How can humility help you achieve joy?

These thoughts come from “The Book of Joy”, by Desmond Tutu and his holiness The Dalai Lama.

In this book, they cover eight pilars that are considered essential towards achieving a life of happiness and joy. There are four pilars that come from the heart and four from the mind. Out of those that come from the mind, humility is considered an essential pilar towards achieving a life of joy and fulfillment.

The Essence Of Humility

Humility actually comes from the word humus which is the Latin word for earth or soil. So, in a direct way humility actually reminds us to go back to earth or perhaps even to go down to earth. And in this sense it always reminds us not to feel superior or inferior to those around us. Superiority and inferiority make us feel separate from everybody else from everything else and this perception of separation is what so many people in our modern day world experience in the form of anxiety, depression, isolation, etc.

It is when we truly realize that we are not special, but rather unique and essential to a whole, when we will truly feel humbled by our greatness. We see so many people feeling superior or inferior because they have achieved a certain status or have a certain label. But humility offers us a constant reminder that this is not the direction to go if you want to achieve a life of happiness and joy. For those people who actually achieve status they start acting in a different way, behaving in a different way, but humility actually reminds us that we should always be our truest selves. Like Don Miguel Ruiz puts it in his four agreements, we should present ourselves with our truest self and stay true and thus be impeccable with our words. I like a quote by Gandhi that actually says that “happiness is when what you think what you say and what you do are in harmony”.

Be Yourself

That’s why you don’t want to present yourself as somebody you are not. You don’t want to act a certain way towards a family member but then another way towards your friends and yet another way towards your teachers, your boss, or your kids. You want to present yourself as the very best version of yourself every time and it should be the truest self. This is probably the reason why so many spiritual leaders that you see today are actually very humble people. They are not special at all in form and they don’t feel different at all. This is the case of leaders like the Dalai Lama, Gandhi Mother Theresa, and plenty more.These spiritual leaders that are among us today are very approachable.

I’ve experienced this myself in working with other musicians and artists. Many of the ones who have achieved a certain level of success happen to be very humble in nature. They don’t feel superior or better than anybody else. They just feel they have a unique gift and talent to share with the world
and this is what they are doing.

Don’t Take Things Personally

Humility also reminds us not to take things too personal. For example, when somebody is criticizing you, or when somebody is acting out of their pride or their ego, or showing insecurity in some way. The best reaction to that is sometimes no reaction at all. It is best to stay humble and to stay true to your truest self. As a result, you will feel joy and experience happiness. Otherwise, if you let that negative experience come to you and affect you you will feel isolated, or bad, or inferior.

Share Your Gifts With The World

It’s important to mention that humility is not the same as timidity. Some people believe that you should never show your talents to other people or, in other words, show that you have something great to contribute to the world. This does not make sense. Humility is in fact about sharing your gifts but without feeling superior or inferior. The world actually needs your gifts. It actually needs your uniqueness. You were brought here for a reason. You are meant to go through life, learning, growing and accepting your hero’s journey in order to accomplish something. So, you want to contribute but without that sense of superiority or inferiority. You want to contribute as a way to serve the world. This is why you always want to celebrate your gifts and the gifts of others and never deny them.

Keep Growing

One last note that I wanted to add on humility is about growth. Remember we are here to grow on this earth and in order to grow you actually need humility, because you cannot grow if you are an arrogant person and feel like you you already know all there is to know and feel there is no more knowledge you can acquire. Humility, joy and happiness actually come when you actually have more questions than answers. So, each time that you ask a question, you’ll typically come out of it with more questions than answers and this just humbles you. It makes you realize that you will probably never achieve all the knowledge that you wanted but it will make you realize that you are on this journey, not to achieve the whole truth, but to be the best version of yourself, which requires you to remain humble all the time.

I hope this information will be helpful to help lift you up. Working on your humility.

Please remember to like share and comments on perspective…

Further resources:

Book of Joy by Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama

Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao by Wayne Dyer