Overcoming Self: Learning to Be Humble

Overcoming Self: Learning to Be Humble

Someone corrects you in front of your friends. Maybe it is a parent, a coach, a teacher. Your chest gets tight. Your face goes hot. Something inside you wants to either fight back or disappear. You know that feeling. We all do.

That feeling has a name. It is the self trying to protect itself. And there is nothing wrong with noticing it — but there is something worth asking honestly: what happens when we let that feeling run our lives? And what happens when we learn, by choice, to let it go?

One Idea Worth Writing Down

Here is the heart of everything we are going to look at together:

Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It is choosing to stop making yourself the center, and letting God be the center instead.

That is not a personality type. It is not the same as being quiet, or agreeable, or easy to push around. It is a decision — one of the most courageous decisions a person can make.

And we know this because of Jesus Christ. He had every reason in eternity to insist on His own position, His own glory, His own will. He created worlds. He was God. And yet, in the garden of Gethsemane, kneeling in the dark while bearing the weight of every sin and sorrow that has ever existed, He said:

Not my will, but thine, be done. (Luke 22:42)

That is not weakness. That is the strongest, most deliberate act in human history. Everything in this lesson flows from that image: a God who chose to kneel.

Poor in Spirit — Where Humility Begins

When Jesus sat down on that hillside and opened the greatest sermon ever preached, the very first word of blessing He spoke was this:

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:3)

The word blessed in the original language means deeply happy, even flourishing. And the first people Jesus calls flourishing are the ones who know they are spiritually bankrupt without God. Not the impressive ones. Not the ones who have it all figured out. The ones who know they need Him.

This is where humility starts: honest awareness of our need. Not performance. Not shame. Just honesty. "I cannot do this alone. I need God more than I need to look like I have it together."

That honesty, Jesus says, is the door to the kingdom of heaven. It is not the last step. It is the first one.

The Trouble With Pride

The opposite of that honest open posture is pride, and the book of Proverbs describes what pride actually does to a life:

Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. (Proverbs 16:18)

This verse is not a threat. It is a description of how things actually work. Pride is structurally self-defeating. When we are busy protecting our image, we stop being able to learn. When we are gripping tightly to being right, we cannot receive correction. When we need everyone to see how capable we are, we cut ourselves off from the help we actually need — from other people, and from God.

Picture a white shirt with a deep scarlet stain right in the center. You could walk around all day insisting the shirt is clean, arranging your jacket to cover it, snapping at anyone who mentions it. Or you could say, simply and without drama, "Yes, there is a stain. Can someone help me?" The first path keeps the stain. The second path is the only one that leads to something clean.

Pride makes us cling to the stained shirt and call it fine. Humility lets us hand it over.

A Choice, Not Just a Circumstance

Here is something worth sitting with. Sometimes life humbles us whether we choose it or not. Failure humbles us. Embarrassment humbles us. Being left out, passed over, or corrected in public humbles us. That kind of humility — the kind that is pressed on us from the outside — can be painful and disorienting.

But there is a different kind. It is the humility you choose before the hard thing forces it on you. The Book of Mormon prophet Alma taught that it is far better to humble yourself by the word of God than to wait until circumstances crush you into it. One comes from the inside out, from faith and love. The other comes from the outside in, from pain and necessity. Both can lead somewhere good — but chosen humility, freely given, is an act of trust. It says: "I believe God is good and that His way is better than mine. I will kneel before I am knocked down."

That is one of the bravest things a person can do.

How a Covenant Person Walks

The prophet Micah asked one of the most beautiful questions in all of Scripture:

He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? (Micah 6:8)

Notice the company humility keeps here. Justice. Mercy. These are not passive, mousy qualities. They are the marks of a person who is strong enough to be fair, tender enough to show compassion, and honest enough to walk through life without pretending to be more than they are.

And notice the image: walk humbly with thy God. Not kneel forever in the dust. Walk. Every day, step by step, alongside Him. Humility is not a single dramatic moment of surrender. It is a way of moving through ordinary life — open to correction, open to guidance, open to the person walking beside you.

The Open Hand

Picture closing your fist as tight as you possibly can around something small — a coin, a smooth stone. Now imagine someone trying to place something in that same hand. They cannot. Your hand is full and closed. No matter how good the gift, there is no room to receive it.

Now picture opening your hand slowly. Releasing the grip. Suddenly there is room. Something better can be placed there.

Pride is that clenched fist. We hold so tightly to our reputation, our image, our version of events — our need to be right, to be seen, to be enough on our own — that God cannot put anything new into us. Humility is the open hand. It does not mean you hold nothing. It means you stop gripping so hard that grace has somewhere to land.

Go back to Matthew 5:3 — poor in spirit. Go back to Micah 6: