Episode 36: Humility

Well, hey, everybody, welcome to the 36th and my God 36th episode of Don’t lose your balance. My name is Mallory Durrick. Today’s topic is called humility. And I think I am going to speak about it because of the gratitude room this morning, there was a story that we shared. And I’m going to grab it real quick and just give you the gist of what this was about. It talks about it talks about humility for all and what does that mean, pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real. And this is a quote by Thomas Merton. So the story is a little like this, you might think you want an expensive car or a fancy watch and a huge house. But I’m telling you you don’t. What you want is respect and admiration from other people. And you think having expensive stuff will bring it it almost never does, especially from the people you want to respect and admire you, when you see someone driving a nice car, you probably don’t think wow, that person is cool. Instead, you think, Wow, if I had that car, people would think I’m cool. Do you see the ironing, no one cares about the guy in the car, have fun by some nice stuff. But realize that what people are really after is respect and humility will ultimately gain you more of it than vanity. So first, in the context of the room, I was really struggling to find somebody whether it’d be on YouTube, or Instagram, or a book or television that I look at as somebody who is humble, and I want to emulate that person and be more like that person so that I can be a better version of myself. And I’m still struggling with finding somebody that I can think about because the topic that was discussed about humility in the gratitude room, and this again, is all also on clubhouse. If I didn’t mention that this was the prompt today. Let’s think of the best models of humility in our life, from my personal life professional life books or YouTube or somewhere else. What do I admire about these people? And how can I be more like them? And then of course, we give thanks for all the models of humility in our life. They make our lives better, they teach us and help us become better versions of ourselves. Well, my struggle is that I couldn’t think of anybody from my personal life or my professional life. Not that I didn’t admire anything about them. But I didn’t find them the best models of humility in my life. Now, certainly my parents have represented a specific part of myself that I would like to be more like them, they did not fall the way I fell. Even my sister did not fall. That does not mean they are impervious to any kind of judgment or problems. I just felt like I had really suffered, I had really struggled. And as a result, I think it took me down quite a few notches in my life. What does that mean? Well, here’s here’s how it goes a little bit for me. I don’t think I was ever somebody who believed they were. I don’t think I was cocky.

04:08

I don’t think that I thought that I was better than anybody else. I definitely think a especially now that I was somebody who was privileged and very lucky in life. I was well educated. I came from a good home. I come from a good background of morals, despite having lost my own morality along the way. And yet I never really understood what it felt like to walk in a poor man’s shoes. And I don’t think I ever knew what it felt like to not have things that very oftentimes came quite easily for me until I did I lose everything. Even if it was at my own hand. I lost a lot and I had to learn how to live with nothing. When I say nothing, I mean I gave away all my I furniture and all my things I had to move in with somebody by the sheer nature of I had no place to live. When I had to move away from that person, I had to figure out how to live on my own. And I couldn’t do it without a little help, which makes me feel really humble that anybody would want to help me. But then again, they were my parents that said, there were resources along the way that I could tap into, like public assistance. You know,

