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What to do when you hold far too much humility.
So, I am dealing (and suffering) with this inane issue with the amount of humility I hold.
I tend to think of every single girl (no matter if they're considered "ugly") as prettier and more beautiful than I. And it's truthfully affecting my self-esteem more than any one person could ever imagine. It's not just affecting my self-esteem; it affects me working towards my full potential. I'm super humble about everything - my looks, my personality, my potential - just everything.
What I'm asking is how I could ever "tone down" on my humility? The one thing I'm attempting right now is to continue to telling myself the reason why I see myself so poorly is because of my beyond crazy humility. But what else could I do to solve this issue?
Thank you!
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Lets see if I can help you sort this out. I will take your description 'humility' and since you feel you are at an extreme in that, lets look at the opposite meanings, the antonyms.
In dictionarys on the net, the opposite is listed as: pride, pridefulness, conceit, conceitedness and vanity. Taking 'conceited' and looking up the meaning from dictionarys on the net: characteristic of false pride; having an exaggerated sense of self-importance.
Okay, I think we can figure out without a dictionary that self-importance is having a big ego,feeling that you are better than everyone else. But if theres false pride, then what is real pride and will it give you answers?
I hope so. Heres what pride is: a feeling of self-respect and personal worth, and satisfaction with your achievements. Though I think some of your confusion may come in from other not as nice translations of pride, which dictionarys list under the word pride. So there is a good pride and a bad pride. In fear of being found to have a bad type of pride, often people will swing to the extreme opposite. I would hope you agree with me that neither one extreme or the other is the right place to be. That must mean there is some middle ground, a place of balance that can be sought. So the question is, what does it look like and how can it be found as I believe that is what you are looking for.
Perhaps I can help as I used to be at pretty much the place you are at. What you are doing, stating what the problem is, is step one, but it isnt the solution. Believe me, your subconscious mind is soaking up everything you think and everything you say. Its like a child inside you wanting to please you and so whatever you do focus most on is what your subconscious may believe to be important to you, as a good thing rather than a bad so ones subconscious will force you to take actions, or inactions, and think and state things that are what the subconscious beleives in its simplistic thinking that must be good. So to state you are over humble is translated as "I like being overly humble and want to continue to stay that way".
I found that the average human has distorted or negative thoughts all day long. In fact, I couldn't go an hour without having at least a dozen of them. In themselves, if we don't take the thoughts so seriously or dwell on them, it doesnt end up harmful to us. But many have found their fears come true simply because of the power of thought to be able to create. There are many top business people and authors who have learned that it helps in business such as those who spout, Think it and you will grow rich. Theres a bit more to it tho.
You are correct that self esteem is suffering here.
So I did a couple things, adjust my thinking of the view of pride vs humility and the other, a simple fun exercise to gain self confidence. Its lack of confidence and negative thoughts that will actually trap you where you are right now.
Okay first, the thinking: Society has always taught us from the cradle on that there is always some bigger and better, new, improved and that we should never be okay with 'average'. So it isn't always that we caused ourselves to end up there, society kinda molded us and pushed us in that direction.Where there is a problem is in failure to explain that bigger, better, new and improved doesn't apply to everyone.
What this meant for me is that I could no longer play a follower and simply beleive what I was told and just copy everyone else. Ayurvedic medicine claims there are a handful of different body types and accordingly what we ingest and the amount of exercise needed is not going to be the same for everyone. Each person is that different in body types. This makes it hard for traditional medicine to treat all with the same band-aid solution or prescription for example. And that is just body type from skeletal build to every cell in the body. That doesnt even count a persons unique traits, talents and personality.
So if you catch yourself every time you feel someone is better at something than you or prettier than you, you need to immediately counteract that with the positive thought like: I might think she looks prettier than me, but her straight hair and blue eyes don't mean shes prettier just because I have red hair and hazel eyes. Everyone has personal taste and not all men are going to like or even be attracted to blue eyes straight haired blondes. Some men are drawn to red hair and freckles. Hey I had the freckles thing reinforced when I created a red haired freckled avatar inside a game and a male asked my avi to dance with him and told me he had a thing for women with freckles. So are freckles really ugly? No, just different. The thing keep telling yourself is that there is no such thing as you being the kind of woman no man will ever look at, cus you don't measure up to being like everyone else. Just keep replacing your negative thoughts with the positive ones.
Now for a fun exercise I read about in a woman's magazine long ago. The context in which they were doing it and the reason for it was a bit different but I realized then and there it should work for what I needed.
Do you have one thing about you that you can somewhat, even slightly compare to a female celebrity? I used my eyes and compared them to an actress I felt was beautiful and confident. My eyes are not a dead ringer for hers, but her eyes came closest to mine where I feel mine are somewhat deep set and very expressive. Then everytime you leave the house, everytime you enter a room of people, another building, anywhere, the s tore, the Drs. office, the park...as you go kept pasting a picture in your mind of you actually looking like that celebrity and turning heads the same way she would. It takes some dedication to be doing this every couple of minutes, reposting this image in your mind. Then tell yourself, you will walk and act and talk just like her. This may seem counter productive but wait....
Within a few days, I started getting compliments from complete strangers, both men and women on how pretty or beautiful my eyes were. I actually hadn't worn makeup on most those occasions so it wasn't that. I had done nothing different other than how I thought or pictured myself. So what exactly changed that made Lots of people notice my eyes, just my eyes, no comments on anything else...it wasn't a visual difference. They were picking up on something invisible, my self confidence that my eyes were pretty. This is the same as what happens when a person believes no one wants to talk to them and they walk around looking at the floor. People can able to pick up and sense things as if they were like radio waves, able to tune into them and thats what they picked up on, how I felt about my eyes, not what they actually looked like. I did this until I felt fully confident in the fact that I had learned that beauty or attractiveness even as just a friend, is not what I look like or the extent of my talents but in how I think about myself. So borrow a celebritys self confidence until you have had enough success at being complimented and sought after for your opinions and talents. It wouldn't be healthy to imagine to be someone else for the rest of your life, only until you have experienced enough attention to kickstart you into having your own confidence.
I hope this all has helped you.
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