__Ezra Taft Benson
RYAN WAS AN ACCOMPLISHED PERSON who worked for a Fortune 500 company. Young and energetic, he had climbed the corporate ladder quickly. After doing well with a few assignments in Japan and Australia, he was a rising commodity in his field. There were several reasons for his success, but in talking to him one day I saw one of the main ones.
I had heard the story of how in a short amount of time he took an almost non-existent laundry soap business in China to one with sales of almost a billion dollars. It is an awesome accomplishment. Think about going into a country where you have never been, where you do not know the language, where you have no friends or support, and achieving such spectacular success. How do you do that?
I put that question to my friend. “What are the steps?” I asked. “How did you make your business grow so spectacularly?” I did not expect the answer he gave, but after he explained it, I experienced another déjà vu moment.
“I got a job on a rice farm,” he said.
“What?” I asked, a little confused. “That is how I did it,” he said.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I was asking how you built the laundry detergent business into a billion-dollar enterprise. What does that have to do with rice?” I thought he had not really understood what I was asking.
“Well, I thought that if I went to work on a rice farm and worked with the people day to day, I would learn how they used their soap,” he said. “Then I could begin to figure out what to do to build the business.”
“What do you mean, ‘use their soap?’” I asked. What could he possibly need to learn about using soap? He was already known as something of a soap expert who had built similar businesses in other countries. “Don’t you just add water and use it?”
“Well, in each new country you always have new questions to ask about how they use the product, such as, do they carry it with them? How many times a day or week do they use it? Where do they store it? What size makes the best sense? Do they tell each other about it? Are they happy with it? I realized that I knew very little about how the Chinese used the product, so I figured that in order to sell it to them, I had better understand them first.”
“But how did that help? Wasn’t soap in China about the same as soap everywhere else? How did working with them result in the monster sales?” I asked.
“Here is how,” he replied. “I learned that all the workers on the rice farms basically went to one spot to wash their clothes. They had to make a special trip from their homes to get to this certain place. It was a real hassle. For me the key was the reason why everyone made the inconvenient journey to this one spot. It turns out that the water in Chinese homes was very hard almost everywhere, but there were a few special places where they could go and find softer water. The softer water would cause the detergent to create more suds, which would result in better cleaning and use less soap as well. Their entire habits were dictated by the prevalence of hard water. It ruled their cleaning lives.”
“So, how did that knowledge create sales for you?” I asked. “You could not solve the water problem.”
“Actually I did,” he said, “though I didn’t change the water. What I did was take that information back into the research department and we developed a formula that made the detergent create just as many suds with hard water as it did with soft. So, for the first time, they could do their wash at home. It was a revolution of sorts. Then we created some ads that showed all those bubbles using the water within their homes, and we were off. Sales skyrocketed to $800 million,” he said.
And that explains how the way to sell soap in China is to work on a rice farm. Or does it? Was working on a rice farm what did it? You could say it was, but that is not the real answer.
The real answer is the one to a more important question: What was it that created the idea to work on a rice farm? What caused my friend to do that? The answer: humility.
It was humility that made a billion dollars, not soap or rice. This simple but profound quality of déjà vu people, the eighth of the Nine Things, helps them succeed in both love and accomplishment.
We’ve seen that we must dig up and invest our talents, and move past the negative. We know we must make decisions based on their effects, and always ask how to improve a situation whether or not it’s our responsibility. We achieve our goals through small steps, and protect the good with a healthy hatred. Now for Principle Eight and its enormous implications.
The Need To Be Greater Than We Are
What does humility have to do with Ryan’s story? We will understand the answer to that question after we first explore why the connection of humility to any real success is not always so obvious. Often we miss the ways that humility contributes to success in work and relationships.
Part of the reason for this is that our thinking is sometimes a little fuzzy about what it means to be humble. Have you ever thought about how to define humility? What comes to mind? Self-effacing, not taking credit, shying away from attention, non assuming, and other terms are often used. There is truth to all of them.
