The Humble Position Themselves For Success

🎧 READ TO ME

I listen to a lot of motivational speakers and most of them talk about success like it’s all about money, houses, cars, yachts and so on. Don’t get me wrong. In life, it is important to have money and all the other toys if you fancy them. But, obviously, getting all of those things is not the goal of life. Or, is it? This warped definition of success has become so rife. It has made it difficult for many to be actually happy with their success in the simple things if it doesn’t come with some of those toys. Anyway, I won’t be dwelling too much on that here except to make the point that riches, wealth and health are a by-product of what you truly need to focus on when it comes to success: character and posture.

Why character?

I don’t want to sound like a broken record so I will be really brief with this one. Character. What is character? The origins of the word marks it as the distinguishing quality of a thing or person. That’s just talking about what makes something different from the other so that just by picking out the what you can almost completely define that thing. Take the sun for example, a distinct feature, the unique what, of the sun is its bright light. But that’s not the only feature, right? Of course not. It is also extremely hot. These features of the sun make it different from, say, the moon which is dim and cold. Interesting enough, that’s exactly how we tell the two apart—their characteristics!

To add, the character of a thing helps us to know what the thing is useful for or at least, guess. To put it bluntly, the use of an object is directly associated with its characteristics. When you pick up a knife and you don’t know its a knife and try out its edges with your finger, what happens? Yes, you got that absolutely right. It will cut you! After that experience, you will know exactly that the knife is good for cutting because of its feature—sharp edge.

I will circle back to character in another post to go a bit deeper so for now, I will end with this addition and transition to posture afterwards. The character of a thing helps you to know how to handle it. Let’s look at an extreme but familiar example, fire. We know for a fact that fire is hot, bright and burns. Fire can turn a whole mansion into ash in no time at all. We have seen this reported in the news several times. Due to this, we understand that fire must be handled carefully to prevent it from going out of control. It’s why we have regulators on anything fire-related.

Position yourself

Posture is derived from position. Position is simply where an object sits. An object could be up, down, beside, underneath, behind, before, after, and so on. These are all positions an object can be found. The difference with posture is that while an object’s position may feel passive, posture is active. Posture involves the thing acting out. This might feel like mere semantics but it’s important because while posture also implies attitude, position does not; even though posture is derived from position.

OK. Enough with the English lesson. The position you choose to take becomes your posture and this is reflective of your character. Let me make this loose comparison. Scientists have shown that the position of the earth relative to the sun’s is optimal for life on earth. If the earth is too close to the sun, we burn and all life ends. Too far from it and we freeze and all life ends as well. In this case, you can say that the earth’s posture is relative to the sun’s position and this is reflective of their respective characteristics.

Just like the sun and the earth, with humans and success, character and posture are very important and this is clearly revealed in the contrast between humility and pride. From here on, I will focus on humility and show you why it is so entangled with success.

Troubling notions of humility

If you happen to use social media often, a common phrase you may have seen on the posts of others is be humble. This is usually atop the backdrop of what is considered success these days: flashy cars, mansions, money, yachts, luxury lifestyles or contrasting images of poor and rich. Funny enough, none of those images paint a clear picture of humility or success. It’s all distorted!

Like I mentioned earlier, success is not about those luxuries. Not at all, those fancy things are by-products of success. These are not things you should even worry about because they always accompany success and not the other way round.

What about humility? Well, it is true. Humility is very basic to the success equation but humility too is not about the presence of luxuries or absence thereof. Not at all. Wearing a Rolex watch does not make you any arrogant than wearing a 10-dollar watch makes you humble. Don’t get it twisted. Be very clear about this.

Many people easily subscribe to the idea that choosing to suffer with pain when you can step out of it by demanding what is rightly yours is humility. My friend, don’t allow yourself to suffer unnecessarily in the name of being humble. Others think doing everything your boss says even when it means compromising on what is right because it will make your boss happy is humility. No, not even close. That’s just sycophantic. Humility like kindness is not weakness but strength, especially to do what is right.

