Music. Welcome to Mr. and Mrs. Therapy, the podcast that empowers you to transform life's challenges into opportunities for personal growth and healthier relationships. We're your hosts, Tim and Ruth Olson, licensed marriage and family therapists and trauma experts. As experienced therapists with backgrounds in addressing trauma and mental health disorders, we believe there is hope and there certainly is healing.
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Hi, everyone. Welcome to the podcast. We're very excited to have you here with us today. We're going to be discussing and exploring the idea of false humility and some of the negative side effects that you can experience from having that. Now, one of the things that I think is that is it a good thing to be humble? Yes, I think it is a good thing to be humble where you're not being a braggart, where you're running around and talking about how wonderful and amazing you are.
But the difference between being a braggart and being humble, but still being able to talk about out your accomplishments, ultimately it ends up boiling down to it's a heart issue. What is the motivation behind what you're doing? Am I doing it because I need people to adore me and to look at my wonderful accomplishments and then tell me how amazing I am?
Now, if that's what's happening, what that's identifying is that you have a deficit in confidence in yourself and you're going to play up all your strengths and you're going to try to get other people to compliment you and be impressed with how amazing and wonderful you are.
But if you are just talking about something where it's you're genuinely good at it and you acknowledge that and you say, oh yeah, I'm good at playing the piano or I'm really knowledgeable about tech, but you're not trying to fish for compliments or trying to put yourself in an elevated position over other people, but you're just genuinely saying that, hey, this is an area that I'm good at. There's nothing inherently wrong with that.
But I think a lot of times what people get concerned about is that what are other people going to perceive that my motivation is? Are they going to think I'm very full of myself when I say these kinds of things?
But then I think what really happens is that we then take it to an extreme where then we don't want to talk about any of our accomplishments, or we don't want to be excited for anything good that we're doing because we don't want to hurt other people's feelings, or we don't want to seem like we're not putting on good sportsmanship or something like that. Yeah, and I remember this happening when our kids were in jujitsu.
And one of our kids just had a really great match and he was super excited and was like cheering and ran over to us. And I remember me kind of quieting them and saying, good job and congratulating them, but just telling them like, okay, go and make sure that you congratulate the other person and make sure you're not celebrating too much. And my heart behind that was trying to teach them good sportsmanship and all of that.
And there is certainly a time and a place for it. But I remember Tim stopping me and saying, no, let him celebrate. Let him cheer. And let's celebrate with him. Oh, for sure. And he definitely wasn't like rubbing the other kid's face in the mud or anything like that. He was just excited that he did well. And so he wasn't putting the other kid down or anything like that. But he was allowing himself to feel that excitement from doing good.
And so that's a great motivator to continuing on in a difficult task is, oh, I get this injection of good feelings when I do perform well here.
And so you don't want to stifle that or try to push that down or away and this just happened to me just yesterday actually i hadn't played racquetball in a really long time several years in fact and in the middle of a game i had envisioned this shot and i took a shot it was kind of risky but it played out exactly how i wanted it to ended up getting a point out of a super excited so i just did like a quick fist pump and it was almost this reflexive action
where i was just so excited like i was just like oh yes and it enhanced that moment for me because it's so much fun and I was really enjoying myself and I was happy with how it played out. And one of the things about this is that if you're not allowing yourself to experience that excitement, you're stealing a reward from something good that happened.
And whether it's your kids or yourself, in order to continue on good behaviors or even attempting difficult things, you have to allow yourself those rewards that you get from those positive actions. And it makes me think of a poem that was in actually a couple movies. It was in Coach Carter and in Akilah and the Bee. And a a little bit ways into the poem, it says, we ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
And I love that. I love that part about your playing small does not serve the world. And then when it goes on to talk about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. I think a lot of times that is one of the aspects that plays into it.
You don't want other people to feel bad or even see you from the perspective of oh look at him and how he's acting or I'm not as good as him and so we often do shrink and so when someone pays you a compliment a lot of times we'll disqualify the positive and say why it isn't such a big deal or why it's not true or we'll minimize our accomplishment but when somebody pays you a compliment and you do that, it also makes it uncomfortable and awkward for them because sometimes people
are really stepping out of their own comfort zone to pay you a compliment and then when you disqualify it or you say why that's not true, then sometimes it can make the other person feel dumb for even saying something and it doesn't validate what they're saying and it takes away from your own accomplishment. I do like that other line where it says, And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
And this isn't always the case. I think sometimes when you shine, other people may get jealous, they may get discouraged. But there's a lot of cases where as you shine, other people will see that and it'll motivate and it'll encourage them. And it'll make them feel like, oh, man, if they could do it, I could do it, too. Oh, totally. I remember watching this movie and I believe it was about breaking the four minute mile. So running a mile in under four minutes.