Webster gives these definitions for the word humble: 1: not proud or haughty : not arrogant or assertive; 2 : reflecting, expressing, or offered in a spirit of deference or submission (a humble apology); 3 a: ranking low in a hierarchy or scale : INSIGNIFICANT, UNPRETENTIOUS; b : not costly or luxurious (a humble contraption).
Through these definitions and others we can get a general feel for what it means to be humble, as opposed to proud. And most people can “smell” true humility as well as the stench of arrogance or pride that is its opposite. We know it when we see it.
But how do we understand humility in ways that we can put into practice? Ways that bring about fruit in our lives? How does the successful déjà vu person show humility? Certainly through not being haughty or arrogant, as the definition affirms. To defer to others is a sign of humility, and to assume a low ranking instead of having to be on top are all-important indicators, as we shall see.
There are other ways of demonstrating Principle Eight as well, and in this chapter we shall look at those and see how they affect the déjà vu person’s ability to do well in life—even to sell soap. But one simple, guiding principle that encompasses many of the others is this:
Humility is not having a need to be more than you are.
When I think of how the déjà vu person performs in the arena of humility, that is a pretty good description—to just be who he or she really is, a human being like everyone else, avoiding the need to be more than that.
It was that quality that sold soap in China. It was humility that led my friend to get a job on a rice farm. He avoided the pride and arrogance that others might have exhibited, thinking they already knew how to sell laundry soap in China. It would have been easy for him to assume that position, especially since he had been so successful elsewhere. He could have thought that there was nothing more he needed to learn. His mantra could have been, Get out of the way. Here I come. But instead, Ryan assumed that he did not know it all, and like other humans, had something to learn in each new situation.
Driven by his humility, he did not make himself out to be “more than he was.” Nor did he have to appear that way to others. The truth was that he did not know a lot about China, so he let that truth be who he was. Pride would have assumed or acted like he did know, but not the humility that allows a déjà vu person to be what he really is in such a situation: ignorant. That was the truth, and owning it gave him the edge over the other companies who thought they knew but did not.
See the difference? The competition did not know how to sell soap in China either. Ryan and the other guys actually were on even ground there. No one had an advantage. The difference was that humility caused Ryan to see that he did not know; pride caused his competitors to assume they knew more than they did. Humility always wins. It is the winner’s advantage.
Think of people you have worked with who came into the company with a know-it-all attitude. Are they still there? Often not. Were they liked? Probably not. What was it like to talk to them? Did you feel listened to? Understood? Valued? Probably not. Did you want to go to the mat and sacrifice for them? Hardly. The arrogant ones who think they know before they know are always tough to deal with. And though they might appear successful for a short time, they ultimately fail to be successful because they never learn what they do not know, and they fail at relationships because they never learn that people do not like them before it is too late.
Just as humility sells soap, it can also build success in all areas of your life. Let’s look at some of the important ways that humility contributes to success, and how lacking it can guarantee failure.
Humility Identifies With Others
It was a moment I will never forget. I was in the midst of one of the most difficult trials of my business life. I had hired a person to manage a company I owned which had a lot of promise, great assets, and many things that pointed toward success. I had a substantial investment in it, and thus a lot at risk. The person I hired was competent, I thought, and able to make it work.
For several months I had been getting very good reports from him. The returns were going to be excellent, and I was optimistic about the future. But then it all broke loose. A crisis revealed that the forecasts I had been getting were nowhere close to the whole picture. Not only would we fail to get the returns that were promised, we were in substantial financial trouble with payables and debt my manager had accrued far beyond anything I had been told.
He had misled me about the past few months, but that was not the worst of it: the future looked bleak as well. Most of the future business that he had claimed to have under contract was not a reality, and in fact, we had very little booked at all. At the same time, he had increased overhead by many multiples, and cash was draining like water though a sieve. I had no clue as to what I was going to do.
At that moment I got the last call I would have wanted, but the one I needed most. I was on my patio praying about the crisis and asking God for guidance when one of my business mentors and heroes in life called. He was a true déjà vu person. He had amassed many successes in his business career, accomplishing outstanding feats in his fields.
