When taking steps to improve ourselves, there will come a time (or many) where we will see significant progress and people will notice. This is an amazing feeling and can make all your hard work really worthwhile. But it’s also something, that if not handled properly, can stunt your continued growth. People handle progress in two different ways. One way is to see progress and have the excitement of the results propel you to further accomplishment. The other is to see progress and get complacent since you’ve already made great strides. If you continue to do the latter, you can see how easy it is to fall back into your old bad habits over time.
Confidence a great characteristic to have, and I think people should generally have more of it on a daily basis. Being confident in yourself and your abilities can give you that extra boost to stand out from the rest of the pack. However, having too much confidence can make you lose sight of the hard work that got you to where you are in the first place. Staying humble is a big key in continuing to grow in your career and your life. Those that can achieve success and remain humble and eager to learn are the ones that see the greatest heights.
Every plateau that we reach in life always has another mountain in front of it. The challenge is that once you reach one level, there’s always the next one to reach for. If you have the ability to keep your focus forward on how far you still have to go, then it’s easier to remain humble. Those that get caught up in looking behind at all the things they’ve done so far are more at risk to losing focus on their ultimate goal. This is not to say that you shouldn’t enjoy your accomplishments, as everyone should regularly evaluate the things that they’ve done well (and not so well) in their life, but don’t harp on things that are in the past and lose sight of the future.
So what are some practical ways to help yourself stay humble? In order to continuously improve and grow you have to always measure yourself from where you are to where you’re trying to go. For example, if you were unemployed and your goal was to get a job at a big corporation and you did, that is a great accomplishment. Now that you’re there however, don’t think of yourself as being recently unemployed. Think of yourself as being an entry level worker at your corporation, and you’re trying to get to that senior level. What it does is give you a new starting point to always keep your focus up.
I know that some may be saying that this is somewhat depressing, as no matter how high you go, you always start back at the beginning. That’s true in a sense, but it’s really just a way of “tricking” your mind to stay motivated. At the end of the day, you can always look back at all of your accomplishments with pride. Everyone should keep in mind where they come from, and enjoy any success they’ve had. But the great part about staying humble and always striving to learn is that no matter what happens on a given day you’ll always be better than you were the previous day. With that the bounds of your success are limitless.
