Have you noticed how easily some people bounce back from losses? They learn from them and become even better than they were before! Meanwhile, others seem to fail, fall, and never get back up again. After they experience something negative, you can actually see the downward spiral starting. And no matter how much you want to help them, you can’t. They just don’t learn from their mistakes.
What is the difference between these two kinds of people? I believe it isn’t due to timing, social status, the degree of adversity, or anything else outside of their control. The difference is on the inside. It’s the spirit of an individual. Those who profit from adversity possess a spirit of humility and are therefore inclined to make the necessary changes needed to learn from their mistakes, failures, and losses. They stand in stark contrast to prideful people who are unwilling to allow adversity to be their teacher and as a result fail to learn.
Everyone experiences adversity. Some people are made humble by it. Others are made hard. And they carry that spirit with them everywhere they go. For those who allow themselves to become hard, that’s tragic because it’s very difficult for a hard person to learn anything.
Ezra Taft Benton observed, “Pride is concerned about who’s right. Humility is concerned about what’s right.” That’s a pretty accurate description. Pride causes people to justify themselves, even when they know they’re wrong. And that’s just the start! Take a look at the negative impact pride can have on a person:
Do any of those descriptions apply to you? I’m sorry to say that in my formative years of leadership, I did not possess the humility needed to fill me with the spirit of learning. In fact, I was just the opposite: I was prideful, I was competitive, and I always wanted to win. And when I won, I was insufferable. If I beat someone, I told him I won. And I told everyone he knew that I had won. I put everyone on edge. What’s worse is that I wasn’t even aware of it. I didn’t realize how unteachable I was until my friends gave me the gift of a T-shirt that read, “It’s hard to be humble when you’re as great as I am.” Everyone laughed as they presented it to me, but internally I suspected they were trying to speak truth into my life.
Later I went to one of the presenters and asked if I really was that way.
“Yes,” she said, “that’s who you are. But we love you and know you can change.”
That opened my eyes. Her kind words connected with me and convicted me. And I decided to try to change my attitude from expert to learner.
That decision took a long time to implement—two or three years. Arrogant people don’t get humble quickly. But it was the beginning of a change in me, a desire to embrace a humility that makes learning possible. I’m still confident, but I work every day to keep that confidence from becoming a barrier to my ability to learn.
You may already be a humble person who possesses the spirit of learning. If so, that’s fantastic. But if you don’t, here’s the good news: you can change. If I did, then you can, too. If you’re not sure where you stand in regard to humility—if your friends haven’t given you the T-shirt—then perhaps this can help you. Kirk Hanson, university professor and executive director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, offers a list of characteristics exhibited by unteachable leaders. He says these characteristics are often the Achilles’ heel of leaders. I believe they also apply to everyone who does not possess the spirit of learning. I’ve altered his points slightly, stating them as questions so that you can ask yourself which apply to you.
If you answer yes to many of these questions, you may not possess the spirit of learning. Please don’t be discouraged. If you have gotten off to a bad start, don’t worry. You can change. Remember, it’s the finish, not the start, that counts the most in life.
People with a lot of talent often perform at a high level, but the greatest—the absolute best of the best—achieve the highest heights because they possess the spirit of learning. I was reminded of this recently when I learned about a story from the early life of one of my heroes: John Wooden. The former UCLA basketball coach is a legend. He’s won every award and received every accolade in his profession. He was the first person named to the Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach.1
Wooden was highly talented—so talented, in fact, that he was in danger of being prideful and unteachable. Growing up, he was always the best player on his team, and he went on to lead his high school team to three state championships. But he was fortunate to learn a lesson early on that helped him to develop a spirit of humility. Wooden explained,
I had forgotten my uniform and did not want to run the mile or so back to our farm to retrieve it before that afternoon’s basketball game. Besides, I was the best player on our team—I was sure there was no way Coach was going to bench me. I was wrong.
When it came clear that I would not be allowed to play without the uniform, I talked a teammate into going home to fetch it for me. After all, I was the star, right? Why shouldn’t I be allowed to ask a favor or two from the benchwarmers? With that attitude, it’s no wonder that the game started without me in it. When I tried to reason with Coach, pleading with him to let me play because it was clear we were outmatched with our new starting lineup, he told me very simply, “Johnny, there are some things more important than winning.”
