Member-only story
You Can Fake Your Humility
Perform your best self, even if you’re a bad person.
Let me tell you about two times I got too drunk. The first time, I confessed my narcissism to a friend. She laughed in my face and brought me a blanket. Clearly, I was spending the night on her couch.
Why did she laugh? Because the idea of me as a narcissist sounded that ridiculous. Which meant my plan had worked.
I’d fooled everyone into considering me a humble person.
By doing what? Acting humble, even if I thought very highly of myself. Which begs the question. If you care deeply about how humble people think you are, does that actually make you so?
Turns out, yes. If you do it the right way.
What is humility, except an internal form of pride? A secret pride, one that matters. One you don’t have to show off, because it’s real.
With me, something inside my head makes me care enough about other people to correct my deepest failings. It’s not a one-time fix, though. I have to monitor myself all the time. Exhausting, but it works. I fake a persona, because part of me knows how I should act.
