this trumps their decades of experience.  We discussed the Sink Issue and Brian gently reminded me that he ordered what we had put on our spreadsheet.  OMG, I totally forgot about the spreadsheet!  At the suggestion of Trish’s brother, who has built numerous homes, we used his spreadsheet template to capture the details on the myriad items we picked out for the renovation—everything from light fixtures in the kitchen to flooring to pulls on the cabinets to faucets and, yes, the sinks in the bathroom.  We picked out standard sinks at John’s suggestion.  We never thought to check the specs on the vanity when we bought it.  We had no idea that we even needed to think about that!  Brian just bought what we had spec’d out.  This lovely man STILL shouldered the blame, saying that even though it looked like we had thought through everything, he should have thought to the check the vanity.  I was mortified!  Here I was, all self-righteous in my loading blame on him when it began with what we spec’d out.  The real lesson learned?  Don’t forget to look inward as well as outward.

Even just writing that story makes me flush with embarrassment, but humility is not about embarrassment just as it’s not about shame.  It’s not about “you should have known better.”  It’s about “I’ve learned something.”  Each time you are humbled, ask yourself what you need to learn from the experience.  I am humbled in some small way each day.  If I can manage to learn a little something too, then I am getting closer to that unattainable goal.  It’s all about Intention.  You know I am fond of quoting Brené Brown on this one:  I’m here to GET it right, not BE right.