Thread by @jsmian

Fifteen years ago, I blew my first shot at joining the buy side.

It was the first time I learned about humility. 🧵

1) I was in the final round for an analyst position with CIBC Asset Management in Toronto.

After a candid back and forth, the interviewer posed his final question:

“What’s the most important trait for a successful investing career?”

2) An image of my father flashed into my mind.

“Hard work and discipline,” I replied.

3) The interviewer didn’t seem too pleased with my answer.

Was it too cliché? Did I just expose my inexperience?

4) “What do you think is most important?” I asked back, politely.

5) “Humility,” he said, and nothing more.

I nodded. But the truth is I had no idea what he meant.

6) It was my first time hearing the word.

I linked it to humiliation, and I confused humility with low self-esteem.

7) I was twenty-two, with big plans and places to go.

Being weak or passive wasn’t the path.

How could lowliness be an accomplishment worthy of praise?

8) Anything I came to later understand about the strength of humility was entirely obscured.

9) I didn’t get the job.

And I learned the meaning of humility the hard way when the market snatched my savings in 2008.

I then turned to the sages.

10) When Saint Bernard of Clairvaux was asked to identify the four cardinal virtues, he answered, “Humility, humility, humility, and humility.”

11) Lao Tzu observed all streams flow to the sea because it is lower than they are.

He said, “Humility gives it its power.”

To Emerson, humility was the secret of the wise.

12) There is no simple definition of the virtue—it’s easier to identify what it’s not.

13) Humility is not defined by traits like sincerity, honesty, and unselfishness.

Humility doesn’t mean thinking little of oneself either.

It has nothing do with depreciating our talents in ways we know to be untrue.

14) Outward piety can be deceiving; pride can masquerade as a humble attitude.

To lay claim to humility negates the virtue.

15) Life’s blessings, material or spiritual, are not “acquired goods” from the fruits of one’s own labor.

Rather, they are bestowed by the Almighty.

16) According to St. Augustine, the idea of a great-souled man acting independently of God is the height of arrogance.

17) True humility comes when we have seen ourselves to be nothing and how truly God is everything.

We recognize and place our entire dependance on God.

18) Humility, then, is a disposition.

Like gratitude, it is an interior state that resides in the heart, cultivated by the remembrance and contemplation of God’s majesty.

19) With humility comes an accurate idea of one’s own worth in relation to the divine’s immeasurable stature.

The ego is vanquished.

20) In a way, humility is simply the ability to acknowledge the truth about ourselves. 

The Angel Gabriel counseled the prophets to “humble yourself before your Lord.”

21) In Humility: The Journey Toward Holiness, Andrew Murray writes:

22) I keep returning to humility in different contexts, always finding something new, something more to understand.

23) Follow @jsmian for more infusions of clarity and inspiration.

And get the Stray Reflections book—an antidote to the great angst of modern times. 👇🏼

strayreflectionsbook.com