“Confidence without humility is Arrogance. Humility without confidence is self-deprecation.”
This sketch came out of an unplanned, brilliant conversation with a good friend of mine, Jeff Riddle of The GiveGive. After several iterations through my notebooks (and lots of cross-outs, and a few laughs over coffee), Jeff pointed out that it’s not an either-or, but a balance relationship. Credit to Jeff (and check out his amazing work on understanding business + relationships at his website).
I LOVE the graphic! My first thought was “balance” but “teetering” quickly replaced it!
This is great — there could probably be a book written on this.
This is fantastic. Again, like I reiterate, it’s all about balance. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks so much! It is all about balance. It’s about being quietly confident while also humble. It’s perfectly acceptable to think you are amazing and also have all of the respect and admiration in the world for the brilliant people you encounter – I find thousands of amazing people in this world on a weekly basis!!
LOVE it. Okay, I’ll line it up :) — I have about 8 books I want to write right now and I don’t know how I’m going to get to them all! (One at a time….)
Thanks! Haha, yes – sometimes it feels like teetering …. definitely.
Sorry to be a pedant, but I think you mean “self-deprecation.”
Yup! You’re totally right! Maybe I’ll do a little photoshop magic and remove the extraneous “I” in there. (My mother always said I was the queen of malapropisms…) Thanks for catching that !
All fixed!
You have a great blog here Sarah. Only discovered this yesterday on the last day of the year. I am always amazed how the same ideas seem to find different people across the planet around the same time. I wrote a long, rambling post about humility in June ’11 with the same theme – how a see-saw could swing if you push yourself to be too humble all the time, and take you to self-effacement.
http://satwikhebbar.blogspot.com/2011/06/other-side-of-humility.html
Now I wish I had found the inspiration to just put it down more simply using a picture like you did!
Keep up the good work.
Oh I love the long, rambling nature of your post! You pull in so many good ideas and thoughts and nuances; it’s not easy to capture the ideas, and we must sit and muse and ponder and wonder, hedging closer to an idea that captures what we’re trying to say. Thank you so much for sharing, and for stopping by. This doodle had several drafts, and my friend Jeff is the one who stumbled on the see-saw metaphor of balancing between humility and confidence. (Or, as you also suggest, between foolishness and wisdom, too!). Thank you!