So here I was in the midst of my own failure, getting a call from someone I saw as always succeeding. As a result, I was a little embarrassed for him to know about the mess I had allowed myself to get into. I remember wishing that one of my less successful friends had called at that moment instead of one of my highest achieving ones! But here he was.
He asked me how things were going, and I told him the whole sad story. I did not hold hack any of the gory details, even though being real and authentic at that moment was hard. Such openness was a value we enjoyed in our friendship: total honesty and full disclosure. I told him the whole thing, how bad it was, how out of touch I had been with how things actually were, and how I had absolutely no clue about what I was going to do.
When I finished, there was a long silence. He did not say anything, and I pictured him on the other end thinking, What an idiot. I can’t believe I have given time and guidance to this guy. What a waste! I was waiting for him to say something like, “Well, Einstein, you created this mess, now I guess you have to live with it. But it was pretty stupid to let it get to this point without being more on top of it.”
But that is not what he finally said. What he did say totally changed the whole picture for me and played a big part in my being able to turn the situation around.
“Well,” he began, “we’ve all been there.”
What? What did he say? Who is “we”? Certainly he has never done anything this stupid. What was he talking about? “What do you mean?” I asked.
“Just that,” he replied. “We, including myself, have all been where you are. Anyone who builds something gets duped or fooled or surprised, at least once. It happens. And none of us ever sails through without losses and having things go really bad. By ‘we’ I mean any of us who try to step out and do things in business. We have all had this experience where we do not know the next step or how to get out of it. But you’ll figure it out. I am confident of that,” he explained. “In fact, this is when you are at your best.”
At that moment something changed inside me. I knew that I was going to turn this thing around and make it work. I was no smarter after that phone call, and I had no more answers than before. But knowing that this is a part of the path of success, and that even very successful people go through loss, failure, and crises, gave me courage and hope that I had not had before.
God had answered my prayer for guidance in a way that I never would have foreseen by giving me a moment with a déjà vu friend who showed me that loss and failure are just parts of the path. I was not as stupid as I thought I was, and my crisis was merely a problem to be solved. I could do that. I did not know how, but here is the point: as long as I knew that my failures and losses, my mistakes and missteps, did not mean that I was an incompetent idiot, I could learn from them, unite them with my strengths, and make it all work out.
And that was the way of this déjà vu person. His humility was demonstrated in this fact: even though he was enormously successful, he accepted his own failures and mistakes, and even saw them as part of the process itself He saw those occurrences as natural. “We’ve all been there,” he said. No exceptions, including himself and even those who are more successful. This is an important quality of déjà vu people: they are not surprised that they make mistakes, and as a result, they can identify with others who do, give to them, and not judge them or wrongly judge themselves.
Identifying with other normal humans who fail leads to a number of success patterns, as we shall continue to see. The first two of these are huge factors in achieving success:
1. Successful people show kindness, understanding, and help to others who fail.
2. Successful people are not derailed by their own failures; they accept them as a normal part of the process.
The first certainly is an incredible gift to others. Over and over I have seen how déjà vu people extend themselves to serve others. They always tend to be givers of themselves. Truly successful people are givers, period. Success and giving are synonyms in many ways. Non-givers end up losing their success, or it caves in on itself as they inadvertently remove themselves from the larger picture of humanity. Self-serving success always implodes. Self-centered lives always create self-destructing black holes. Always.
But beyond the obvious gift that humble givers are to others, they also develop a lot of relational equity over time. They have extended themselves to understand and reach out to others, and as a result they are highly appreciated and loved. They create true networks of care in their lives. They experience high quality relationships as a result of their high quality of giving and understanding. People appreciate them, and their lives are full of love, both in the workplace and personally. The people they have identified with and helped are grateful.
And like everything else good and lasting, their giving is pure. It is pure because they do not give to get love or appreciation. They give freely because they truly do identify with others. And because they give freely, not to get anything in return, they are truly appreciated and do get a lot in return. People do not want to repay kindness that demands repayment, since it is not really kindness at all. But déjà vu people give themselves, expecting nothing in return, and for that they receive a lot.
The big result is that they are deeply loved and never alone in the world. And there is no higher success than that—to have deep, quality friends over time, friends that you are there for and who are there for you. This is success, and it also leads to other success, as you will always need the support of other people to accomplish whatever you do in life.
