“Pride leads to disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.”

I can’t really call it humility when Google stands out there and tells others that they are beatable.  Google’s Chairman, Eric Schmidt, did just that in front of a group in Berlin, where Google just happens to be facing antitrust and competitive challenges throughout Europe.  So, what do you do when everyone knows that you are the 800 pound and still growing gorilla?  You say things like, “Amazon is better at shopping than we are”, “Facebook ate Orkut”, “Yelp is faster than we are” and, “We know that someone in a garage could take us down.”  Do we buy it?  It’s hard for me to take it all seriously, when the handwriting is on the wall that they are facing some stiff legal opposition.  True humility comes from saying these kinds of things long before anyone had challenged them.  Google is far from being the little engine that could.  They are the plant that builds the engine, creates the fuel and owns the trains.  As we grow our businesses, or just get better at what we do, we would be well reminded that to be humble it isn’t only about showing weakness, it is about doing so from the time we are truly weak right though our strongest days.

Staying humble is a challenge in itself.  Each time we do something well and are recognized for doing so, we have to talk to ourselves and remember from where our abilities come from.  Last week I was speaking/teaching all week to university students and one of the questions asked was, “how do you stay so humble?”  That question in itself is hard to answer with humility, but the words came easily,
“If I am going to walk in the example of the One I follow, I have no choice but do so with humility.”  Let’s remember that any time we allow ourselves to get out in front of God that we are indeed demonstrating a weakness and it doesn’t do us any real good.

Reference: Proverbs 11:2