Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Why Humility is Vital to Your Success w/ John R. Miles EP 51

Episode Date: August 6, 2021

In this powerful Momentum Friday Episode, John R. Miles discusses why humility is vital to your success, and specifically intellectual humility. The definition of intellectual humility, determining if we are practicing humility, what happens when we don't, and techniques to get better at being humble.  Thank you for listening to the Passion Struck podcast. Like this? Please subscribe, and join me on my new platform for personal growth and life coaching: https://passionstruck.com/. Why is Humility Vital? It is ok to have self-confidence, but it becomes a problem when that grows; it encompasses you. People often ask me what the key to peak performance is? It is intellectual humility! And, that is why humility is vital to your success. The act of being humble fosters a positive impact on your career and life. Here are additional topics from past podcasts that were mentioned in the show: The Art of Diplomacy: https://youtu.be/9tbB0dWDlSQ Acting with Tact: https://youtu.be/Aq-I5LF3-wg Why We Should Stop Playing Small: https://youtu.be/WByldhG4hlY How the Ego Holds us Back: https://youtu.be/s6gir0jNAwI Why Humility is Vital to Your Success Show Notes Thomas Horton Quote Why do others perceive us differently than we perceive ourselves John tells a personal story of learning humility the hard way Letting ego get the best of us Why it's hard to foster humility How you can recognize if you are not using humility Why being humble is underrated The reason possessing intellectual humility is vital to your success 4 ways you can practice humility What happens when we don't practice humility ENGAGE WITH JOHN R. MILES * Subscribe to my channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnRMiles * Leave a comment, 5-star rating (please!) * Support me: https://johnrmiles.com * Twitter: https://twitter.com/Milesjohnr * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Johnrmiles.c0m​. * Medium: https://medium.com/@JohnRMiles​ * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/john_r_miles JOHN R. MILES * https://johnrmiles.com/my-story/ * Guides: https://johnrmiles.com/blog/ * Coaching: https://passionstruck.com/coaching/ * Speaking: https://johnrmiles.com/speaking-business-transformation/ * Gear: https://www.zazzle.com/store/passion_struck PASSION STRUCK *Subscribe to Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-passion-struck-podcast/id1553279283 *Website: https://passionstruck.com/ *About: https://passionstruck.com/about-passionstruck-johnrmiles/ *Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast *LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/passionstruck *Blog: https://passionstruck.com/blog/  

Welcome visionaries, creators, innovators, entrepreneurs, leaders, and growth seekers of all types to the Passion Struck Podcast. Hi, I'm John Miles, a peak performance coach, multi industry CEO, Navy Veteran, and entrepreneur on a mission to make Passion Go viral for millions worldwide. do so by sharing with you an inspirational message and interviewing high achievers from all walks of life to unlock their secrets and lessons to become an action-struck. The purpose of our show is to serve you the listener by giving you tips, tasks and activities you can use to achieve peak performance and for two, a passion-driven life you have always wanted to have. Now help. Let's become PassionStruck. Welcome to Momentum Friday, an episode 51 of the PassionStruck Podcast. And I want to thank all of you so much for continuing to watch and listen to the PassionStruck Podcast

and helping us make our goal of bringing passion to the world a reality. If there's a certain topic or guest you would like us to interview, please DM me on Instagram at JohnRMiles. Now let's get on with today's episode, which starts with a quote from Thomas Horton, who said, When we are being taught to be highly sensitive to others' identities, we are also implicitly being told to take pride in our own identity. This is where the problem lies.

Pride is a vice. Regardless of your own self-identity, we all have a vision of ourself that is far different than the world pictures us. In most cases, the way we see ourselves is glamorized into someone who is more liked, more intelligent, more decisive than who we really are. And that very reasoning is why humility is so vital to your very success.

We all want to feel self-important. And there's nothing wrong with that. It is great to have self-confidence. I would even say it's vital if you want to feel self-important and there's nothing wrong with that. It is great to have self-confidence. I would even say it's vital if you want to have a passion-struck life. But the problem with self-inflated self-worth is that it can cause a huge ego problem and that becomes a massive liability. Now let me illustrate this through a personal story. A few years ago, I was working as a consultant to a company, and my client son had recently gotten a job with one of the up-and-coming scooter companies.

And he found in this new job that he was in charge of new market development. The father thought that landing the Tampa Bay market, which is the 12th largest market in the country, would be an incredible start for his son's future. And he knew that I had connections with both the mayors of St. Petersburg, for a Christman and Tampa, Bob Bacorn at the time.

And not only did I have connections with them, I had deep connections with both their respective staffs. He asked me if I would use those connections to help his son out. And I reluctantly said yes. You see, the rumors about his son were that although he was highly astute and was Ivy League educated, he had a vision of himself and his self-worth that was larger than the state of Texas. And coupled with that, he had just come from working a stint in the Trump administration.