The second point mentioned earlier is huge for success as well. People who win in life do not condemn themselves for failure; they accept it. They learn from it. Failure motivates them to do better. They do not beat themselves up for it, and they do not begin to believe that they cannot accomplish something just because they failed. Because they are humble and identify with the human race that makes mistakes and fails, they see failure as normal. They expect it to come, so they are not surprised when it does. They use it and do not feel disqualified because of it. It is a paradox of monumental proportions.
Self-confidence does not come from seeing oneself as strong, without flaws or above making mistakes. Self-confidence and belief in yourself comes from accepting flaws and mistakes and realizing that you can go forward and grow past them, and that you can learn from them. You realize that your failure of the moment does not mean anything in terms of your ability to finally “make it.”
So, the déjà vu person is not above the rest of the human race. He or she is firmly identified with it. The roots of the word humility itself tells us something about these people. It comes from the root word humus, meaning “earth,” and also from a Greek word that means “on the ground.” The humble person has his feet on solid ground, not in la-la land. He is firmly planted in reality, and that reality includes his knowledge that he is a down-to-earth, gifted, but imperfect person just like everyone else. It is not lonely at the top if the top is on the bottom. There is a lot of good company to be had there—like the rest of the human race. The successful person has no need to be more than who he truly is. That is humility.
The Biggest Sickness Of All
I was once a consultant for the leadership team of a high-tech company which was in the process of selecting a new president. The founder had retired and it was time to find the successor. The search firm had narrowed the field down to a few candidates, and one in particular was the favorite of the founder and most of the board of directors. A meeting was set up in which the board, the founder, and the consultants would all interview him together.
We asked him a series of questions about such things as his vision, his plan for growth, his leadership style, how he would handle the markets. We also asked him about his former company, his performance there, why he had left, and other things related to his history. As he answered, I noticed a pattern, which began to give me a negative feeling.
The pattern was that everything he said seemed to place himself in a favorable light, sometimes even by putting others in a not so favorable light. He was looking better and better as he talked about himself and his performance. It was all good.
The feeling that I was getting slimed in some way began to grow. He was just so slick that I felt like I was in a room full of grease. It was a yucky feeling, and at the same time, a hollow feeling. It did not have that sense of fullness that one feels in the presence of a real person. I felt like I was listening to a snake-oil salesman.
He was nice enough—very gracious and not saying anything offensive. Why was I getting such a negative impression? Then I put the two factors together. The image he was painting of being without flaws and my own feeling of being slimed do indeed go together. That image is always a lie. We were being lied to in a very nice way. So I decided that I would give him an opportunity to correct my negative impression.
“I have a question,” I said.
“Sure,” he responded, smiling. I could feel his perfect answer coming.
“What were the biggest mistakes you made in the last company you led, and what are your biggest weaknesses? How do you think those weaknesses will affect the work here in this company, and how will you deal with them?”
The silence was deafening. No response. He just looked at me. He did not even look around the room. Then he said, “Well, I don’t really remember any big mistakes that I made. The performance of the company, the stock price, all of it added up to a pretty good picture. I think things were really a big win there.”
“Okay,” I said, “I’ve seen the numbers. But what about you personally? How would you describe your greatest weaknesses and how they would affect us? And what would you be doing about them?”
Again he was silent for a moment, but then he spoke. “Actually, as I think about it, my greatest weakness is that I tend to push for the goal pretty hard, and come up with more visions and plans than some of the team members can keep up with. I run ahead of them a little too often.”
I felt slimed one more time. I had asked for a weakness, and he had told me how creative, visionary, and strong he was. Too strong for others. I had to respond. “So your greatest weakness is that your strengths are so good?”
He seemed relieved that I had finally understood. “Yes,” he said. “That is it. I go at such a fast pace that sometimes I can leave others behind.”
“So that is your weakness,” I said. “A strength.”
“Yep,” he said. “That is the big one.”
The board finished with a few other questions and then excused him from the room. Several began to speak. “Great! Let’s hire him.” “Awesome!” “Really impressive. He is exactly what this company needs.” “Very strong leader.”