Some things more important than winning? Not many coaches could convince a thirteen-year-old boy to believe that. But as I sat miserably on the bench, watching my team fall farther and farther behind, I started to realize that maybe Coach Warriner was right. Maybe I did need to be taken down a notch or two. As I grew up and that experience stayed with me, I really came to appreciate its significance. The life lessons in responsibility and humility that I needed to learn trumped a hatch mark in the loss column of a grade school-league record book. And at the start of the second half, Coach let me in the game.2
As a boy of thirteen, Wooden possessed all of the qualities Kirk Hanson says arrogant leaders possess. He thought he was better than others, that he didn’t have to play under the same rules as everyone else, that the team couldn’t do without him, that he was the team. Fortunately, he had a coach who believed there are things more important than winning, such as learning. And fortunately for Wooden, he learned the lesson early in life.
I believe that’s one of the key things that made him great. That lesson in humility influenced Wooden in his life and coaching and made him a lifetime learner. His spirit of learning allowed him to ask questions that many coaches were unwilling to ask. It compelled him to make changes others were unwilling to make. It inspired him to hold on to values that others were tempted to compromise. It empowered him to model graciousness in victory that others rarely do. It’s the reason he wanted to be remembered, not for his championships, but as someone who did his best to teach his players about the important things in life.
John Wooden understood that sometimes you win, sometimes you learn—but only when you possess a humble spirit. Humility is foundational to all people who learn from their wins and losses. It is a key to success at the highest level.
What? you may be thinking. I disagree! I can name a dozen people who’ve achieved big things with arrogant attitudes. So can I. But what might they have achieved had they possessed the spirit of learning? Perhaps they would have been even greater. Humility opens the door to learning and to ever higher levels of achievement. Here’s why:
Author and business consultant Ken Blanchard says, “Humility does not mean you think less of yourself. It means you think of yourself less.” When we are focused too much on ourselves, we lose perspective. Humility allows us to regain perspective and see the big picture. It makes us realize that while we may be in the picture, we are not the entire picture.
I’ve had the privilege on occasion to spend time with Billy Graham. His accomplishments as a religious leader are legendary. That could make a person lose perspective, yet it doesn’t seem to have affected him. What has always stood out to me above his accomplishments is his humility. His spirit is typified by an incident that once occurred on an elevator. Another person recognized him, and asked, “You’re Billy Graham, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Graham replied.
“Well,” the man said, “you are truly a great man.”
“No, I’m not a great man,” responded Graham. “I just have a great message.”
When we possess a spirit of pride rather than humility, it clouds our view of ourselves and the world around us. Pioneering psychiatrist Carl Jung said, “Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, ‘Something is out of tune.’ ”
When lack of humility makes us “out of tune” within ourselves, the world gets out of focus. We lose perspective and have difficulty learning. How can we discover our shortcomings or the things we need to learn when we can’t see them?
Humility opens our eyes and broadens our view. Because we aren’t focused on justifying ourselves or looking good, we have better judgment. Baseball great Lou Brock said, “Show me a guy who is afraid to look bad, and I’ll show you a guy you can beat every time.” Why? Because his eyes are closed to everything around him.
An accurate view of ourselves is difficult to obtain and even harder to keep. Humility helps. John Wooden understood this, and he worked to help his players keep a humble perspective. He didn’t want them to get tripped up by either criticism or praise. He knew that whether it was deserved or undeserved, they would always hate the criticism and love the praise.
“Your strength as an individual,” Wooden used to tell them, “depends on how you respond to both criticism and praise. If you let either one have any special effect on you, it’s going to hurt us…. You have little control over what criticism or praise outsiders send your way. Take it all with a grain of salt. Let your opponent get all caught up in other people’s opinions. But don’t you do it.”3
Humility fosters an agenda of seeing things as they really are, of learning, and of the desire to improve. Where pride fosters close-mindedness and always seeks to justify itself, humility fosters open-mindedness and a desire to improve. Humility puts things in perspective, and if we let it, it also helps us to have a better sense of humor.
Winston Churchill, one of Great Britain’s greatest prime ministers, was once asked, “Doesn’t it thrill you to know that every time you make a speech, the hall is packed to overflowing?”
“It’s quite flattering,” replied the statesman. “But whenever I feel that way, I always remember that if instead of making a political speech I was being hanged, the crowd would be twice as big.”4
When people are humble enough to have a clear and realistic view of themselves, their vision is usually also clear and realistic when they face their mistakes, failures, and other losses. That ability to see clearly sets them up to learn and grow. Success lies not in eliminating our troubles and mistakes but in growing through and with them. Elbert Hubbard described the opposite when he said, “A failure is a man who has blundered but is not able to cash in on the experience.”
How does a humble person learn from mistakes? By pausing and reflecting. I strongly believe that experience isn’t the best teacher; evaluated experience is. I learned this lesson from the Book of Ecclesiastes, which states, “In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider.”5 It’s believed that Ecclesiastes was written by King Solomon of Israel, said to be the wisest man who ever lived. When someone with that kind of wisdom speaks, we’d all do well to listen.
