So far, I’ve taken a deep dive into feelings, meme’s and leader’s mindset. You don’t want to be a fool. Nor do you want to hit a peak in your life where your emotions and feelings block your journey. That would be an unnecessary end to a golden opportunity. It might feel a dry to deny. So, today we play a power game with the universe. Today we explore magic.
If you take a block of ice and melt it, is there still ice? Well, there’s two ways to see it isn’t there. Firstly, with your feelings – your senses, sight, sound, feel, taste and smell, that ice is no more. It’s gone. There’s no ice. What you now have, from a sensory, feeling. emotional, view, a real view you might call it, there’s no ice. And that means if you get a divorce your partner is no more your partner. Or if you lose $50 you no longer have $50. To see these things differently, and therefore not be pushed and pulled by your material viewpoint, (which is really really important as a leader), you need humility. The willingness to see through another lens. Let’s explore this.
Humility is sometimes confused with sham humility. Authentic humility is based on realistic self-appraisal. The humble evaluate themselves with “sober judgment” which we call SMART goal setting. They are sensible and balanced in their judgments because they know that every human being is a mixture of good and bad. For this reason, the humble are able to acknowledge their opportunities to grow without becoming oppressed by them. Sham humility, on the other hand, lacks the words “I don’t know.”
The roots of sham humility vary from person to person. Some people disparage themselves because their self-identity has been shaped by criticism or abuse. Others disparage themselves to preempt criticism or elicit sympathy. Still others do it when they feel shame for failing to earn more money, write more books, attract more attention, or demonstrate more saintliness than others. Whatever its source, sham humility is a knock-off of real humility and must not be confused with it.
Humility is sometimes confused with self-loss. Self-loss entails the dissolution of the self. People who have lost themselves are not centred, independent persons—they are appendages to other people’s lives. They sacrifice and serve and suffer. Family and friends praise them for their humility, but in reality they are incapable of authentic humility because they are not integral in themselves.
Sham humility leaves one feeling demoralised, depleted, weak, fragile, and hopeless. People who live under a cloud of sham humility are “condemned to live constricted, deformed, frustrating lives, cut off from possibilities for self-realisation, self-fulfilment, and happiness and wise self-examination.”
Rigorous self-examination seeks only truth; it gives no place to ego-saving rationalisations or self-flattery. Unfortunately, human beings do not find such honesty easy.
People tend to attribute positive behaviors to themselves and negative behaviours to external factors, enabling them to take credit for their good acts and deny responsibility for their bad acts”.
Social psychologist David G. Myers notes that “experiments have revealed that people tend to attribute positive behaviors to themselves and negative behaviours to external factors, enabling them to take credit for their good acts and deny responsibility for their bad acts”. This “self-serving bias” usually renders simple introspection impossible against entrenched pride.
As a counterweight to self-serving bias, one might practice the time-honored discipline of using the tool I share “the emotional shower” or, as I call it “THE MEME BUSTER.”
The act of disclosing private thoughts and actions to a coach or fixed daily process leads to new self- understanding, Ie Evolves You. Memes previously shoved to the margins of consciousness become focal. Once easily denied, stuck meme’s that serve Sham Humility, or unquestioned thoughts, take on a stark objectivity that pierces the self-deception on which pride depends. And with this, people evolve.
By honestly confiding our thoughts and behaviours to a trusted mentor, or the Meme Buster process, we become aware of those fixed and rigid thoughts that block our progress in love and life, that derive from or lead to pride or vanity. The spiritual mentor, the process or this author, does not listen in order to forgive, but to facilitate self-observation and break through Sham Humility. In dealing with emotions and insecurities the sham inclination to pride is exposed. Often this alone suffices to keep us on the path.
Self-serving bias may also be countered by giving appropriate credit to criticisms levelled against us by our enemies.