Finally I could not remain silent any longer. “I understand that you all really like him. But let me tell you something. This is a guy who thinks he is pretty much flawless and wants others to think that as well. He does not even know his own weaknesses. He thinks he has never failed. And I do not want him to learn about failure here, not as the CEO. This is a big job, and you want someone who has already done some failing before they get here. His fall is not going to be pretty when it occurs, because he doesn’t know how to deal with failure. He thinks he is above it,” I said. “Get me a smart guy who is also smart enough to know where he is not so smart. If you hire this candidate, you are taking a huge risk.”
People who think they have it all together are infected with a terrible sickness, and they do not even know it. They flatter themselves, as David said, too much to see where they miss the mark (Psalm 36:2). They are not wise in other areas either, because their wish to be seen as perfect and without flaw keeps them from seeing other realities outside themselves as well. Our CEO candidate was not being real, and that kind of denial and belief that one is all good is the worst sickness of all. “Do not do it; you will be sorry,” I urged the board. “And put me on record as standing by that.”
The company leaders did not like what I said and went on to hire him, with substantial stock options and other perks to get his greatness into the camp. A year and a half later they were buying their own stock back and trying to dig themselves out of the mess that he had created. He had deceived them by painting a better picture of the company than was real, and one that he actually probably believed. I do not think he lied, but he was out of touch with important realities because of his own overestimation of himself. In the end, both he and the company paid the price for his lack of humility. He paid by having his failure exposed, and the company paid by going through a takeover by a smarter group. Ugh. Big price to pay for wanting to believe in prideful perfection.
Déjà vu people know their weaknesses. They know where they are not good. They see where they have done it wrong, and they admit those things. They do not have the sickness of trying to “preserve the good self,” as psychologists sometimes put it. They do not try to preserve a view that they are all good, either in their own minds or in the eyes of others, because they do not have such a view. Nor do they desire that others have that view of them.
Regarding their imperfections, these people do at least two things very well that build success, foster good relationships, and encourage learning, growth, and wisdom:
1. They admit it quickly when they are wrong.
2. They receive correction and confrontation from others well.
The first quality aids in learning and is always correlated with wisdom. We cannot grow and learn if we cannot admit our mistakes. How can we get better if we do not think anything is wrong? To see our own faults is a key to growing in wisdom and learning how to make things work.
Closely related to admitting our own mistakes is responding constructively when the news of our imperfections comes from others. The way of the déjà vu person is to receive correction as a gift, and not to be defensive. Once when I was leading a retreat of leaders, an executive named Adam had just outlined his current situation to the others in the group. Then one of them asked him, “Would you like some feedback?” We could all tell from his expression that what he had to say would not be complimentary. He had seen something in Adam’s life that needed some input or correction.
Adam’s response was outstanding: “Of course, give me a gift.” Though he did not know the exact nature of what was coming, he was pretty sure that it was going to be some sort of criticism, though given in a positive spirit. He welcomed it. He saw that getting corrected or having his faults pointed out by someone wise was a gift indeed.
That is a consistent mark of wise déjà vu people. They are not defensive to feedback. Defensiveness is the mark of a fool, as you certainly know by experience if you have ever given feedback to a defensive person. It is a maddening experience. Here is how Solomon saw it:
Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult; whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse.
—Proverbs 9:7
A mocker resents correction; he will not consult the wise.
— Proverbs 15:12
What a disheartening experience to endure in any kind of relationship! You give valuable feedback, and as a result you get insulted. Something that should be received gratefully is seen instead as a negative, and you get punished for offering it. You reap a storm of resentfulness for just being honest.
Such a prideful spirit that resists correction makes for bad relationships. And past that, it makes for a lack of success in the life of the defensive person. He is unable to grow and get past failure because he is closed off to the information that would help him.
Melissa experienced this kind of response with Tom. She loved him, but he would not listen to her feedback about how some of his behavior affected her. When she tried to tell him, he would get angry and feel victimized by the feedback. He could not see what was staring him in the face—a wife who genuinely wanted to be closer to him. His refusal to listen to her was getting in the way.
