Man : Reserve (Humility)

Humility (adjectival form: humble) is the quality of being modest and respectful. 
Humility, in various interpretations, is widely seen as a virtue in many religious and philosophical traditions, being connected with notions of agelessness.

Term

The term "humility" 
   a. comes from the Latin word humilitas, 
   b. a noun related to the adjective humilis,  translated as "humble", 
   c.  but also as "grounded", "from the earth", or "low", 
   d, since it derives in turns from humus (earth).

Humility is a form of prosocial behavior. Some misunderstood that humility is associated with low self-esteem or self-denigration, a self-regarding and other-regarding components. 
    A humble person keeps their accomplishments, gifts, and talents to one self/perspective. 
A person with 
        i.    self-knowledge, 
        ii.   aware of their limitations as an individual and as a human being. 
     
Humble individuals are also 
     a.    oriented towards others; 
     b.    they value the welfare of other people and 
      c.   have the ability to "forget themselves" as well, when appropriate.

An empirical research on humility shows that this trait has great value. Humility has been linked with better academic performance, job performance, and excellence in leadership. Humble people have better social relationships, avoid deception in their social interactions, and they tend to be forgiving, grateful, and cooperative. A predictor of generosity with both their time and their money.

Bases of Humility

a.   Inner Bases Of Humility

Inner Peace

        Man is, a complex, nicely designed by nature. Man has two aspects, material as well as spiritual. Every individual is unique combination of body, mind, and soul, are best in stature, proportion and excellent in working and operation.

  A personality profile is the outcome of physical, psychological and spiritual inclinations.  

Body

      Human body is corrupted, generally,  physical lusts such as over-eating, lethargy, drinking, and smoking. At physical level, instincts/needs are food, clothing, shelter, sex, knowledge thrust, social interaction, and self esteem.

MInd
        Human mind correlate with peace of mind.  Human mind play an important role in making, shaping, sustaining, and maintaining a mindset. An individual's mind is sometime disrupt or behaves abnormally due to negative mindset.
The mind powers / intelligences composed of three basic intelligences - perceptual intelligence, emotional intelligence, and intentional intelligence.

Soul

        Soul shapes a definite personality profile for human eternal and everlasting growth and survival. Soul is conscious energy that gives definite directions; however soul movement is perverted due to lusts/false beliefs. A structured and proportionate profile of man set a route of ordinary/humble life activities; maintaining humility and natural pattern of life activities.
 Spiritual human soul has three major senses - religious sense, moral sense, and aesthetic sense. This divinely gifted impose natural limits on human pride.

Pride

·   Proud creeps in and breeds lusty behavior at physical level, creates multiple physical abnormalities such as fat, high cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes, and fatigue

·  Negative mindset at psychological level, creates numerous psycho abnormalities such as tension, anxiety, depression, stress and strain

·    Isolation at spiritual level, develops dogmatic beliefs and behavior pattern based on unfounded system of rites and rituals, irrational / immoral, consequently, countless totems & taboos are become part and parcel of daily life.

In addition, vulgarity and nudity rises due to wrong elucidation of aesthetic sense. The ultimate outcome of pride is, thus, presence of abnormal attitude at all levels of life - physical, psychological, and spiritual.

b.   EXTERNAL BASES OF HUMILITY

The profile of a person is often assessed by the interaction with fellow human beings. A human interaction has three aspects :
   -  social, 
   -  economic, and 
   - political. 

A proud person 
       a. is discourteous during social interaction, exploitative during economic interaction, and unjust during political interaction. 
     b. person is narcissist or self-centered. The social truth he follows is unfounded, the economic behavior he manifests is irrational, the political attitude he depicts is dictatorial.

A humble person is 
     i. courteous during all types of social interactions, 
    ii. fair during economic actions, and 
   iii. moderate during numerous political interactions.

