Pause & Reset
Mid-August, 2020. I had just arrived in Montreal for a weekend away with a couple of friends, for what had seemed to be an annual summer pilgrimage to the city. We had checked into our Airbnb and set out to Parc La Fontaine, one of the beautiful parks in the centre of the city. And there we were, hanging out in the park, surrounded by other groups of people doing the same—having a drink, laughing, being silly, and all sharing moments.
It was something that I had done the year before, in the same park, but this year was different. We were in the middle of pandemic lockdowns. The previous few months were tough and outdoor hangouts were our only refuge from isolating indoors. We weren’t even sure if we could or should make the drive for a weekend away, but like most of the people I knew, we needed some sort of break.
So that moment in the park felt different. Same space and the same activity as I usually do every summer, but it felt like a reset. I had a moment to stop and breathe. Looking around, I noticed how happy everyone in the park was. And I felt happy too, for the first time in months.
This trip felt like freedom. We stuck to outdoor activities, as bars and other events weren’t open, but we had fun and a lot of it. The whole trip felt like that moment in the park; a relief and letting go. And I was appreciating each moment for what it was—being away with friends, being outside, letting go of the stress I had back home. It all felt so much more meaningful than it ever had before to me. And one of the biggest feelings I noticed was about what mattered in that moment.
Like many of us, I feel a lot of external pressures. Society tells us what success should look like, people influence how we feel we should act, and we can grow to rely on external validation. I’ve struggled with self-esteem and confidence which make these external pressures all that much more powerful. But moments like that summer pandemic getaway are grounding. What I felt that weekend reminded me of what is important to me and how many of those external pressures I feel don’t mean anything and shouldn’t impact me in the way I have let them.
When I reflected more on this experience, and why I struggle with these pressures, it occurred to me that this is coming from my ego. And not in a way that my ego is inflated; this is not the case with my struggles with confidence. Instead, it is in a protective way, or at least a faux-protective way. The ego doesn’t want us to be hurt, so we make excuses for ourselves or form judgements of other people that are an unconscious attempt by our ego to make us feel temporarily better or at least shelter us from feelings of hurt and inadequacy. And of course, developing a reliance on external validation to make our ego feel good—becoming so dependent on others for our sense of self.
So I started to think more about this and how uncomfortable it really can be to be both on guard as well as so reliant on others to make ourselves feel whole. And why, in my (at the time) late thirties did I still struggle so much with this? Hadn’t I figured out who I was by now?
The answer of course lies on a spectrum. I have done a lot of work understanding myself in recent years, establishing a healthy self-esteem and building that sense of self that is so important. But at times, those external forces would impact me in disproportionate ways, or I could put too much value on receiving external validation, or feeling empty when I don’t receive it.
My sense of confidence and self has solidified a lot throughout my thirties, but this world is full of distractions; it’s easy to get taken off track and fall into these patterns, and let our egos take over. These distractions are amplified by social media and curated images of others' lives.
In moments like that trip, brings me clarity of just how much I had been distracted. That trip, and even the pandemic in general, for as horrible as it was, did offer a chance to pause and take away some of those distractions and ground myself.
While this was on my mind over the past few years, I also hit a milestone that further jolted me into self-reflective action. I turned 40. While age is just a number, and I feel like I’m in my prime, it is of course a significant number in my mind. When I was a child, 40 seemed, well, old. And I’m not old, I certainly don’t feel old. But the reality is, if I’m lucky, as nothing is guaranteed, I’m likely about halfway through my life—or for you optimists, I likely have half my life still ahead of me. And there’s nothing like existential thoughts of mortality to ground us.
And it did. During that year, I would occasionally check Facebook, out of habit more than anything else. But what I saw in that casual scrolling on my phone over a few months was people I went to high school with were passing away. I learned of three deaths from my high school in a short period of time. People I knew well when I was younger, and my age, were dying. I work in healthcare, so this shouldn’t have been a surprise to me, especially given the deaths caused by COVID-19 on people of all ages, but it hit differently that peers of mine, even though I hadn’t talked to them in twenty years, these were people I knew and grew up with, were dying.