No one monitors our words or deeds more closely than an enemy; no one is quicker to notice when our deeds belie our words. Enemies feel no obligation to protect our self-image with falsehoods. They show no mercy; and, in the process, they do us a huge favour by identifying self-deceptions to which we are blind. Of course, our enemies are not oracles. They often misconstrue our motives and overlook our intent. But even one-sided criticism may illuminate a facet of our lives, and, if wisely received, can provide a “reality check” that leads to better self-understanding and authentic humility.
Rigorous self-examination must proceed wisely. It must focus on character rather than socially desirable goods. Too often people appraise themselves in terms of beauty, intelligence, wealth, fame, or success. The result is predictable. Some stack up favorably and become puffed up with pride; others fare poorly and slide into self-contempt.
Serious self-examination by navel gazing, or day dreaming, or introspection without a mentor or process is emotionally taxing and a seriously Sham Humility. It can also be painful. No one undertakes it lightly, and most avoid it entirely. Usually it takes a serious set-back—some failure or illness or loss—before people are willing to take a more realistic, honestly confronting and humbling look at themselves. It is usually during those times of acute stress that people turn to professionals like me for help. Spiritual mentors then have the opportunity to guide their clients into rigorous and wise self-examination. Or as I call it “EVOLVEYABASTARD.” Because it’s a wonderful joyful journey.
One such journey is the awareness that the ice in our example here today is still the same atoms, molecules and sub-atomic particles it was when in the form of ice as you heat it through, water, steam and into pure invisible vapour. That, in sham humility a person might claim the ice is gone, but authentic self awareness will know “IT CAN’T BE GONE.”
“Nothing is ever missing it just changes in form.”
In true Humility, this is the magic we experience when, we rise above or sink below our ego view, underneath our emotional righteousness, around our meme’s and through pride of knowing and into learning.
The best way to explain this is to use an example that might shock you. Example it will use is of my own mother’s death. I was three years old when she died accidentally in front of me. I was there when she fell from the car. Grief drove a spear into my father’s heart and our family was changed forever. But I was three years old and had a vivid imagination. Firstly I imagined my mother was still with me in the form of a ghost or whatever we wish to call it (I would now say her spirit). Secondly, all the material things that my mother would have been able to give me has she been still in her body were provided by those around me. If I were to have been able to take a sheet of paper and list every single thing that was missing from my mothers material care none of it would have been missing but would have been provided by others. I remember my stepmother coming into the house two years later as my father struggled to take care of three infant children and offering her heart and warmth to me and me rejecting it out right because I already had it in a different form. My friendships with the indigenous people of Mildura, my relationship to nature, my love of the supernatural was already embedded in my life and so all of the things that were missing from my mother’s passing were provided just in a different form.The ice had turned to water, to steam, to vapour. Nothing had been missing it just changed in form.
This viewpoint is real. It is true humility to realise that nothing is ever missing in our lives and that we may not like the new form but that is us rejecting the abundance of life and fighting for the same form in what we have now described as “Sham humility”. It is true humility to realise that we live in an abundant universe that would never deprive us of anything. It just might be that we are missing the billion dollars in cash that we want but we have the billion dollars in a different form.
Given that what we appreciate grows and what we don’t appreciate depreciates, it is therefore essential to recognise this principle in order for us to grow and expand. If we don’t recognise this principle that nothing is ever missing it just changes in form then we will be only grateful for what we can have in the form that we want it and therefore we will spend 50% of the time of our life depreciating what we’ve got.If you don’t appreciate the way that you’ve got it you won’t get it the way that you want it.
Sham humility defines what it wants and then pretends to be humble in the process of getting it. “Oh please universe give me a new car.” But this humility is a shame because nothing is ever missing it just changes in form, and so the person who would love to have a new car might be wiser to recognise where their abundance and that new car exists in a different form before they begin begging for more.
So, magic does exist. There are a process that can help you find it and live in a world that is truly an expression of honest self appraisal, the emotional shower, and true humility, the process in the form above of nothing is ever missing it just changes in form, magic. To be successful, and at the same time not lose everything in the process of becoming successful, this magic becomes the crucial factor in appreciating what you’ve got without focusing on what you haven’t got, and therefore depreciating it.
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