Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Pride is the thing that can disqualify us from some of the greatest things in our life. But the cure, the antidote to pride, is humility, one of the hardest, yet easier things to obtain. Let's talk about it in today's podcast.
[00:00:40] Hey, everyone, it's Ryan. Welcome to shifts and ladders. I'm so excited that you're able to be with me today. We're going to continue the conversation regarding pride. And the opposite of pride is, is actually humility. And before we get into it, I'll do a quick recap of what we talked about in regards to Pride in the previous podcast. Pride is really keeping you as the center of every major impactful thing that has taken place. And because of your contribution and because of your presence, you think that you are in control of your life. And I gave a couple of examples of, particularly from the Bible, but also from personal life and experience of how pride has done the exact opposite of what we have intended to do. And God deals with that. We talked about it in proverbs 1618. It says, pride comes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.
[00:01:45] And again, it's one of the most challenging things to consider, because pride is one of the sneaky things. It could be. It could be masquerading as self confidence, or it could be masquerading as being, quote unquote lowly, where you have withdrawn yourself in your expertise and not given what you have as a way to serve other people. You've kept yourself isolated. Therefore, your experiences, understanding, knowledge and wisdom that you have gained is kept for yourself, not to be of service to other people. So that is a quick, quick synopsis of the last podcast. But I do want to talk about humility. I'm going to start with a personal story in regards to humility in my football career. There's ways that individuals have in many cases been this is a lesson in pride and humility, which I probably should have started with in the last part, but I'll just talk about it now. One of the biggest challenges I had when I was playing football in college is pride.
[00:03:06] And one of the hardest things, and actually one of the easier things that pride actually does is it actually isolates you from other people. It basically says you don't need anyone pride you in some way, shape or form you think that you are, you don't need anyone. You don't need any relationships, you don't need any friendships. You just create a sense, I'm on my own, I don't need anyone, and no one will really need me. But it's me against everyone. And I had two instances of this in my career and in my time in college.
[00:03:53] One was I went on my trip to visit the University of Miami. Not Ohio, not Florida, but remind me of Ohio. And one of the things that the strength and conditioning coach told me at the time was that I needed in order to earn my scholarship because I was a preferred walk on.
[00:04:21] I eventually gained it, but one of the things he said was that you need to have a chip on your shoulder.
[00:04:26] And I took that as no one's my friend.
[00:04:32] I need to come in and basically do the work without having anyone around me because it's me versus them.
[00:04:43] And it came off as being a bit egotistical because when you're new, you don't know anything. You have an idea. But the reality is, you know, I've never been in college. I had never played at that speed. Or, you know, again, I'm 1819 years old, and my teammates, at least the ones that are graduating, are 22, 23 years old, getting ready to go into professional career or the NFL in some cases.
[00:05:23] And one of the big things I didn't realize was that to think that I didn't need anyone to coach me or to pull me off to the side and say, hey, man, look, there's some things you want to learn before you get out here. I wasn't really hearing it, and that was I learned a hard. I learned the hard way through some conditioning activity. And the other part of it is that I didn't actually. This is a byproduct of not having humility.
[00:06:00] I missed out on a lot of friendships. I got some great, amazing friends. Let's not get it twisted. I have incredible, incredible relationships. But the thing that I did not do is I did not really open myself up to the opportunities of relationships that were in front of me because I felt that because we were competing for a particular position and opportunity, that it actually created that we couldn't be friends, that we could not be acquaintances, or we couldn't develop into something that get garnered mutual respect or have a conversation outside of the weight room, the practice field, or the film room. It. I never really took the opportunity to get to know folks outside of the those occupations, or I would say occupation, but outside of those areas that we had in common.
[00:07:10] And I never spent additional time until the end of my career and the end of my college time. Did I really start to spend time with them and say, like, man, I wish I had spent more time with them, only had a year left or six or seven months. Some of them are graduating in the. In the winter time and some in the fall. And I realized I was like, man, I missed out on opportunities because I was just so self absorbed in what I wanted. And I, again, did we have end up having probably good relationships. Yeah. Like, you know, we could call them or we can connect and, you know, have some good moments and conversations. However, the depth of those conversations I got, I missed out on because I was not willing to humble myself and be like, you know what? I'm playing my role. I'm playing in my position.
[00:08:10] I'm doing the best I can. If the person's better than me, then they're better than me. And that's okay.
[00:08:17] And that's okay. But pride will create and actually tell you that you don't need anyone. And you can do it yourself, and you can create your own opportunities, and you can manage all the expectations and you can do anything without anyone. You can be who you'd like to be, and you don't need anyone's help to give you the opportunity. And those were things that, for good reason, disqualified me from being somebody's friend and garnering relationship. So I'm going to talk about this in the context of scripture, because I think it's super important, because you really cannot be elevated to any level of leadership, any level of stewardship, if you are not willing to be humble.