I started thinking more and more about that, not with fear, but in a way that forced me to think long and hard about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. What do I hope to accomplish, how do I want to lead my life, what kind of relationships do I want to have, and what impact do I want to have on others? And while I gained clarity on that, something else became so clear to me as well. Those distractions, as ever-present in our daily lives as they are, are not worth it. Having your success be defined by someone else, curating a perfect image for others to have a certain perception of you, or aiming for a brief high when getting attention on social media, are all just distractions. They can take our energy and our focus away from living the lives we want to lead and being our authentic selves. They can change how we treat others, change dynamics in relationships, and keep us from having authentic relationships with others that we truly connect with that are so fulfilling.
This brings me to the topic of this book. I started to think about how I am so affected, and what I can do to recentre myself. While the pandemic took away some distractions, how could I handle life’s challenging situations and stay on the path I want for myself when things resume, which thankfully they have. It made me evaluate what is important to me in my life, what I want to accomplish, how I show compassion for myself and others, and challenge my views about myself.
Where I landed was humility. Humility, as I will explore, is a tool, an approach to life that can help us find meaning and build true confidence and meaningful connections with others. It can help us minimize the many distractions around us that take us away from what’s important and our values. Humility can be an antidote to our ego-obsessed world and help us all live fulfilling and authentic lives.
A Definition
Different things may come to mind when you think about humility. It is known as a virtue in many religious and spiritual teachings, and in that context perhaps gives an image of someone conquering pride and giving to others over their own needs. The word may also conjure images of someone who is meek, lacks confidence and is a pushover.
To me, and for this book, this is not what I’m talking about. Humility to me means having the confidence to know your abilities and limitations, having a clear purpose and sense of your values, and an openness to continuously learn from others. Having humility means you have freedom from self-obsession, ego and arrogance. It allows you to recognize the value that everyone else has and be able to connect with others by bringing down the barriers that our egos can create. And while selflessness is absolutely part of what humility is, it doesn’t mean that comes at the expense of pursuing our own goals and having healthy self-confidence.
Humility is an approach to our daily lives and our relationships with others. Through this lens, we can be open to learning, continue to grow, treat others with respect and kindness, and have deep, rich relationships.
I’ll break down in more detail the three main components of humility in the next chapter, which will guide us through the rest of the topics I cover. For now, one thing to want to emphasize is that humility is a choice. We all can practice humility in our lives, and I hope to show how that can have such a positive impact, both for ourselves and for others in our lives.
A Humble Note
It’s not lost on me that I’m writing a book about humility, in some ways declaring that I am an expert and I have it all figured out. That is not true, and part of humility is accepting that you always have more to learn and grow—if I were to confidently say I am humble, let me teach you to be like me, I would most certainly be missing the point of humility completely.
To be fully transparent, I am not an academic who has formally studied humility, ego or any other related topic, and I have not conducted my research studies to add to the body of knowledge on humility. And I am certainly not the humblest person you will ever meet.
What I am, and what I do know, is that I am living in the world and culture that we have created and feel the pressures of that world. It affects me. I have struggled with confidence and self-esteem and have been on a journey to learn more about myself over the last several years, learn about relationships and connections, and embrace the learnings that I have given and received. Through this journey, I have come to understand myself on a much deeper level, what is important to me, and how I impact those around me.
This is ongoing. I do not, nor do I think I will ever, have all the answers. And that’s part of what is so beautiful about the human experience. If we are open to it, we can continue to learn from each other, about each other and grow together.
What I want to share in this book is my own reflections on what I have learned so far. Humility is a powerful thing, and embracing it, as much as I am not perfect at it, has helped me grow as a person and connect with others differently.
Humility has forced me to face aspects of myself and life that have made me feel uncomfortable, but it’s facing that truth that has allowed me to understand myself and build a true confidence that helps me remove judgement of myself and others, handle feedback and challenging situations and see beyond myself on how we are all connected. It has allowed me to recentre myself, focus on what matters, and be true to myself. That authenticity has deepened my connections with others and helped me embrace others' needs.
I will share my reflections on how humility is an approach to building confidence that is authentic and solid. How it opens us up to learning. How it changes how we treat and prioritize others. And how we can handle all the distractions of the world and remind us what our values are and what is important.
And I will talk about things like pride, often cited as the opposite of humility—I have a different perspective that has shown me to be proud of who I am, and proud of who others are, and our accomplishments, without taking away from others or needing external validation.
This book is a way for me to share with you the learnings that have helped me grow and handle the pressures of our world. Nothing more and nothing less. For me, humility is such a powerful force that we can all embrace, and shape the world to be a kinder, more caring and creative place. If sharing these learnings resonates with others, I would be honoured, and… humbled.