And it was something that they talked about and it had never been done. And they even speculated the human body couldn't even do that. But this one guy ended up finally breaking that four minute mile. And then very quickly after that, lots of people started doing it. And so when he shone through and he was able to break that four minute mile, Now, suddenly that barrier became so much easier to break for everybody else
because then all of a sudden they're like, oh, this can happen. Oh, that guy could do it. Well, that guy could do it. That means that I could do it if I worked hard enough and I just pressed hard enough into it. Versus before, because nobody had done it, there was the thought process, it's impossible.
And so when you change or you work at being different or you work at correcting something or you work at being excellent or magnificent at something, you also help other people see that it's possible to do this as well.
Now, the other thing that I think is also true about this is that being wonderful at something, being great and amazing at something also can draw negative attention to you because then you are shining light on people who maybe don't want to be better or don't want to put in the effort that you did. And so instead, they want to challenge or tear down your accomplishments.
Then it's showing that, okay, this thing is possible, but they didn't want it to be possible because they didn't want to put in the effort to do it. If people are complaining about it, it's showing more of an issue with them than it is an issue with you. Because doing something great or stellar does require a lot of effort. But most people aren't really willing to put in that effort.
And especially if you are accomplishing something very difficult, you do want to take credit and be pleased with yourself for being able to do that. And it doesn't mean you have to be the best in the world to take credit for being good at something. And I know this could be a whole podcast episode on its own. How you respond to other people succeeding and other people shining makes a big difference for then what you're going to do.
And I know, Tim, you kind of just talked about this, but like that four-minute mile, it can encourage you and push you to want to do more. Or you could be one of the people that are just kind of outside of the arena talking about all the negative things and getting jealous and saying all the bad things about them. And maybe making accusations like they probably cheated or giving all these reasons on why they shouldn't have succeeded.
And although it may reach them and it may hurt the person, maybe it won't, ultimately it's affecting you and then creates a barrier for you. And it's really hurting yourself the most because it's almost justifying why you're not succeeding rather than getting out there and taking the steps to succeed. And then also think about who you wanna be around. Do you want to be around people who are always grumbling and complaining and pointing out the negative things?
Or do you want to be around people who are cheering others on and encouraging them to greatness? Because then you know when you're succeeding that they're going to encourage and cheer you on. And so really being careful about how you're responding to other people's success because you're creating an atmosphere and a community of people around you.
And I think, too, again, if you're able to praise somebody else's success, it helps you feel better, even if their success is to your detriment, meaning like they beat you out at something or they got more accolades than you for something.
And going back to me playing racquetball yesterday, whenever I play, when I'm playing against other people or another team, whenever somebody shoots a good shot, whether it's my team member or whether it's not my team member, I always praise a good shot when I see it. And if you've never played racquetball before, sometimes somebody will shoot a shot that is unreturnable. It is impossible for you to get to and for you to hit it back. And that could be very frustrating.
Or if you praise that shot where you're like, man, that was such a great shot. I had no chance at that. It will make you then feel differently. And so instead of losing hope in a moment like that, you actually can just appreciate what it was. Oh, man, that was a beautiful play. And going on to what you're just saying there, Ruth, it also creates a more pleasant atmosphere as opposed to sitting there grumbling and complaining and being irritated. irritated because the whole reason I'm there,
I'm not playing super high levels. I'm playing pickup games and they're for fun. I'm there to have fun. I would like to win because winning is fun, but I don't want to ruin the experience by being so upset or irritated that other people were performing better than me or they shot a shot that I couldn't return.
And so if you're listening to this and you're like, oh my gosh, taking a compliment from somebody or talking positively about myself to somebody else, this feels like a wildly uncomfortable activity to me. We're going to challenge you this week to go out and just give it a shot. When somebody gives you that compliment, just say, thank you. I appreciate that.
Or maybe if it comes up in a conversation where there's an opportunity where you can praise yourself a little bit on something, take that opportunity to do it. And it may be uncomfortable, but again, there's a positive reinforcing feeling that ends up starting to come through that when you talk more positively about yourself and you don't discount all of your positives or you don't try to suppress those positive feelings you get when you accomplish something good.
All right, guys. that's about all the time that we have for today. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, your mind is a powerful thing. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Mr. and Mrs. Therapy. We hope that you enjoyed today's episode and found it helpful. If so, would you take 30 seconds and share it with a friend? Also, we'd love for you to leave us a review on Apple Podcast.
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