05:33

I think that there’s this idea of what poverty looks like. And poverty comes in a lot of different skins. It’s not about the color of your skin. I also think that poverty comes to people who had a lot at one time. And somewhere along the line, I think that people who have had a lot when they no longer have a light may hopefully become a little bit more humble in their lives. I know it did for me, but it didn’t, because I was thinking I was ever better than anyone else. I just didn’t think it could touch me as closely as it did, I may have thought I was impervious to poverty. And I wasn’t. But I didn’t know that I didn’t know that when I had money. And someone I could fall back on. I didn’t know that everything would be taken away. Everything. Everything that I ever had could be taken away and that I’d have to more or less started, start a new start again, I’m almost grateful that I went through what I went through, I say almost because it was incredibly painful. But I do think it made me a better version of myself. I do think that instead of thinking that it could never happen to me, I realize, oh, it can happen to anybody. Intellectually, I always knew that phrase, you’re only one paycheck away from homelessness, but I never believed it could happen. I don’t believe that it could ever happen to me. And when you don’t believe that, it can even touch you that closely. You walk around with an air of I don’t want to say it. But it’s almost like an air of arrogance. I don’t mean arrogant in that you’re better than somebody. I mean, that arrogant in, that’s just something that happens to somebody else. And you know, something that’s not very humble. I don’t know if people necessarily need to be knocked down a few notches to find that humility within themselves. But I think it helps I look around online, and I read comments that people write, they think that it can never happen to them. These are things that happen to the other guy. Well, here’s a little tip. No, it isn’t. I don’t think you have to have a drug addiction or go through everything that I went through or be poor, to be humble. I don’t think it hurts. But I don’t think you have to go through it. I do think that you should have a daily reminder for yourself and ask, Are you are you being humble? Are you are you recognizing that there are clearly going to be people in this world who are in the circumstances that they’re in sheerly by happenstance circumstance, the way they were raised poorly raise education or lack there of opportunities that came and went, you know, there are people I believe this there are people who look at people who are poor, and they think that they are lazy, they’re not lazy. They don’t have the same opportunities that other people have. They don’t have the same education that other people have. And then they are based on our system, especially in America. They are the system was designed to keep them poor. This much. I do believe I came out of it a little bit in a different way. Because I didn’t go into it as a poor person. There are people who are born into poverty that may never get out. You will read about the rare one, you’ll see a documentary on Netflix about the rare person who had the special gifts and that favorite uncle that took them under their wing and made them better than they may not have been otherwise you know that they came in from a family of alcoholism and drug addiction and there was no way they were going to get out or even a mother who was in the prison system. And then they managed to escape all of that you’ll find those rare individuals and this those people are very humble i I can pretty much guarantee it. However, what about the people who never get out and live their lives each day based on the fact that they don’t have the same opportunities as US There’s they don’t, they don’t know what they don’t know.

10:03

So what do you do with that I wish I could come up with a person that I could think of other than maybe like a Mother Teresa, or I don’t know, I don’t know who these people are. I wish I knew who these people were, I look around. And I, I see a lot of indulgence online. I don’t know if these people are humble or not. But it’s not me. It’s not up for me to judge them to be humble. If not, but I do spend time or I did, especially last year, I spent a lot of time on clubhouse, and I still do I spend every morning on clubhouse in the gratitude room. And these things truly make me think about my life, my, my life, and what’s important in my life, and having a good relationship with the people that I love. But also what people actually think of me as the authentic person that I am truly conveying to them online. And on the app, I am not pretending I speak from a place of sincerity and truth. I am not trying to suggest to anybody that I’m better than anybody. I’m not judging anybody. And when we talk about this thing, where we say, it matters, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t care what people think, of course, you care what people think you care if people think you’re a good person, so you’re gonna care if they think you’re not a good person, I don’t know whether other people go through the same thought process that I do. I don’t know if this is deep thinking or if this is normal thinking, I know that the people who share the gratitude space with me every single morning, care about the same things that I care about, they care about gratitude, they care about sharing, they care about showing up for each other. And there’s a sense of humility, and all of that these people are humble. And I feel so close to them. I recognize that some people come in when they can make it, I get that too. But I will say that for the people who have come and gone from gratitude, that doesn’t mean they’re not gracious anymore. They just didn’t feel that the space suited them well. And that’s okay. It’s a shame for those people who have come and gone. When I say it’s a shame, I don’t mean I feel sorrow for them, I feel, I feel like it’s a shame that they weren’t able to maybe get out of the room, what I get out of the room, how I feel about opening up that room every morning, and then closing it out. And knowing tomorrow is a new story and a new prompt, and new shares and new conversations. And only for 30 minutes, maybe it lasted I don’t know 45. Today, I love hearing that there are people who unlike me, didn’t go through poverty, or maybe they went through having to be unemployed and not knowing where their next meal was gonna come from. I don’t know whether or not they got a jolt of, you know, humility as a result of it. But I know that it took me a while to really understand this, I seem to have believed that maybe that like others. This is something the things that I that I went through, or something that happened to other people and not to somebody like me. And when I say somebody like me, I don’t mean like I’m better than them. And so it can never happen to me, I always believed somewhere in the back of my mind, it could happen to me and RNA grateful that it never did until it did. And then and I’ve talked about this in the I guess in the poverty episode, the idea that I was on public assistance. And you know, medical assistance and food stamps is astounding to me, mostly because I never thought that I would be somebody who couldn’t figure out where their next paycheck was going to come from. And yet here I was somebody who couldn’t figure out where their next paycheck was going to come from. I’m one of the lucky ones. And I recognize that and I’m very humble about that. And when I say I’m one of the lucky ones, I mean it like this, I have an education. I hold two degrees. I’m smart. And I learned that I don’t need a lot. I just need enough. And when I had enough, I could do a lot with it. The greatest gift that I realized I could give myself was learning something new every day and improving my own skill set so that when opportunities would come my way, and they certainly did. And I’ll get to that in a second. I would be ready for them. So when opportunities came my way they didn’t just fall in my lap. I positioned myself in such a way where I would be ready when those opportunities came, I wanted to do certain things in my life. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with working in a fast food restaurant or as a cashier. Certainly, I’ve worked in a pawn shop robbing boxes as a highly educated person. But I was probably taking a lot of humility pills during that time, realizing I may have been upset, but realizing that I am not any different than any other human being, who had fallen on hard times, even at their own hand. When I say that about at my own hand, I recognize I took the drugs, I let them get a hold of me. Unfortunately, once the drugs, get into your system and into your life, and take a hold of you, you need to really do a lot to get yourself out of it. And not everybody has that opportunity. I also know that there are certain people who may have gotten into like prescription painkillers like me, and then moved over into heroin. And that’s much much harder to come out of, I don’t know if humility and arrogance are aligned, but kind of like love and hate. You’re not humble, I guess if you’re arrogant. Yeah, I guess they are aligned. And I say that, because I don’t think that you can be humble if you are arrogant.

