Character strength · Temperance
Humility as a character strength: meaning and examples
The short answer: humility, also called modesty, is letting your achievements speak for themselves, seeing yourself accurately, and not considering yourself more important than others. It is not low self-esteem. It is one of the 24 character strengths of the VIA classification, in the Temperance family: the strengths that protect against excess.
What humility looks like
People with a lot of humility tend to:
- share credit easily
- rarely bring up their own achievements
- listen more than they talk about themselves
- say "I don't know" without embarrassment
- are comfortable when others take the spotlight
In everyday life
At work, humility is the expert who asks for the intern's opinion, or the high performer who thanks the team in public. In social life, it is the person who asks you about your trip instead of describing theirs.
Humble people are often easy to learn from and easy to work with, because they are open to being wrong.
Humility and the strengths close to it
- Forgiveness comes more easily when you remember your own mistakes.
- Honesty includes seeing yourself accurately, which is the core of humility.
- Love of learning grows from accepting that there is always more to know.
When humility is overdone, or underused
Like every strength, humility works best in the right amount. Overdone, humility can slide into underselling yourself, letting others take credit, or being passed over for things you deserve. Underused, people can come across as boastful, and stop learning because they assume they already know.
The aim is an accurate view of yourself: not too big, not too small.
Is humility one of your top strengths?
Ask yourself:
- Do you feel uncomfortable talking about your own successes?
- Do people find out about your achievements from others rather than from you?
- Can you admit you were wrong without feeling diminished?
If you answered yes to most of these, humility may be one of your signature strengths. The only way to know how it compares with your other 23 is to rank them.
Find your top strengths with the free test
Where this comes from
The 24 character strengths were described by psychologists Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman in Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification (2004). Happy Me's assessment uses public-domain questions from the International Personality Item Pool and is not affiliated with the VIA Institute.