I saw this couple together and asked Melissa to tell Tom what was wrong in their relationship. She said, “Tom, I love you and I want us to be close. But when I ask you to help me with the kids at night, and you get angry at me, it hurts. It makes me feel alone. And then later when you want sex, I do not feel close to you at that moment. I try to talk, but you won’t listen.”
“See what she does?” Tom said to me in exasperation. “She is on my case about everything. It doesn’t matter what I do, she always wants me to do something different!”
“I don’t hear that, Tom,” I said. “I hear her telling you how to get close to her.”
“I try to get close to her,” he said, “but she always finds something wrong.”
“No I don’t!” she cried. “I just need for you to understand what it is like with the kids all day and that I need some help. I need for you to share the parenting role with me when you are home.”
“So you’re saying I’m a lousy parent?” he responded. “See, Dr. Cloud, that is what I was just telling you. She is always saying that I can’t do anything right!”
I wanted to try to clear up the problem and get him to hear, because it would change their lives. And eventually I would. But at the moment, all I could do was sigh. It was depressing. No, he was depressing. Unlike a déjà vu person, he could not take feedback. He resented it. He fought to hold on to the “good self,” which made him unable to hear from her what he needed to learn in order to restore their relationship. If ever he were going to succeed, he would have to learn a new response to constructive criticism. He would have to stop feeling victimized when someone gave him feedback or correction.
Closely related is another kind of defensiveness in which some people are offended when they are questioned or critiqued. Once I worked with a man who was a good person, effective at his job, but had a lot of relational discord in his life. When discussing the people he was having difficulty with, he always seemed to talk about their shortcomings and how they were failing in the relationship. He said little or nothing about what he was doing wrong or what he could do better. He painted a picture of himself as a victim of the unfair or unloving people in his life, both on the job and in his personal life.
One day some things surfaced and I found out he had been less than straightforward with me. He had not overtly lied, but he had purposefully allowed a particular deception to go on that was hurtful to me. Valuing our working relationship, I went and told him that I felt a little deceived by what he had done. I was hoping that he could see the problem and understand it from my perspective so that it would not happen again. That is not the response I got.
“I have to tell you I really take offense that you would feel that way!” he bristled.
“Excuse me?” I said.
“I am insulted and offended that you would even hint that I have done anything deceitful,” he said.
“Well, I am sorry that you feel offended,” I said. “Why would you be offended by something that hurt me? The injury here is on my side.” He had somehow managed to blind himself to the fact that he was the offending party, and had suddenly assumed the role of the victim instead of the offender. That is a common paradox with those who will not accept feedback. They hurt others and then feel like they are the injured party.
“I find it extremely offensive that you would feel that way,” he said. Then he went on to tell me how right and just he was, and that I had no business feeling the way I did.
I walked away sad. I knew that deeper trust between us was not possible, as he was not willing to even consider how his behavior had left me feeling deceived. He was immediately invested in “preserving the good self,” and not invested in how his behavior had affected me or our relationship. It was sad.
Then I thought about all the people that he had griped about in other relationships and wondered if they had behaved as badly as he had described. Had he ignored his own culpability in all of those situations as well? Seems possible. I felt for him, because until he could give up his defensiveness and his investment in being “good,” there was not a lot of hope for deep and true success in his life. He was always going to hit a ceiling until he figured that out.
Later I had another meeting with a woman who had also done something that I felt could have been handled better. (It was a bad day!) I told her my perception of what she did and explained why it was troublesome to me. I said that I wanted to be able to trust her, but what she had done was getting in the way. Her response was that of a déjà vu person.
“Oh, my... I am so sorry. I can see that now,” she said. “I did not realize how what I did would hurt you. I never want to do anything to undermine your trust in me. Please forgive me. Tell me more about how my action appeared to you and how it affected you.”
I could feel the relational barriers coming down and trust coming back. She was truly more concerned about the effect on our working relationship than about being “right” or looking like she was “good.” As a result, she became both right and good in my eyes. I knew that we would work it out. We discussed the matter frankly and sensitively, each coming to understand the perspective of the other. She understood my feelings and resolved that such an incident would never happen again. I totally trust that we will do fine from here on.
