Humility

There's a TL;DR at the end, but it'll make more sense if you read the whole thing.

I was just wondering what actually I liked about that one former classmate of mine. There are charismatic people, and they're easy to like; he wasn't particularly charismatic. Studies have shown that attractive people rate as more likeable too, and there are lots of dynamics that go into that; but he wasn't particularly attractive. Passionate about his favourite topics, but you'd never hear about it unless you poked and prodded him to talk. You know that thing where passion draws admirers? Yeah, it requires that a person is visibly enthusiastic. By any measure, he shouldn't have been so magnetic as a person, and yet he was.

On a long plane ride, I figured it out. In a word, this former classmate had humility. I know, we've all heard a lot about humility. So I'm going to talk about my classmate instead. We'll say his name is John, because I don't want to keep on typing "former classmate".

Now John, he had pretty good grades when I knew him. More because he was the most hardworking person I've ever seen than because of his (actually solidly above-average) native intelligence.  Participated in - was on the committee of - a number of extracurricular activities, and won accolades there too. Amazingly responsible person.

And that's all really fantastic, it is, but I'm just filling in some background, here. Let's get to the real point of this essay.

Remember how I mentioned that you had to poke and prod him to talk? He honestly enjoyed listening to you talk about what was important to you. Or at least he gave that impression, and based on what I know of him, it's the complete truth. When you were talking and he was listening, you were the most important thing in his world.

I'm sure we've all known people who seem that way. They listen, and they sympathise or agree or even offer a story of their own. And they never talk about anything that's important to them, because there is actually nothing that is so important to them as being in agreement with the group and gasp being the speaker of the moment opens you up to people disagreeing with you.

That wasn't John at all. If he disagreed with you, you'd know it. Polite to a fault, taking pains to ensure that you knew his problem was with your statement and not with you as a person. But he'd never agree with anything that he didn't actually agree with, and he'd listen respectfully to your issue with his statement but never give in to pressure (persuasion, of course, was always an option). And of course, once you managed to get him talking, well, you could almost see him light up. He'd get right into it.

In short, he was equally comfortable with listening and talking. Which is a lot rarer than most people realise, I think. Because to be a good listener, you have to be able to put a lid on your own issues and focus on the other person. The less you're concerned with what they think of you and how you're going to respond wittily and etc, the more you can be concerned with what they're actually talking about. And let's be honest, if your self-worth is tied to how well others look upon you, that right there is something to work on in therapy. Instead, perhaps you could accept that you are yourself regardless of what they think of you: this frees you up to actually pay attention to them as a person and what they are saying.

And to be a good talker, you have to have some level of assurance that you know what you're talking about, and that it's worth talking about. The less you're concerned with gaining people's approval with your words, the more freedom you have to truly speak your mind. Now please note that this is not license to go around talking shit at people, even if you think it's true. It just means you judge your words by some other standard than "will it gain audience approval".

I'm going to go off on a minor, but very important, tangent here. You can be the most self-assured speaker in the world and still be completely wrong. Public speaking ability doesn't necessarily have to have any causative relationship at all with quality or truthfulness of content.

Getting back to the point. My old classmate John could talk all day about something he was passionate about. But he didn't need to talk about it: he knew that his worth as a person didn't depend on whether people were listening to you talk. He could listen, really listen, because he knew that interpersonal interaction isn't a zero-sum game. Focusing on another person doesn't make you any less of a person yourself. Definition of humility, right there, and the only way to actually reach it is complete self-assurance. Don't you just love it when life throws you a paradox like that?

TL;DR Perfect humility requires perfect confidence.

There's actually a very important related point, which is "what is your self-assurance based on?" For John it was God. God loves us all the same, as individuals, regardless of how bad or wrong or insecure we are. I reckon that's a pretty solid backing for his level of confidence. Whether or not you believe the same, it's probably a good idea to spend some thought on what your confidence is founded on.