Donald Miller

I am not a humble person. I’m proud of my accomplishments. I drop names when I’m feeling insecure. I also talk about the cool projects I’m working on when I want to impress somebody. If you’ve known me for long, you’ve probably heard me do it. Sorry about that.

But the truth is, I don’t really want to be a humble person. It’s not a goal of mine. I don’t think about it, and I have a lot more emotional stability because I don’t think about it. If I get too arrogant somebody will humble me. When you write a blog you get criticism every hour on the hour, and that certainly helps.

Truly humble people don’t get called humble very often. In fact, if you are consistently spoken of as humble, you might want to reflect on whether or not you are trying to project a humble identity, which is just another form of narcissism. People who are humble are too busy thinking about a project they are working on, or their family, or their friends. Their mind isn’t on their humility or their lack of humility; their mind is on something other than themselves. In doing so, they help other people focus on something other than themselves, too. And that’s true freedom. We live in a fallen world, so you and I are only going to accomplish this in shades. I’m not humble, but I don’t sit around and condemn myself for it either, which is yet another form of narcissism. I’m pretty awesome that way. I also once met Harry Connick Jr and his girlfriend thought I had nice hair. Try being humble when that sort of thing has happened to you. It’s freaking impossible.