I reflected later on the difference between the two people. She was a déjà vu person, and he had a long way to go. Both situations resulted in a similar confrontation, and one relationship hit a wall at that juncture in terms of future trust. I will not trust that man deeply again until I see some change.
But with the woman, I have no qualms about trusting her in the future. The key to my trust is not in the fact that she made a mistake. Both of these people made mistakes. In one, the mistake put an abrupt end to our going forward together. In the other, it became a launching pad to going forward because of the way she handled the resulting conflict.
That is the key to what successful people do. It is not that they never fail, but rather in the way they handle their failure and imperfections. Instead of feeling compelled to be seen as “right” or “good,” they are interested in what is best, no matter who is right or wrong. You never hear words such as How dare you question me! You hear Oh, gosh. That is not good. Tell me more about how it felt to you, or some similar response that lets you know they are not trying to defend themselves, but to help make it right.
Giving It Up And Gaining It All
We said earlier that humility could be seen as giving up the need to be greater than we are. We have looked at some ways in which that principle operates. It is giving up thinking that we know it all. Giving up thinking that we can do it all. Giving up thinking that we have to do it well all the time. Giving up thinking that we are better than others when they do not do it well. Giving up needing to be seen as right or good all the time, and giving up defensiveness. In all these cases, the way of the déjà vu person is basically to be real.
It is really true that we do not know it all, we do not have all the answers, we do not always get it right, we are just as imperfect as the next person, and we are not right or good all the time. No matter how great some person’s particular talent or accomplishment, humility is always very available to him or her, and very evident to others. It does not take self-deprecation, such as Oh, it was really nothing, after some huge accomplishment. A simple thank you is a wonderful response. Although such a response seems to acknowledge one’s own accomplishment, it does not show a lack of humility if in the rest of that person’s life and interactions he or she is being real and honest. The accomplishments will not make such people proud or arrogant, because being real—acknowledging the reality of one’s own human weaknesses and failures—will protect them from that. And it will endear others to them as well.
Déjà vu people accomplish great things. I have known some of them to be heads of large companies, professional star athletes, innovators, sacrificial humanitarians, television and movie celebrities, and leaders whose accomplishments in other fields are mind-blowing. But the difference between them and other so-called achievers is that they are successful in all of life. They are integrated, and unlike other people who accomplish things, they do not see success as who they are, and lord it over others; they see themselves as people just like everyone else, and they do all they can to love and serve those around them. As a result they succeed more. And unlike others who succeed, they do not blow it up in the end.
There are many people who achieve so-called “success.” But if they are not humble, it gets tarnished by failed relationships, breaches in relationships that are never mended, unresolved battles with partners, moral collapse, and other blemishes that make their success of little benefit to them in the end. They destroy it.
Be a déjà vu person and learn the way of humility. When you do, not only will you succeed more, but you will also keep your success as well. Here are a few tips on the humble ways of déjà vu people:
• Say you are sorry to your children, spouse, coworkers, customers, and other people in your life when you fail them.
• Seek to understand situations and people before thinking you know the answer or the truth or what the reality actually is.
• Get rid of any and all defensiveness when it occurs in you. What you are defending—the need to be more than you are —is not worth keeping.
• Serve the people “under” you in whatever structures have placed you “over” them. In organizations where there are hierarchies, déjà vu people are as concerned with their relationship to the custodian as they are with their relationship to the CEO.
• The moment you think some task or position in life is beneath you, take a time out. Go spend some time with someone performing that task or in that position and you might meet a human being superior to yourself.
• Root out any attitude of entitlement that you may have. Embrace a spirit of gratitude for everything you have or any good treatment you get.
• When someone is hurt by you, listen. Try to understand what he or she is feeling and learn how you can make things better.
• Give up any investment in looking good, right, or any other posture that makes you different from the rest of humanity.
• Embrace your imperfections and the imperfections of others. Do not ever be surprised by them.
• Use failure as a teacher and a friend. Be humble.
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