However, I had never met him, so I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. I used my personal contacts and set up meetings. And as we approached that first meeting with Bob Buckhorn, the mayor of Tampa, I reached out to the sun to finalize not only the agenda, but also discuss what attire we were gonna wear to make sure that we were in unison on both.

And I suggested to him that we dress formally or at least have a sports jacket on. And I received zero responses. And then I tried again on the eve of the meeting and I received a response and text that I will never forget. It said, I got both your messages. I ignored the first because I thought it was demeaning. You realize I am a Princeton grad and attorney,

and I just left working in the White House where I briefed the president on a regular basis. You must be either inept or inexperienced. If you don't think I know how to handle a meeting and what to wear, especially for a third-rate mayor like the one we're going to see in Tampa. I looked at my cell phone with disgust and anger. My first reaction, as I'm sure yours would have been, was to immediately type a very pointed and direct response. Instead, I thought the bad of it.

And I thought the way to handle this was with tact. And so I showed this father the text. And what surprised me the most was that it was very apparent to me that this was not the first occasion that something like this had happened. That said, the father reassured me that this was just a misunderstanding and pleaded with me to go to the meeting. I should have trusted my instincts and called the mayor and cancelled

it. The next morning, I met up with my friend from a local public relations company, a lobbyist, and one of the most prominent city council members. We were all dressed in suits for sport boats, which was the protocol that you had when you met with Mayor Buckhorn. We were all dressed in suits for sport coats, which was the protocol that you had when you met with Mayor Buckhorn. We were all standing there when that young man rode up on his scooter wearing Converse sneakers, blue jeans, and a t-shirt. All of them, at that point, looked at me with a stare

of the welder meant. However, there was nothing we could do at that point. We were literally minutes away from meeting the mayor and so we went forward with our plans. I will never forget this. Mayor Bacorn entered his private meeting room and was very gracious and shaking all of our hands and then he turned to the young man and said something I will never forget. Sunny, my time as mayor is coming to an end. And those eight years, I have been in meetings with literally thousands of people. You are the only person who has ever met with me, wearing a t-shirt, blue jeans, and sneakers. I hope and expect that your presentation will be far

more astute than your choice of attire today. Sadly, it did not. The sun had done little to no research on the mayor, the city council, the politics of what was going on and ended up using a canned pitch deck from his employer. The mayor to his credit, listened intently, asked very pertinent questions, and even did a photo op standing on the sun's scooter.

But we all knew that the meeting was a colossal failure. I had not left the meeting when five minutes later, my friend called me on my phone and ripped me a new one. That is because the mayor had already called him and given him his feedback and warned him never again to waste his time like he did in that meeting. Why did this happen? You could say that there were various reasons for it,

but I believe the biggest one is that the young man let his ego get the best of him and failed to demonstrate humility. Did you know that Forbes Magazine recently cited that 70% of individuals who do personal development, masterminds, and one-on-one coaching benefited from better work performance, increased communication skills, and overall better relationships. And we at PassionStruct are obsessed with self-development, coaching, and mentorship.

That is why we've created a free resource to help you unlock your hidden potential. Because people doing great things in business and life are just like you, only they've had a coach along the way, and we've got that covered too. Let us show you the systems and frameworks that we teach both minded individuals to help them step into their sharp edges, execute on their passion journeys, and get predictable results time and time again. Go to passionstruck.com slash coaching right now and let's get igniting.

Why is it so challenging to foster humility? Through my long career, I've learned just how difficult it is to foster humility and more importantly, intellectual humility. From my study of it, I have learned that there are three main challenges on the path to acquiring humility. The first is learning that we all possess blind spots. To act with more intellectual humility, we all, even the smartest among us, need to appreciate that we have mental blind spots. Our cognitive capabilities are more imperfect

and imprecise than we'd often like to admit. And our ignorance can be imperceptible. Second, is being able to admit when you were wrong. I remember working in that same company with another gentleman who would take on so much work that he never got any of it done. And the one thing he would never do is take any personal responsibility for any of it. It used to anger all of us so much because not only was he not getting his work done, his ego was getting in the way of all of our advancement and what we were trying to do in the company. And even if we can overcome a blind spot like my pure head and figure out our errors, we need to remember that it's not only okay, it actually shows strength

to say I was wrong and we need to be braver about admitting it. We need to create a culture that celebrates those words, I am wrong. The third is learning the art of tact and diplomacy. No matter how hard we can possibly try, it is impossible to achieve perfect humility. So we need to ensure that our convictions are well placed and act with tact and diplomacy when interacting with others. And I'll talk more about this later on in the segment. So if you're not familiar with it,

you may be wondering what is intellectual humility. Intellectual humility is admitting that your ideas and beliefs may not be accurate, but don't confuse it with the idea of being bashful. It's not at all about being weak, and it's not about self-esteem or low self-worth. Those who practice intellectual humility don't run in the face of danger or when their thoughts are being challenged or questioned. Instead, it's a method of rationalizing the situation and

