The Value of Humility.

I've come to this thought because of a conversation I've had recently with a friend.

The value of Humility is so extraordinary.  I almost never hear humility talked about as a primary attribute.  There's usually a glossing over of it, but I feel that it deserves a bigger spotlight than it has, if it even does.

The meaning of humility is as follows:
"A modest or low view one's own importance; humbleness."
This short little meaning has so much power. 

These are just my opinions of course, but I've come to them from watching people carefully and constantly thinking about people's behaviors and the ways I apply it to my own life.

This goes in hand with my older post of "The importance of Self-Reflection and Self-Correction."  If we think deeply about it, Humility opens the door to growth.  Be it mentally, spiritually, academically and even physically.  Because it lays the foundation for a certain type of mindset, the mindset to be open to learn.  The trait that typically leads to the exact opposite is Pride.  The more proud we are of ourselves, the less open we will be to growth.

If we look at children.  Besides the obviousness of their bodies and brains still in the phases of construction, the reason they learn so quickly is because they don't have pride.  So they learn at rapid pace from anyone or anything they encounter.  As they get older, they become more proud in their abilities and then they feel they don't need to learn anymore.  We see this typically in people who responds with "Yeah I know that!" whenever we tell them anything. 

For someone who has humility in knowledge, they'll take in, absorb and process the information and will find a place to apply it in their lives or discard some of it if they already have something similar in place.  If they're proud in their knowledge and with the pride comes the confidence they're correct, they don't typically take in new information unless the source is credible.  This means the source is usually someone who has some kind of authority.  If the information is coming from a source that doesn't seem credible, they usually reject it outright and not even bother to process it.  This isn't good.  Just because someone has a credible background, it doesn't mean they understand anything of what they are saying.  On the other hand, someone proud may overlook information from someone who may be obscure, but is a treasure chest of fabulous and in-depth knowledge.  

Besides the personal growth potential we'd have access to, humility also allows us to interact with people in a much more pleasant way.  This is because we don't feel full of ourselves when we walk around and feel "YOU need to make way for ME, because I do whatever it is I do." We'd never look down at other people because we'd understand that they may have some area or ability that is above our own.  We'd understand that no matter how good and efficient we become, there's always someone better, so we can acknowledge other people's ability and encourage and support them.  We can understand that because there's people doing more and better than us, that we don't deserve to have what they have, that we can be happy with what we have because we achieved it through our own abilities.  We can accept where we are in life and not feel jealous about other people's life.

Humility opens up all of these doors.  Whether we choose to use this skeleton key to life and walk through those doors on a path to better enlightenment is up to us.  The great thing is this key is unbreakable and can be reused throughout our lifetime.