What does it mean to be humble?

Since evaluating my strengths according to StrengthsFinder 2.0, I have a new perspective when it comes to defining humility in my life.  The definition for most people may not seem like a big deal, but for me it has been a challenge for much of my life and I think I may be starting to better understand the reason.

Three of my top five strengths are Achiever, Significance, and Competition. Having any one of those strengths without the other two would cause you to struggle with humility, but when all three are representatives of your personality, then everything you've ever been taught as a kid related to humility becomes an enormous burden.

Growing up, I was not humble by most people's definition. I was always out to win and achieve things with significant impact. As humility was preached to me - "let others win", I pulled back on my strengths. I've noticed in recent years, I've not excelled at the level I am capable of because my perception of humility has been fed to me as a weakness.

I would have been better served to understand the difference in my humility and others' envy.  By no means am I under any illusion that I walk around causing people to become green with envy with my unimaginable talents.  I understand my place next to giants. I am at awe of those who do things well and better than myself.  That's humility, and it's my choice as to whether I'll be envious too. Pride and boastfulness is their choice.

Humility is not about experiencing what is less. It's about honoring what is more.

Sociable

If you are new to marketing in the social media realm, or just looking to refine your strategy a little, Shane Gibson and Stephen Jagger provide a great place to start with their book Sociable!: How Social Media is Turning Sales and Marketing Upside Down.

This work does a good job of presenting an overview of being sociable online. However, what I really appreciated from these guys, were some of the helpful lists they provided on specific strategies for specific platforms. For example, they listed "16 strategies to grow their Twitter following organically (p102)." They also do a good job of identifying the major platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Meetup, Ning, and how to leverage them for your business or brand.

For most small businesses, this would be a great book to provide your team or new hire when it comes to developing your Sociable strategy. It may not help the "Big Brands" significantly, but there's enough in this book to make it worth your purchase.

A big thanks to Chris at Inter Changes and In Social Media who had a role in contributing to this book and for providing me with a copy.

It's about quality work, not social media

Social media was once thought to be a fad by many. It's now accepted and is here to stay. Marketers and advertisers are now now incorporating it into all of their marketing plans.

In the 90's, during the dotcom boom most people didn't worry about internet marketing as they were saying things like:

'"Most customers aren't on the internet."
"There's no proven return on investment.'
"It's for the younger generation."
'We are already successful using print advertising."'
Source: Sociable!: How Social Media is Turning Sales and Marketing Upside Down

Sometimes I do feel like Social Media is like a bag of rice being thrown out of a back of truck to a horde of healthy people made to believe they are going to starve without it. It's chaotic and madness for some.

Until the web can fix my car, mow my grass, or do the plumbing, service industries aren't going to hurt from lacking an intentional social media strategy. They leverage word-of-mouth, whether it is online or not. Those who figure it out with social media will do well, but those who don't will also do well if they're good at what they do. Why? Because those they serve will talk about them both online and offline - strategy or no strategy.

Social Media can be fool's gold, if you neglect to do quality work in the first place.  Some would argue that you can't survive without Social Media today and that you have to get with the times. For most businesses, I tend to agree. However, I can think of quite a few businesses that are still resisting even the dotcom boom and they are doing better than ever.

It doesn't hurt to have Social Media as a tactic (in fact it helps), but don't let it control your business or your product.

God Understands This (G.U.T.)

This morning a brief discussion took place about how saying "go with your gut," is insulting to the Spirit.  If you subscribe to that thought then when people say "gut," just think of it as an acrostic for God Understands This.

Anyway, it made me think more about each of our own intuitions. Like Malcolm Gladwell suggests in his book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, your gut reaction is made up of a history of experiences that in the blink of an eye gives you a pretty good reason for having a gut feeling that is often times more accurate than not.

I would not deny the power of the Spirit in any circumstance, but I am also not willing sacrifice the idea that God gave us a brain and the ability to grow through our personal experiences. If two people have gut reactions that are opposing views, then which one is of the Spirit?

Nonetheless, we may not understand or know why our gut tells us to react one way instead of another, but then again, that's all the more reason to say "God understands this".