Humility

Mickey Mantle…”It’s Unbelievable!”

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Without a healthy dose of humility, we can not grow. What baseball legend Mickey Mantle's quote above suggests is that you don't know what you don't know.

"During my 18 years I came to bat almost 10,000 times. I struck out about 1,700 times and walked maybe 1,800 times. You figure a ballplayer will average about 500 at-bats a season. That means I played 7 years without ever hitting the ball." – Mickey Mantle.

"Sometimes I think if I had the same body and the same natural ability and someone else's brain, who knows how good a player I might have been." – Mickey Mantle.

Stop and think. Mantle, one of the great baseball players of all time, saying how much he didn't know. Mantle, admitting he could have learned more.

Those who think they know it all put themselves at a disadvantage. Ego checked, willing to learn and apply new ideas, we can grow. ##

Image credit, WikiCommons

Post and poster by

L. A. "Tony" Kovach

Pride and the Rose Less Traveled

To oversimplify, one can speak of two types of pride.  Healthy pride and unhealthy pride.

An example of healthy pride is to feel good about one’s work and accomplishments.  An example of unhealthy pride may seem similar at first: to feel good about one’s work, accomplishments and self, but to do so to the point that one looks down upon others.

The antidote to the second sort of pride is humility.

Roses and fountain - Chicago Botanic Gardens
Roses and fountain - Chicago Botanic Gardens

Humility comes from the word humus, of the earth.  When one realizes that we are ‘of the earth,’ made of the same chemicals found in the natural world around us, this can bring us back to reality.

One may realize that none of us is an island.   None of us is a truly “self made” man or woman, we all have had – and still have – need of others.  From parents and family, to friends and colleagues, we need others to become our best.

Rich soil – dirt – humus – this is where nature properly cultivated can flower.
Humility is not to think of oneself as dirt. True humility is nothing more or less than a recognition of the objective truth.

So there is a healthy balance needed between self respect and respect for others.

In younger days (not that I’m old, mind you! ; -) it is easy to recall how one once thought that one ‘knew it all.’

Then slowly, over time, the reality of the importance of others comes into play.

 

In strolling through the glory of the Chicago Botanic Garden’s this evening with my wife and son, it was easy to get carried away in the beauty of the place.  To see the wonder of nature.  To realize that nature’s wonder has been cultivated by people in a fashion that makes the natural, super natural!

Team work is a little like cultivating nature.

Establishing team work is to take what is already good in others.  To be open to and receptive oneself, to be willing to share in a fashion that allows another to flower.  This type of process makes the good ever more beautiful.

Such a process makes what is good even better.

Team work can be misunderstood, just as pride and humility can be misunderstood.  Not everyone ‘gets it.’  But once a team comes together, works and stays together, the results can be amazing, truly humbling, and beautiful to behold.

The Rose Less Traveled
The Rose Less Traveled

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost

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Post written by

L. A. “Tony” Kovach

http://www.linkedin.com/in/latonykovach

 

 

 

 

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