“This award for achievement and excellence in their field goes out to…!”
Wouldn’t it be awesome if the world celebrated our personal accomplishments the way we do celebrities? Not a competitive awards show like the Grammys, but with big fanfare and public acknowledgement of achievement. And even more than that, how great would it be if we got demonstrable PROOF of our abilities or expertise?
Unless you work for yourself (*ahem), you probably get work-based performance reviews, and hopefully, promotions with title changes. Someone else gets to review what you’re doing and say, “hey, good job. You’ve leveled up. Now you can call yourself THIS.”
But even if your job is doing well at recognizing your growth, you’re probably not getting that acknowledgment in other areas of your life like relationships, health, or even your hobbies.
You may not be an EGOT, but I will bet you’re more impressive and are more of an expert in something than you allow yourself to say.
I have personally struggled through deciding when I get to call myself an expert, because no one has ever crowned me as a “master of tapping” or “difficult communication skills expert.” But when I look back and see that I put in thousands of hours and have so much accumulated wisdom in a topic, isn’t it incorrect to claim anything less than expertise?
The problem with too much humility is you are showing up with an outdated image of yourself — you go around believing you are less than you are.
It is totally possible to be TOO humble.
We have to tell other people who we are in order to be treated appropriately. So if we are pretending to be less powerful, less experienced, or less wise than we actually are, people will respond to us that way. And it reinforces that self-image because it’s reflected back to us.
So how do I know if I’m being too humble?
- You feel like people don’t seek you for your expertise.
- You feel unseen or misunderstood a lot.
- You bite back your good ideas in a group rather than share them.
- You don’t get offered opportunities you would be a great fit for (because you never threw your hat in the ring, or because people underestimate your ability.)
In trying to avoid being seen as a braggart or a narcissist, you are probably downplaying your greatness. So in my next post, I’ll talk about what you can do to better see and BELIEVE in yourself.
Let’s level up.