In my previous post I argued that humility is a badly underestimated virtue that we need to embrace in order to lead more successful and meaningful lives, specially in the digital age, when networks are replacing hierarchies as the predominant organizational form.

So here are a few practical tips that have helped me exercise my “humility muscle” throughout the years.

I hope you find them helpful too:

Practice failure

Regardless of what you have heard from self-help and management gurus, failure will never be fun, no matter how many times you go through it. But it’s still necessary to take initiative that brings us out of our comfort zone regularly enough, so that we fail as many times as necessary in order to feel, well, comfortable with it. In my view, the reason we are eventually able to become comfortable with failure if we practice it often enough, is that our expectations are healthily adjusted in the process.

By failing at something, we learn as much about our strengths as about our weaknesses, which allows us to not overestimate the former and/or underestimate the latter for the next challenge that comes our way. In other words, by failing often enough, reality shakes us up to the point where we are able to take a humble approach towards achievement, which will increase our odds of success at whatever we do next. A great way to get started is to purposefully failing at many small risky initiatives in a determined period of time and tracking the results. This gradually builds the courage necessary for gradually taking on bigger risks due to the fresh self-knowledge that ensues.

Meditate

One of the well-documented effects of meditation is its capacity to exert a powerful influence on the ego, making us less self-centered, more empathic, content with what we already have, and most importantly, with who we already are. And being content with who we already are usually lowers our defenses and allows us to take a better look inside. All of a sudden, it becomes easier to not feel too proud of our strengths, but also not too bad about our weaknesses, or overwhelmed by the hard work that mitigating them might require. This in turn allows us to take a more objective sort self-analysis and discover other strengths and weaknesses in the process.

Contemplate the immensity of the universe

This can be done in several ways, either by looking at a clear, star-filled night sky, by meditating on the notion of infinity, by studying the work of astronomers and other scientists that deal with the immensity of the universe, or reading literature inspired in such issues. They are all good ways of grasping the enormity in which we are inserted. It helps put our problems in perspective, giving us a sense that no matter how terrible they seem at the moment, they really don’t matter much in the great scheme of things; but it also infuses us with a sense that it’s truly miraculous to be such a tiny, apparently insignificant bit of something so humongous, and at the same time be fully aware of it all. And from the combination of that sense of smallness and meaningfulness usually arises a warm feeling that is exhilarating, but also, for some hard-to-explain reason, is deeply humbling.

Contemplate great works of art

One could argue that contemplating great achievement in any field is an enriching experience, but at least in my case, I find that seeing a great athlete perform, or a great craftsman do her thing, is exciting and delightful more than anything else. On the other hand, seeing great examples of what we most often call the visual and performing arts and literature can have a thoroughly integral impact on our being that somehow humbles us to our core. There’s a whole discussion of what exactly is a “great work of art,” and it’s a good discussion to have, but it shouldn’t inhibit us from letting ourselves be guided by our common sense and our aesthetic feelings more than anything else.

History and tradition are always good guides of course. You can rest assured that if you read some Tolstoy, go to a couple of Picasso exhibitions or watch a few Stanley Kubrick films, something will blow you away sooner rather than later. Still, this is not at all a reason to stick to the mainstream, especially with an ever increasing infinity of marvelous and yet-undiscovered artists peddling their wares on- and off-line, for whom it might be even easier to blow us away due to our not expecting them to as we would from Cervantes or Pink Floyd. The whole point is that the feeling of “being blown away” has, after all, an inherent elemento of deep humility to it.

Have your arguments smashed every now and then

The effect of this practice is similar to that of a an exercise I proposed a couple of years ago for becoming less judgmental, but instead of an introspective, meditative exercise as I proposed back then, this is a general attitude to assume whenever we are engaged in debate. It basically means taking the risk to be totally frank about what we believe, focusing our efforts on conveying the truth as we understand as clearly as we can, and allowing for the possibility of being wrong to the point that the other might completely smash our argument. If we manage to open our minds up to the point where we see the smashing of our arguments as an opportunity for learning and growth instead of a lost fight, we will surely have strengthened our humility muscle, along with our intellectual emotional ones as well.