We respect people who are humble for a good reason.

It’s far easier to interact with a person who has an accurate sense of their own self-importance and who doesn’t boast loudly about all their great accomplishments, compared to someone who believes they’re possibly the greatest thing to ever touch the surface of the Earth.

As with anything good though, humility can be taken to an extreme in the wrong hands and with the wrong mindset.

The danger is that humility can become more like a title to chase rather than an ideal to nobly strive for, if you aren’t careful. It can become a flex to assert your dominance over others rather than just a way of living. Doesn’t that sound so tragic?

You can easily fall into what I call the toxic humility trap if you aren’t aware of its existence. I’ve ocassionally found myself there and so might have you.

It’s where you aren’t humble for the sake of just being humble, but to be noticed by others for you pretending to be humble. Where each day feels like a pointless battle you wage against the world just so people will notice your “humility”. You end up degrading your own existence by doing this.

As you can guess by the name alone, the toxic humility trap isn’t a place you want to end up in.

Here’s the difference between real and toxic humility; knowing this can help you avoid being trapped in the latter.

Real vs Toxic Humility

Real humility is the type of humility you think about when that word comes to mind. It’s good, honest and noble. It’s found in people who have tamed their egos despite whatever levels of success or intelligence they’re at, not viewing themselves as more significant or entitled to anything, than others around them.

This is difficult to achieve, and that’s what makes it more worth striving for.

Toxic humility emerges from the same room as real humility but with its own malicious spin. It’s when you aren’t really humble but are merely a pretender. In this state, one is really just an egoist who is lying to themselves and to the world declaring that they are humble.

Toxic humility is when you see being humble as a competition. You want to emerge victorious so people will recognise and praise you for being such an amazingly humble individual. As I wrote about in my earlier article on doing the right thing, real good is only achieved when you aren’t aiming to be recognised by others for your efforts.

Importantly, when you’re toxically humble, you also find yourself easily criticising others. You may be pointing out anyone who’s loud or slightly successful, instantly accusing them of having a large ego, while commanding attention to yourself for being silent and humble, working hard in the background.

This isn’t the point of being humble though, is it? Inflating your own perception of yourself by acting as if you’re better than others is the literal definition of ego.

Being silent doesn’t mean you’re necessarily humble. And being loud doesn’t mean for sure that you have a large ego.

The truth is that everyone has an ego to some extent. People who are really humble accept that truth and work on restraining it so it doesn’t get out of control and cause harm to them.

People who are toxically humble deny the fact that they even have an ego at all. They believe their ‘humility’ makes them flawless, and that lie just serves to amplify their ego.

The main takeaway

The toxic humility trap is essentially just delusion.

It’s complex, and hard to understand and to be in. It’s when you’re lying to the world and also lying to yourself about who you really are. You believe you’re truly humble but your actions and thoughts paint a very different picture.

It prevents you from being able to accept the hard truth that you may not actually be humble at all. It’s a fantasy which you must escape as soon as possible, if you’re in it.

On the other side of the struggle of escaping the toxic humility trap is real humility, which we want to have. Humility that isn’t used as a weapon against others, but as a means of inspiring them to behave the same way, to show them what a well-lived life is like.

The world would do better with more humble people, who want to be humble to benefit the world instead of their egos.

So, don’t be humble to impress others. Be humble to be humble.