Wisely humble people are never afraid to admit they were wrong. When they do it’s like saying they’re wiser today than they were yesterday. And of course there are other side benefits. As the great American novelist Mark Twain quipped, “Always acknowledge a fault frankly. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.”
Mistakes can often be our best teachers. If we are willing to admit them and learn from them, we gain in knowledge and wisdom. We can do so if every time we take time to reflect on them by asking:
What went wrong?
When did it go wrong?
Where did it go wrong?
Why did it go wrong?
How did I contribute to making it go wrong?
What can I learn from this experience?
How will I apply what I’ve learned in the future?
Asking such questions can be a slow and uncomfortable process, especially for action-oriented people. But it always pays off. Humanity is filled with mistakes. Humility allows us to learn from them.
My grandson John, the son of my son Joel and his wife Liz, is a wonderful child. (I’d say that even if he weren’t my grandchild!) He’s very smart, but he also tends to be a bit serious and perfectionistic. To help him with this, his parents bought him a book entitled Mistakes That Worked by Charlotte Foltz Jones. They read through it together, and it helps him to understand that he doesn’t need to be perfect to be successful.
In the book, Jones writes,
Call them accidents. Call them mistakes. Even serendipity.
If the truth were known, we might be amazed by the number of great inventions and discoveries that were accidental, unplanned and unintentional.
The inventors mentioned in this book were not only smart, but also alert. It is easy to fail and then abandon the whole idea. It’s more difficult to fail, but then recognize another use for the failure….
The inventors and discoverers mentioned in this book should teach all of us the lesson stated best by Bertolt Brecht in 1930: “Intelligence is not to make no mistakes. But quickly to see how to make them good.”6
One of John’s favorite stories in the book is about pharmacist John Pemberton of Atlanta, Georgia. In 1886, the pharmacist wanted to develop a new remedy for prospective customers. He had already invented “French Wine Coca—The Ideal Nerve Tonic, Health Restorer and Stimulant,” “Lemon and Orange Elixir,” and “Dr. Pemberton’s Indian Queen Magic Hair Dye.” This time he created a new medicine to relieve exhaustion, aid the nervous, and soothe headaches.
Pemberton was happy with his product, a syrup that he mixed with water and served chilled. But then a happy accident occurred. Pemberton’s assistant accidentally mixed the concoction with soda water. The drink was transformed. Pemberton wasn’t too proud to admit that his original vision for the drink was inferior to his assistant’s creation, and as a result, he decided not to sell it as a medicine, but instead as a fountain drink. He named it Coca-Cola.7 Today, Coca-Cola is the most popular soft drink in the world.
That brings us to the final way that a humble spirit of learning helps us—by allowing us to make the most out of our mistakes and failures. Novelist Mark Twain was once asked to name the greatest of all inventors. His reply: “Accidents.” His answer is clever, but it also reveals a great truth. When we’re humble, we are open to seeing our mistakes as possibilities for innovation and success.
History is filled with accounts of scientists and inventors who made mistakes that turned into great discoveries. In 1839, Charles Goodyear was conducting experiments with rubber. The substance, derived from tree sap, had been known for centuries. People had tried to put it to practical use, but when hot it melted and when cold it shattered. Good-year tried mixing it with various substances, but none transformed it into a usable substance. Then one day he accidently dropped some rubber mixed with sulfur on a hot kitchen stove. The heat made the rubber firm and flexible. Even cold air didn’t make it brittle. Goodyear’s mistake helped him transform rubber into the substance used in so many products and industries today.8
Cellophane is another substance discovered by accident. Swiss textile engineer Jacques Brandenberger wanted to develop a waterproof cloth after seeing a bottle of wine spilled on a tablecloth. The coating he created was too stiff and brittle to be practical. But Brandenberger discovered that the transparent film peeled off of the fabric in whole sheets. By 1908 he developed a machine that could produce those sheets.9
Penicillin was also the result of a mistake. When researcher Alexander Fleming accidentally introduced mold into the flu culture in one of his petri dishes in 1928, he didn’t deride his sloppy efforts. He studied the results. He isolated and identified the mold, which led to the creation of the vaccine that has saved countless lives.
The cooking power of microwaves was discovered when an engineer mistakenly melted a chocolate bar in his pocket using them. Teflon was discovered when a researcher working on refrigerants left out a sample overnight by mistake. Post-it notes were developed because of a mistake developing a new adhesive.
If you bring the right spirit to your work, you can turn a mistake into an opportunity. Success and fame don’t always come to the most talented people. Sometimes they come to the person who can turn adversity into advantage. Or, as John Kenneth Galbraith says, “If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.”