[00:09:20] And it is difficult for us, particularly those who are in levels of competition or want better out of their lives, because we feel like there is.
[00:09:32] There isn't enough available, which is a scarcity mindset. And when scarcity mindset comes in, you end up becoming like Katniss and all the competitors, competitors in the hunger games, there's only so much that is available and so many people that can survive. So you end up utilizing, weaponizing your giftings, your skill sets, even some relationships, to get positioned to protect yourself. And that doesn't help anybody. It causes more damage than anything. And in the Bible, and this is. Let me talk about pride one more time and then I'll get into humility a bit. Pride is actually probably one of the sneakiest sins that we get into, because we can quickly think that we had. We know enough information, or we've had enough experiences, or we lived long enough, or whatever the case is, we know enough that it can really undertake us and take our legs out. Because God's response to pride, humbling.
[00:10:46] And in all cases, and I would say in many cases, humility is not something that God. We want God to implement, because when God decides to humble you, it is. Or when life circumstances decide to humble you, you can say life circumstances or God orchestrated incidents that humble you, they actually are much more painful than we anticipate.
[00:11:21] So I would say in some of my study here, humility is spoken about 80 to 90 times in the Bible, specifically the word humble, or humility from the Old and the New Testament combined, one in the Hebrew, one in the Greek, both ways in the text. And the challenge about it is in the context of it. Every time humility is talked about, it is talked about. Humbling yourself.
[00:11:58] Give me. I'm going to give you a couple ones. One of the noted ones is James, chapter four, verse ten. It says this, humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you.
[00:12:09] It says you. I mean, if we're going to go grammatically here, the subject is you. The verb is humble yourself before the Lord and he will exalt you. Another one that says, this is one, Peter, five and six is humble yourselves. If I use the King James version, it says, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God that in due season he will exalt you. Or in this version, humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God. God, so that in proper time he may exalt you. The fear of the Lord is instruction in wisdom, and humility comes before honor. That's proverbs 1533, proverbs 1812. Before destruction, a man's heart is haughty, but humility comes before honor. There's so many scriptures in here.
[00:13:04] Another one in proverbs, proverbs 29 23, says, one's pride will bring him low, but he who is lowly in spirit will obtain honor. I mean, there's so many scriptures in here that talks about humbling yourself, and humility is something that is self induced.
[00:13:29] You have to have the self awareness to know that you don't know everything, and it is not your responsibility or capability to do everything.
[00:13:47] There are areas in, um. I would say, in business that I've experienced, especially when it comes to growing in a business, most of the time, people think that they can grow because they decide to do more. Now, granted, I recognize taking initiative is extremely important. However, there is a level of overreaching your capability because you think you can do it and you don't need anyone. Yeah, sometimes early on, you have to. But as you start to grow, your ability to do everything actually starts to diminish, and you start finding people that have expertise in specific areas, and because they have that area, they may be better than you in specific areas. It actually relinquishes the pressure off of you. But if you have a sense of pride about you, you will end up holding on to something that you should be letting go of. And if you hold on to it too long, you can essentially disqualify yourself, because now that season that you are in is no longer available for you to hold on to. So you could be like one of those people that, again, I'm one of those folks, too. But like, you look back at what you used to do when you were, when you were growing up or when you were, you know, 15 pounds smaller or whatever, you know, your back in the day, quote unquote, situation is you end up going back to those areas. Why? Because they feel like a moment when you are in control and it gave you a boost of ego. It made you feel good. You felt as if you were in the best moments of your life, and actually you probably were.
[00:15:45] But were they fruitful?
[00:15:48] What did they lead to? Were you in a position of a learner? Were you willing to begin all over again? Were you willing to say and sit down and be like, you know what?
[00:16:01] All right, I'll sit down and I'll learn and I'll deal and I'll report to such and such? It's hard, man. Like, humility is a very, very challenging circumstance, especially when you are used to performing at a high level. And you've taken a lot of pride in doing what you do and doing it well. And being able to let it go so that you can obtain something different is extremely different, difficult and different for many of us.
[00:16:40] There is a proverb. I'm trying to remember it off the top of my head. I'll put it in the show notes. But it is best to be asked to be called up to a position of honor than it is to be asked to sit down from that place of honor. And you think of it. I like to think of it as someone who, if you're going to like a front row game and you have court side seats and there isn't, you just happen to go down there and there isn't enough seats, or you're sitting in someone's seat that's always been designated and instead of, you know, staying there, you ask, like, you know, the security will come up and, you know, you might have seen these things on not tick tock, but Facebook circumstances. I don't know, Facebook clips or whatever they call them, but when somebody is asked to move or they have to move their seat, back because they're being belligerent or they're not listening to the ref, or they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing. That's embarrassing, but usually that's pride being displayed. So in order to actually be dealt with, the individual security guard, whatever the case is, has to impose humility on that individual via their authority, whether it be their strength, their size, their position in the organization, whatever it may be of the person's pride is then superseded by the authority of which those individuals are operating in, and they either get their seat moved or they get kicked out of the venue.