Benefits of humility

Transforming into one's life for good, there is the need to develop a reliable and valid humility. Humility is associated with the following psychological benefits:

• A reduction of anxiety, fear and depression
• A reduction in conflict, anger and aggression
• An increase in happiness and well-being
• An increase in optimism
• An improvement in friendship and intimate relationships
• Openness for new experiences and new learning
• Greater empathy, compassion and altruism
• Higher job satisfaction and morale at work

How to practice humility

Individual Life & Humility

The ultimate aim of an individual is to live a contented and successful life. A life free from conflicts, both internal and external. Life without internal conflicts provides inner satisfaction and life free from external conflicts gives someone self esteem at collective level. 
Easy to mention, however, difficult to achieve due to the presence of self-contradictory motives in man inner self that makes someone become muddled or depress. 
Similarly, self-esteem is a target hard to achieve with man unwillingly to give their self-esteem the desired push and need but rather takes an easy way of confrontational life. 
Man tries to establish or demands self-esteem at the cost of humiliation of others. Proud people get satisfaction by  humiliating someone, generally, ignoring their self- worth and values of others.

Humility helps the individuals to avoid these negative infectious thoughts/tendencies of inner-self and makes room towards positive responses.
A sincere heart creates inner satisfaction and enthusiastic, acknowledging others' achievements creates self-esteem. It is noteworthy that gratitude and enthusiastic acknowledgment are acts of humility. The humble approach must create self-confidence - a key for successful life.

       
Collective Life & Humility

Man is a social entity. 
Man has strong desire and needs for social interaction. A social interaction take forms such as family interaction, tribe interaction, neighborhood interaction, economic interaction (e.g., buying and selling interaction), and political interaction (e.g., vote casting and vote convincing interaction).

These interactions are extremely complex and difficult to understand and the need to be properly implemented. 
A mistake at early conceptual or later practical level may lead towards  miscommunications among individuals.

Miscommunication at social level is worst as compare to individual misconceptions. A misconception is the worst form of collective miscommunication. It may lead towards strife or war.

A humble approach is a cure in avoiding  miscommunication at all levels, individual as well as collective. Humility shaped  humanistic tendencies towards others, otherwise hypocrisy will be reared. 
Hypocrisy is courtesy without a humble mindset. A charismatic leader is surround with a humble mindset added with soft communication leadership. Founder of Pakistan, Mr. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was a charismatic leader with multiple attributes, especially, two indispensable / glaring traits, Humility and Confidence. A humble or confident person dislikes self-projection.

      
Entrepreneurship & Humility

Entrepreneurship career needs two distinct characteristics: effective communication, negotiation. Communication is required at all levels of entrepreneurial struggle. It is required at the time of early business initiation, business development.  It is required at all occasions of business interaction for the customers/stakeholders to trust; it is unavoidable during multiple business operations in order to avoid mismanagement at all level of institutional struggle.

Effective communication/negotiation is directly linked with politeness or courtesy, and courtesy is strongly linked with humility. A humble approach, thus, leads towards effective communication / negotiation - inevitable pillars of entrepreneurial life.

Humility is an essence and inevitable traits of an entrepreneur. The lack of humility  distorts of all positive traits but also indicates existence of egoism, an extremely negative characteristic for entrepreneurs. 
An entrepreneur imprison by egoism / narcissism reflects a Managerial Ego. An egoist manager would fail in business life or entrepreneurial struggle enclosed with egoistic mindset, attracting enemies and unwise friends which are harmful for entrepreneurship.
 On the other hand, humble mindset is besieged with charismatic and attracts wise friends.

An entrepreneurial struggle success depend on teamwork compricing on- conceptual and practical. The conceptual : a common vision shared  among all members of a team, while the practical environ of unity is sustained due to the discipline.

An institutions shared vision is about the struggle and sacrificing a few individual beliefs, a conceptual submission to humility’.