16:22

I think I said that earlier. I think that there are people who walk around with this ain’t gonna happen to me kind of attitude. And you want to know something, be careful there. And I said that in the gratitude room this morning about this one woman I had read, I had seen a comment online. And she said that welfare would never happen to her. And I said, Never say never, because you never know what can actually happen to another person. I wished that I could have a greater conversation with that person and say, you know, you could use some humility there, you could also use a little bit of compassion. And I do believe that people who are humble are also very compassionate. It’s hard to be compassionate. In today’s world, I do believe that as well. I think this country especially is extraordinarily divided. I keep to myself pretty much, except for obviously, the gratitude room. And I don’t ever want anybody to ever think that this gratitude room is something that you have to have been in for 278 days or whatever out of the 365. In order to attend. If you’re on clubhouse, come on, in. And you’ll start to feel not only grateful, but you’ll start to feel this compassion that I hope that other people may not give you in your world. I don’t know. One thing I do recognize is that you can feel really humble in that room. When you think about how humility impacts you, you may need to kind of check in with yourself. And I think you should check in with yourself not only daily, but several times a day and ask yourself when something happens around you. Are you humble? Do you recognize that you’re not better than anybody else? I mean, certainly you may have greater skills than somebody else. But you’re also going to have less than you know, I I look at these people who make a great deal of money like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, you know, a lot of people don’t think Zuckerberg is all that humble. And I’m not bashing on Zuckerberg, I’m not I don’t have an opinion about him one way or the other. But I think that there comes a greater responsibility for humility. When you have more when you’ve achieved all of that bring yourself down to a reality of you’re still a human being you may have achieved greatness, but the more humble you are, the more respectful and respected you will be that I do believe. So at the end of the day, when I put my head down, and they go to sleep, I really truly hope that after everything I’ve been through, and how I look at my life, even yesterday, that I live my life with a lot of humility, and that people look at me as somebody who’s very compassionate and humble, and human. And I hope that’s a great gift that I can extend to somebody else on a daily basis, especially if they come in to a gratitude room on clubhouse or any other space that they may encounter with me. I hope that okay, well if you like this or any other episode of Don’t lose your balance. You can download it, you can share it, you can even write me a review. You can visit me on my website that’s Don’t lose your balance.com and also on Instagram, I have two accounts. One is Mallory underscore Duric. And the other is Don’t lose your balance. M Sc That’s Mary Sam and David. I hope today tomorrow and always you don’t lose your balance and I look forward to hearing how you didn’t lose your balance along your life’s journey. I’ll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Hi, I am Mallory Durrick. I am a creative. A Marketing Strategist and Web Designer with a small and modest boutique Marketing Agency living in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I am the creator and narrator of this podcast, Don’t Lose Your Balance. This is a culmination of decades of self-help books, countless doctors, numerous hospitals, including rehabs. Once a wife, now divorced, a mother, a grandmother and an addict in recovery. These are things that I am and have experienced.

I’m sharing it all. Baring it all. Hoping to help others; not lose their balance.