I love the story of humility contained in the life of the person who has been called an American Renaissance man. His first love was art, and he grew up wanting to be a painter. But he had a learner’s mind-set and a humble spirit, which fed his curious mind and made his interests vary widely. At Yale he studied religious philosophy, mathematics, and science, graduating at age nineteen. Having finished his formal education, his parents insisted that he become a bookseller’s apprentice. But his primary passion was painting. He tried to convince his parents to allow him to go abroad to train as an artist. After a year, they finally relented, sending him to England to study painting. He excelled. A plaster sculpture he created won a gold medal at the Adelphi Society of Arts, and a large canvas he painted received critical acclaim at the Royal Academy.
Upon his return to the United States, he opened a studio in Boston and became a respected painter traveling from town to town, seeking commissions to paint portraits. While in Concord, New Hampshire, he met a girl whom he wrote to tell his parents about in a letter dated August 20, 1816:
My Dear Parents,
I write you a few lines just to say I am well and very industrious, next day after to-morrow I shall have rec.’d 100 dollars, which I think is pretty well for 3 weeks, I shall probably stay here a fortnight from yesterday; I have other attractions beside money in this place; do you know the Walkers of this place, Chas. Walker the son of Judge W. has two daughters, the eldest very beautiful, amiable, and of an excellent disposition…. I may flatter myself but I think I might be a successful suitor; you will perhaps think me a terrible harum scarum fellow, to be continually falling in love in this way, but I have a dread of being an old bachelor and I am 25 years of age; there is still no need of hurry the young lady is but 16.10
He was madly in love. Less than a month later, he followed up the first letter to his parents with an update. He wrote,
Every thing is successful beyond my most sanguine expectations, the more I know her the more amiable she appears, she is very beautiful, and yet no coquetry, she is modest quite to diffidence and yet frank and open hearted, whenever I have enquired concerning her I have invariably heard the same character of remarkably amiable, modest, and of a sweet disposition. When you learn that this is the case, I think you will not accuse me of being hasty in bringing the affair to a crisis. I ventured to tell her my whole heart, and I found instead of obscure and ambiguous answers, which some would have given to tantalize & pain one, she frankly but modestly and timidly, told me it was mutual, suffice it to say we are engaged;… never was a human being so blest as I am, and yet what an ungrateful wretch have I been; Pray for me that I may have a grateful heart for I deserve nothing but adversity, and yet have the most unbounded prosperity.11
She waited for him for two years, and on September 29, 1818, they were married. Nearly a year later, they had their first child, a girl.
As their family grew, so did his success as a painter. He painted important people such as inventor Eli Whitney, Yale president Jeremiah Day, writer and lexicographer Noah Webster, the Marquis de Lafayette, and United States president James Monroe. Meanwhile he still cultivated his love for invention and innovation. He and his brother developed a water pump for fire engines, which they patented but could not make profitable. He also invented a marble-cutting machine to carve sculptures, but was unable to patent it.
He seemed to be well on his way. Then in 1825, while he was working on a painting in New York, he received a letter from his father saying that his wife was ill. The man rushed home, but by the time he got there, his wife had already died. He was devastated by her loss. What made it even worse was that by the time he got home, she had already been buried. He hadn’t even been able to attend the funeral.
The man’s name was Samuel F. B. Morse. He recovered from his grief over his wife’s death, but his frustration over the slow speed of communication stayed with him. As a result, he began learning about electricity and electromagnetism. And in 1832, he conceived of a device capable of sending messages by wire over long distances. He also began formulating a code comprised of dots and dashes that could be used to communicate.
The early 1800s was a time of experimentation and rapid advances in electricity. Morse humbly learned about others’ advances and studied their inventions. He modified his designs several times. By 1838, he was demonstrating his communication device, which he called the telegraph. The invention of that device, along with the code that carries his name, is what Morse became known for. It brought the world into the modern era of communication. Where once it took days, weeks, or months to communicate with others far away, thanks to Morse it took minutes. The technology changed the world.
Morse received many honors from his invention of the telegraph, but he was always very humble about it. He once said, “I have made a valuable application of electricity not because I was superior to other men but solely because God, who meant it for mankind, must reveal it to someone and He was pleased to reveal it to me.”12 With that attitude, no wonder he was able to bounce back from his losses, learn, and grow. He possessed the spirit of learning. And we would do well to obtain it too.
Novelist J. M. Barrie observed, “The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.” That has been true for me. In many ways, I’ve fallen short of what I would have liked to do and be. However, in the hour when we compare what we desired to do with what we have actually done, if we are humble and open to the lessons life offers to teach us, we increase the odds of our success. And knowing that we have tried our best, perhaps we will be content with what we have been able to become and to accomplish.