listening to the other person or persons. It's actually having that self-confidence to actually realize that you could be wrong. And then having the willingness to learn from other people's experiences. How often have you experienced friends or peers who take a hard and unwavering stance on an idea or a topic? They become so self-righteous

about their own personal viewpoint that they fail to hear anyone else's view and instead just argue their side and fail to seek or acknowledge anyone else's opinion. your opinion, you were just plain wrong in their mind. So why then is intellectual humility so important for you in your life and in your career? I find humbleness is one of the most underrated and undervalued virtues, but one that most of the outstanding leaders that I have met and work for in my career possess. Intellectual humility is actually vital because no one is absolutely all-knowing. No single person can be right about every single topic. And therefore, our perspectives are always going to be limited to what we know. That recognition leads us to a list of as much information, feedback, and expertise as we possibly can. The possessed intellectual humility doesn't necessarily necessitate, I intellect. However,

it requires us to challenge our internal beliefs, our thoughts, and that can be very painful to do. When we have humility, we can become so much more potent than without possessing it. That is because we can strengthen our own self-confidence and in turn our position. After all, we are actively seeking out the opinions of others. So how do you practice intellectual humility? I'm going to give you four different ways that I have found success practicing it in my own life. Many of these are previous podcasts that I've done or articles that I've written. So you can refer to them in the show notes and I will put all of them in there. The first as I referred to earlier in the podcast is by practicing the art of diplomacy. One of the most critical aspects of humility

is learning to value others and listening to what they have to say. In order to do that, it's vitally important to understand the emotional state of that other person. This starts by observing their behavior and listening to the intent and tone of their words. By doing so, we can draw out their values and feelings,

and that enables them to provide us with very valuable feedback. It is a very potent skill to possess, and one that will help you preserve relationships in both your career and in your personal life. To understand why it is so vital, it is essential for you to realize that this is not about you always having your way or that your opinion has to be correct. Just listen and react to them as you would hope they would do to you and do it with kindness. Second, be tactful and focus on being in the moment. A critical part of humility is being able

to deliver sensitive or difficult information in a way that preserves the relationship rather than judging or disrupting them. A key element of being humble is knowing how to actually talk to other people and doing it in a way that promotes honest communication. When we use tact, we are preserving relationships and also fostering dialogue. This doesn't mean you should be deterred from delivering sensitive or hard information, but doing it in a way that focuses on the outcome you want to achieve and not on yourself is so important. The third practice is to use the power of vulnerability. By being vulnerable, we are letting go of that fear of what other people may think of us, and it also allows that other person to see your true self.

This is perhaps one of the hardest things for us to do, but one of the most important if we're going to act with humility. Often those who lack humbleness do so because internally they lack esteem and self-confidence. They try to show other people up because they lack self-awareness and feel threatened. The fourth activity that you can do is play big and let go of that ego. When we play small in our life, we are coming from a place of pride and arrogance. And I realize it can be hard sometimes to avoid a feeling of fear, doubt, or uncertainty. But it is just reckless to cover it up with vanity, because you don't want others to see your self-limiting beliefs.

When we play big, we are living our life with confidence, and unlocking our full capabilities. We learn to confront those attributes of smudeness, snobbery, and arrogance that causes us to have the big ego. We learn to embrace humility by being more open to critique and self-growth. Now, let me wrap all of today's episode up for you by sharing my final thoughts. I have found that you can never go wrong by looking for ways to improve yourself. And that starts by listening to feedback

from your partner, a friend, or a peer. When we lack humility, we end up focusing inward. Pride consumes us, And we end up with a massive ego problem. When a person's mentality, like the young man's in the story I told at the beginning of the podcast, up self and self preservation first, it's a sure sign of immaturity. Instead, we should strive to understand that every human is equally valuable. That recognition should lead us to living our life in a way that we are worth no more or less than anyone else. Thank you for listening to today's podcast, and I hope it was able to bring

some insight on humility and ways that you can practice it and perfect it in your own life. Thank you so much for joining us. The purpose of our show is to make Passion Go viral. And we do that by sharing with you the knowledge and skills that you need to unlock your hidden potential. If you want to hear more, please subscribe to the Passion Strike podcast on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to your podcast ad. And if you absolutely love this episode, we'd appreciate a five-star rating on iTunes and you sharing it with three of your most growth-minded friends so they can post it as well to their social accounts and help us grow our

Passion Strike community. If you'd like to learn more about the show and our mission, you can go to passionstruck.com where you can sign up for our newsletter, look at our tools, and also download the show notes for today's episode. Additionally, you can listen to us every Tuesday and Friday for even more inspiring content. And remember, make a choice, work hard, and step into your sharp edges. Thank you again for joining us. you