Humility is not being timid or a doormat. Allowing yourself to be dominated because you refuse to steel yourself is not humility. No, that is just you being a coward and wasting your time in a situation that you should get out of. You should never allow an abuse to persist in the name of humility. Please, don’t!

What then is humility?

I will just go straight to the point and allow you time to process the next statement. Humility is about following age-old principles that allow The Great Rewarder to look favorably on you and make way for you to reach your full potential rather than thinking you know better and being vain as a result.

Now, take a pause, think about it for a bit and distill it into your mind.

I am very sure you have some questions. In the least, you are probably asking yourself: what age-old principles and who is The Great Rewarder?

In my post, Success Is The Reward For Faith, I talked about The Great Rewarder and said for several reasons, our world today has abandoned the notion of the existence of God and refer to the influence of his power as that of the Universe. While that is not a big deal as long as you understand that the Universe is, in fact, a reference to the Almighty God, problems start to rise when the Universe is used without the idea of God. It is absolutely important to be clear about this especially because we are discussing success and success is not as atheistic as many others would have you believe. Without grace, there is no success at all and without The Great Rewarder, there is no grace.

With that said, consider this.

“God resists the proud,
But gives grace to the humble.”

James 4:6 (NKJV)

Humility: character and posture

Genuine people will always admit to you that there is an element of grace in their success stories. Even Tony Robbins admits as much in his book Money Master The Game. Everyone who attains good success experiences this. Some may call it providence, others say good fortune or, more commonly, good luck. Regardless, it is there and the trigger for that is humility.

Interestingly, grace does not precede humility when it comes to success but compliments it. What I’m I saying? God adds grace to humility to allow us to attain success. It is almost as if humility is a symbol for hard work. Yes, I get that sense myself. But, while humility may demand hard work, hard work is not humility. Like I mentioned earlier, humility is following age-old principles.

Working hard is an age-old principle. So is doing the right thing, the core of humility. Yes, doing the right thing. You see, being humble is all about being righteous. Applying yourself to do right in any venture buys you grace over time and guarantees success. If your posture or attitude towards your career, business, work, family, marriage, you name it, is righteous, you obtain the grace to succeed in it!

Trust me when I tell you that there is nothing more humble than doing the right thing in life especially when it’s against the general direction of the crowd. Today, few people are actually humble though many profess humility. It’s the reason few actually enjoy success with all that comes with it.

Arrogance, is thinking you know better than what is obviously right and acting accordingly. I’m sure you’ve met a couple of people who are like that. No, I’m not talking about you. You are humble or at least are trying to be so you’re clear. I’ll just give you a couple scenarios of humility so you’re more confident about being humble.

The husband-wife scenario

Many husbands use “the head of the house” mantra to bully their wives into submission. The right thing for a husband to do is to “love your wife”. Yes, the right thing! Following this makes you humble because you are following an age-old principle and you will receive grace. Grace will make it easier to forgive your partner and enhance communication which experts have all agreed leads to a successful marriage. On the flip side, wives are to “submit to their own husbands”. In our liberal world today, asking wives to submit to their husbands is an abomination but that’s the right thing to do. Submitting to your loving husband deals directly with his ego and makes him love you even more. We all know what happens when true love prevails.

The Employer-employee scenario

Today, many employers are beginning to realize that their employees are not slaves to be abused with unfitting loads of work over several man-hours. Dear employer, your employees are no different from you and must be treated with kindness. Some will take the side of employers and say employees are lazy. Dear employee, it is your duty to be diligent and work hard and smart like the business is your own. Employers being kind and employees being diligent earns both parties favor from God and the business succeeds. This success will be duly reflected in bonuses for the employee.

Time to reassess

While being humble or showing humility will look different in varying scenarios, the underlying concept is the same: follow the age-old principles of doing the right thing at all times!

I will leave you with this.

“For who makes you differ from another? 
And what do you have that you did not receive?
Now if you did indeed receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?”

1 Corinthians 4:7 (NKJV)

I will not get into it this time. This is just for you to ponder and through scrutiny become wiser than you are now for deciding to follow the path of humility to obtain grace for success.