The education of values in the sports context that we develop at UPAD Psychology and Coaching tends to always move around the same contents: respect, camaraderie, responsibility, effort, humility… Most of these values have such an intuitive name that even the youngest children whom we instruct in them manage to give an improvised definition. However, there is one of them that represents the exception that confirms the rule, and it is none other than humility.
And it is that, Sometimes even adults miss what humility is and even more: why it can be important in sport or in life, because, as that one said, “isn’t too much humility good?”
Humility is defined as knowing the extent of one’s abilities, i.e. know how good we are and how we can improve This means that acknowledging personal merit in public is not a lack of humility (perhaps it is a lack of modesty). In fact, an explicit denial of a great achievement can, ironically, be interpreted as a lack of humility.
But then, is it humility to tell every person I meet about the great dribble I did the other day? Is it humility to celebrate a goal by dancing in front of everyone? Is it humility to compare my record with a teammate or rival’s?
We can all quickly understand that, Disregarding the merits of another athlete is not sporting behavior and, although it may be related to humility, perhaps it is more related to respect.
On the other hand, if we say that being humble is being aware of successes as well as mistakes, it can be deduced that talking about said successes naturally can be related to humility, as long as we do not boast about them. However, The line between boasting and naturalness will always be blurred so this would be an ambiguous criterion that might be useful for us to philosophize in this small article, but not to educate our young athletes in training in this very important value.
The criterion that resolves this hole in the definition would be that this knowledge of achievements and skills to improve does not depend on the opinion of others. I can make a spectacular play, but if I have the need to validate it through my teammates, rivals or spectators, I will not be humble. If I need to have an exaggerated celebration to get more attention for my goal, I won’t be being humble. If a teammate, a rival, a friend (or a journalist) asks me about said goal, and I express my honest opinion about it, then I will be humble. If I celebrate the goal with my teammates, like anyone else who has scored, I will be humble.
Therefore, in order to optimize the value of humility, It is important to generate and strengthen self-esteem since, following the logic of our discourse, the former will be a consequence of the latter.
Self-esteem management
It is common for people who brag the most about their achievements, appearance or merits to do so masking low self-esteem, as if it were overcompensation as a self-defense mechanism. And it is true that one of the sources of self-efficacy is the feedback we receive from others, so I can manipulate that feedback, or my perception of it, to protect my self-esteem.
However, the healthiest solution is to achieve strong self-esteem, which does not need protection and, therefore, does not depend on others. Therefore, it is vitally important to educate people in training to obtain said self-esteem through objective data that speak for themselves of their merits, as well as be very conscientious about how we reinforce obtaining these merits
In this way, if our self-esteem depends exclusively on the objectives we achieve and our room for improvement, we will have a strong self-esteem that will not depend on the evaluation of others and, in turn, we will not need to display behaviors contrary to humility to perceive said self-esteem. Therefore, understanding humility in this way, I would say that not only is too much humility good, but it is, above all, healthy.
