Humbleness is a sign of bigness - never weakness. All personal gifts come with a dark side. High ambition can lead to arrogance, if unmanaged. Great power can lead to great abuse, if unchecked. Artistic brilliance can provoke private suffering—if not balanced with periods of peace, enjoyment and non-doing. I’ve watched a lot of documentaries on superstar artists, athletes and industrialists this summer and have noted these common threats.
Pre-order my hugely anticipated new book The Wealth Money Can't Buy and receive 5 truly extraordinary FREE bonuses [including a 3 hour live online summit with me, a complete virtual training program and 10 powerful morning meditations used by my top clients: all valued at $8,767 USD]. Here's the link so you can pre-order the book.
FOLLOW ROBIN SHARMA:
Instagram
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
The humblest winds. We live in a fascinating world right now. The model sometimes of the great leaders are people who are the loudest in the room. Susan Cain has written a beautiful book, Quiet. In a world of loud people who thump their chests, she's written about the power of being an introvert. I'm part an extrovert, I speak to stages, sometimes there's 10,000 people in the room, and I have a lot of people in this who follow me on the social media, but I'm also an introvert. I love nature, I love solitude, and Susan Cain, in this great book I really encourage you to read called Quiet says, "You can tell an introvert versus an extrovert because extroverts get energy from being around people. Introverts refill their wells and get energy by being alone." I only mention this because humility has got a bad rap. We live in a world where I think the majority, the 95%, are chasing the wrong things and celebrating the wrong values. And wrong isn't the right word, but humility is gold. If you look at the true heroes, those people all suffered so much and endured such adversity, and their heart was broken so many times, their hearts opened to sort of paraphrase the words of the great philosopher Rumi, who said, "Break your heart over and over again until it opens." If you look at the great heroes, they were the humblest in every room, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. The people we see as the true titans and the true legends, they weren't full of ego, they weren't insecure, so they were always talking about themselves. These were people who graced the planet and walked the earth gently. These were masters of compassion. And because of that, they had the empathy to understand what people needed. These were not people who talked about themselves. These were people who shifted from me to we or to you. Here's a little exercise to play out for the rest of the week. Think about how many times you have to say and be very, very careful about what you need to advertise. Do you need to advertise, "Oh, I'm a marathon runner." Do you need to advertise, "Oh, we just passed 5 million on Facebook." Do you need to advertise you just wrote the greatest bestseller? Do you need to advertise your ambitions and your ideals? Do you need to advertise when you had a win? And if so, check out that insecurity.