[00:18:32] Something around those lines. So it's best for that individual to be saying, like, yeah, I was belligerent. I shouldn't have done that, and then take themselves off. It makes less of a scene. But pride causes individuals to fight for something that they do not have. The title, the entitlement to fight for.
[00:18:58] It's a losing game every time. And I gave examples of individuals and kings in the Bible who have, were anchored in pride and ended up losing their life, their position, the honor that they've had, and eventually the kingdom, because they were not willing to be humble.
[00:19:16] The best example of humility is Jesus.
[00:19:20] He is probably, and it is the best example of leadership that we find, uh, period, in any sacred text. And reason I'm bringing that up is, is he always, even though he was all knowing, he was always acting like I was saying, act like he didn't know, but he was always willing to listen.
[00:19:49] And you never heard him say, like, I know that, you know, I'm. I'm Jesus. Who do you think I am? He. He mentioned that in the sense of knowing who he is and knowing who he was and his role in things, but never in a sense that you came to him to glorify him, but his role was really to glorify the father. So he understood his role. And part of humility is understanding that your role is important, but recognizing that your role isn't everything, that at some point, other folks are going to have more access, that other folks are going to take different mantles, that you should be interdependent, not in, not necessarily independent, but working with individuals. Why? Because you don't have everything they have, and they don't have every skill set and gifting that you have. Therefore, God made us in such a way that he distributed gifts that we will need each other at some point.
[00:21:00] And if you're not humble enough to acknowledge that you don't have the skill to do everything, man, you'll be missing out. You'll be living a lonely life.
[00:21:11] And to be transparent, I was living a lonely life for a while.
[00:21:18] And what it causes you as an individual when it comes to humility is it causes you to open up and be vulnerable and transparent.
[00:21:31] Because if you really think that folks like being around a person who knows it all and who is, quote unquote, in control of themselves and their circumstances at all times, you got another thing coming. No one wants to be around that, that not everyone is strong all the time, and people can sniff that out a mile away.
[00:21:55] Most people relate to their, each other's weaknesses than to each other's strengths. Why is that? Because your strength is different than mine.
[00:22:07] I have a gift to speak. You might have a gift to do math or, or whatever the case is, I don't have that particular gift, but there are gifts that are your strengths, and I just can't relate to them. But from a human standpoint, if I talk about sadness, if I talk about anguish, if I talk about anger, if I talk about frustration, if I talk about fear, those are common circumstances that are not unique to the human experience.
[00:22:41] They're common and they're the things that we easily can relate to when it comes to relationship and relating.
[00:22:48] But if you're not willing to allow yourself one to feel those things, but to be transparent enough to even an individual to say, man, this is scary, this is.
[00:23:02] I'm terrified.
[00:23:04] To not acknowledge those feelings is pride in itself.
[00:23:09] And you just can't be connected to anyone.
[00:23:15] You know. In the next podcast, we'll have a couple conversations and talks about where things are when it comes to transparency and vulnerability.
[00:23:27] But it's hard to open yourself up to a level of transparency that makes you feel as if you're not in control.
[00:23:46] As much as everyone wants control, it's a fallacy. It doesn't exist.
[00:23:53] It is just our angst to control an outcome that is in operation. And God doesn't work like that. God controls outcomes. We don't. We're not that good.
[00:24:06] But yet again, that in itself is a lesson in humility.
[00:24:13] So I would challenge you to take some time in the next week or so to self examine some areas that you are not willing to let go and learn.
[00:24:26] If someone has brought a new perspective in, if you can't even accept the fact that you might be wrong about something, or if you can't accept the new perspective of the same thing, or the other side of the same coin, if you will, you.
[00:24:46] It would be. It would behoove you to take some time to self reflect that there might be other ways to do this to whether it be working a job, whether it is to relating to your spouse, whether it's relating to your kids, or is it relating to yourself.
[00:25:06] There's so many things that if we approach it with a level of humility, you would really experience quite the shift in your life, and you would be open to new opportunities, to new relationships, into new avenues that you have yet to explore. So that concludes humility. It's, uh.
[00:25:32] It's not fun to talk about, but it's necessary, because if you don't have humility, the life that you'll live is a closed one.
[00:25:45] And I don't want that for you, and you shouldn't want that for yourself. So, anyway, we'll catch you in the next pod. Peace.