Approaches to Humility

  On the macro level, the need to embrace and incorporates the following beliefs, individually and collectively:

• Self-awareness of our own mortality/weakness
• Realizing our own inadequacies and wrong doings
• Realizing our need for correction/redemption and cleansing
• Realizing our need for help and guidance

On the micro level, we need to develop the habit of humble practices on a daily basis. These include the following skills and exercises:

• Acknowledging our wrong doing
• Receiving correction and feedback graciously
• Refraining from criticizing others
• Forgiving others who have wronged us
• Apologizing to others who have been wronged by us
• Enduring unfair treatments with patience and a forgiving spirit
• Thinking and speaking about the good things of other people
• Rejoicing over other people's success
• Counting our blessings for everything, good and bad
• Seeking opportunities to serve others
• Willing to remain anonymous in helping others
• Showing gratitude for our successes
• Giving due credit to others for our successes
• Treating success as a responsibility to do more for others
• Willing to learn from our failures
• Assuming responsibility for our failures
• Accepting our limitations and circumstances
• Accepting social reality of discrimination and prejudice
• Treating all people with respect regardless of their social status
• Enjoying the lowly status of being an outsider and a nobody

How to Be Humble

Appreciate the Talents of Other People

a. Appreciate the talents and qualities of others.

• Challenge yourself to look at others and appreciate the things they can do and, more generally, to appreciate people for who they are.  
• Understand that everybody is different and relish the chance you have to experience different people. You will still have your personal tastes, your likes and dislikes, but train yourself to separate your opinions from your fears and you will appreciate others more - you will be humbler.

b. Stop comparing.

• It's nearly impossible to be humble when we're striving to be the "best" or trying to be better than others.  
• Instead, try describing things more objectively. Rather than saying that so and so is the best guitarist ever, say what exactly it is that you appreciate about his skills, or simply say that you like his playing style.  
• Let go of meaningless, simplistic comparisons, and you'll be able to enjoy doing things without worrying about whether you're better or worse at them than others.

Acknowledge Your Limitations

Don't be afraid to make mistakes.

1. Part of being humble is the understanding that you will make mistakes. Understand this, and understand that everyone else makes mistakes, and you will have a heavy burden lifted off of you. 
2. Any one person can know only the smallest bits and pieces of the tremendous knowledge that has accumulated over the past. What's more, each person experiences only a sliver of the present, and knows little to nothing of the future.

Don't be afraid to defer to others' judgment.

1. It's easy to acknowledge that you make mistakes and that you're not always right.
2. Somewhat more difficult however, is the ability to acknowledge that in many cases other people — even people who disagree with you — may be right. Deferring to your spouse's wishes, to a law you don't agree with, or even, sometimes, to your child's opinion takes your recognition of your limitations to a different level. 
3. Instead of simply saying that you know that you're weak, you take action based on that fact. Of course, if you know that a particular course of action is wrong, you shouldn't follow it. On closer inspection, though, you may realize that you don't actually know this as often as you think you do.

Rediscover a Sense of Wonder

Rejuvenate your sense of wonder.

• As individuals, acknowledge that we know practically nothing,  expect something new and  amazed more often than we typically are. Children have this sense of wonder, and it inspires the curiosity that makes them such keen observers and capable learners. 
• Do you really know how your microwave works? Could you build one on your own? What about your car? Your brain? A rose? The jaded, "I've seen it all" attitude makes us feel far more important than we are. Be amazed like a child and you will not only be humbled; you will also be readier to learn.

Continue Learning New Things

Seek guidance.

• Study moral texts and proverbs about humility. 
• Pray for it, meditate on it, do whatever it takes to get your attention off yourself. If  you're not into spirituality, consider the scientific method. Science requires humility. 
• It requires that you let go of your preconceived notions and judgments and understand that you don't know as much as you think you do.

Remain teachable.

• Find people you aspire to be like in certain areas, and ask them to mentor you. Under mentorship; good boundary setting, confidentiality and discernment is required. 
• As soon as you cross the line of being 'unteachable', bring yourself back down to earth again.

Help Others

Help others.

1. A big part of being humble is respecting others, and part of respecting others is helping them. 
2. Treat other people as equals and help them because it is the right thing to do. It's been said that when you can help others who cannot possibly help you in return, you have learned humility.

Practice gentleness.

• Gentleness of spirit is the sure path to humility. 
• Use humane touched where possible when faced with conflict. i.e. Absorb the venom from other's attacks and react with gentleness and respect.

There is great force hidden in a gentle command.  
George Herbert

Excerpt and extracts taken with thanks from:

Wikipedia
Robert Roberts

Kathryn Britton

Bruna Martinuzzi
Michael W. Austin

Muhammad Ilyas Qadri