By Dina Aldabbagh

There is one thing that differentiates those who get what they want and those who don’t: the ability to humble oneself in the pursuit of. This is the valley of humility. Humility…huh. Sounds a bit like humiliation, does it not? That’s what the valley feels like. It feels embarrassing. You feel foolish. Onlookers can comment, loudly and very convincingly, “Why are you even trying?” The ability to be humble is, in other words, the ability to let the ego die. 

That’s what the valley is. Ego can’t survive in the valley of humility — because in the valley you don’t look impressive. You look like someone who is trying, making tons of mistakes, and is still trying to become that thing — but the contrast of where you currently are makes it oh-so clear that you are very much not. Not yet, at least — but so many people never even get past that “not” to realize there is still a “yet.” They think if they’re not already something, they shouldn’t try. This is the ego. 

It’s a paradox: the ego will tell you not to pursue something that you are not already good at because you’ll be humiliated, but the only way to get good at anything is to go through the beginning. The beginning is practice, failure, and learning. practice is humbling, but if you can allow yourself to be bad at something, then you can get really, really good. 

The truth of the matter is that if you’re not good at something, there might be people who make fun of you. This is not necessarily done maliciously, but rather insensitively. And I’ll put this bluntly: these people are not your example, nor the speaker of your life’s verdict. Sometimes, they’re just losers. I’ve never met someone who was successful, classy, and kind who made fun of someone for not being good at something. This is a quality much more aligned with the losers of the world. Because here’s the secret: every successful person ever knows that you must be bad at something before you are good. It’s the precursor. 

The ego wants you to be good at everything right away, or to not do it at all. It hates to be laughed at. Humiliation never feels nice. Humility, however, is the most elevated skill there is. It doesn’t claim to be skilled at something it’s not yet developed, but it takes itself out of the game altogether. Because ego has you in the arena. It has you competing for looks and impressions and other people’s opinions. Humility, however, realizes this is not a game it has to play. Ultimately, humility is self-sovereignty. 

There is no magic in getting what you want out of life — it’s just practice. It’s just a consistently invested effort. That’s it. It’s a small step every day. But this is the hardest part, because it requires you to be not good at something. It requires you to be seen as a novice. as someone who’s trying. which can be humiliating when perceived in a certain way because it can seem like the outcome is uncertain. When someone is trying to be or get something they don’t already have, it highlights their current standing. Which is: not there yet. This is the part that all the people who do not get what they want avoid, and that’s why they’ll never get what they want — not unless they allow themselves to pursue it. 

The pursuit can be seen as humiliating to the unwise. And sometimes the unwise of the world are very, very loud. Humility, however, says to those who try to humiliate, “I don’t care what you say, I’m not trying to impress you. I’m trying to be me.” It’s completely twisted to think one should not pursue anything, but should somehow already be a master at the first step. Do you think you should have come out of the womb a finished product? No. You were meant to develop yourself. You were meant to get smarter, better with people, to learn form. You were meant to practice being yourself. 

You get better with practice, this is certain, but to get better indicates that one is already not at mastery. As such, the metric of success should not be how good you are at something, but the way in which you are improving. 

This is the difference between those who get what they want out of life and those who don’t. Those who get what they want just begin pursuing it. They allow themselves to be seen in their incompleteness. They allow others to see that they’re not fully baked. But here’s the secret: people aren’t looking at you all the time — they just glance — and progress compounds. If you commit yourself everyday to something, sure, someone may look at you the first time and see “not there yet,” but by the time they look at you again, they’ll see “fluent.”

People don’t think about us that much. They’re focusing on themselves. So, sure, they may see you today in a load of imperfection, but if you commit yourself to development in whatever area it is, by the very next time they see you, they will think it was magic. They will say, “Oh, he must have always had it in him,” because to them, the development of this skill or identity happened overnight. It will be from the last time they saw you to now: “quickly.”

Humility is the ability to remove other people’s opinions from the equation. I’ve heard it said that “Humility is not to think less of oneself, but it is to think about oneself less.” As in: less often. Less self-conscious. This is “ego death.” It puts down the conception that you are so central to everyone’s life that they are constantly judging you. And when you can put down the weight and pressure of how you look to others constantly, then you are free to be bad at something. 

Another mistake of the people who don’t get what they want out of life is that they assume that if they’re not already good at it, it’s not for them. They toss on the label immediately, “I’m bad at…golf, volleyball, speaking spanish, etc.” This is a fallacy of the ego. It’s a protective mechanism to shield oneself from the humility of being a foolish beginner — but it lies, because practice doesn’t turn you into something you’re not. Everything you are and are meant to be is in you. Your desire to do or be something already signifies how you are aligned with it. Practice just makes you fluent in yourself — it refines you, not changes you. You are someone who is new to it; you’re not faking it. There is no “imposter” in the room with us, just a beginner. Unfortunately, a beginner and an imposter look a lot alike, so can be confused easily. In truth, they are just seen with a different perspective, and therefore, a different attitude. 

The successful people of the world are the ones who say, “I’m still learning,” not, “I can’t do this.” But the absolute most important skill they have is the ability to humble themselves. If you cannot get through the valley of humility — where you are trying and trying and still not showing up exactly how you wish — then you will never become that thing. You will never gain fluency. 

The trick is that the valley of humility is, in a way, like a false mirror. It makes it look like you’re not progressing at all, but progress compounds — and it does so in an interesting manner. You see, when you’re learning something new, you’re forming all of these new pathways. And for a while, they seem to be chaotic and somewhat unrelated to each other. You’re forming the start of these paths, but they aren’t very long, until, suddenly, the paths get long enough that they connect. Suddenly, an intersection is made between them that synthesizes all of the progress you’ve been doing in all these directions into one, cohesive path. This is that overnight, compounded appearance. 

I was raised speaking Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian, but I was never taught proper grammar. As such, I always made a lot of mistakes that, for a long time, deterred me from speaking with people outside of my family. To the rest of my community, I looked like someone who could understand, but not speak, because I never spoke with them. I realized that I wanted to have proper fluency so I began studying grammar. 

Perhaps you don’t know anything about this more niche language, but essentially in our language we have these things called “cases.” This is essentially the grammatical structure that causes every adjective, adverb, possessive adjective, pronoun, and noun in a sentence to change based on gender, number, and function. Right, so every word in the sentence changes its ending based on its function within that sentence. There are seven cases. There are three genders. There are singular and plural endings. Therefore there are tens of different endings that you have to internalize to be fluent in this language — and of course, you have to be able to do so in real time. 

As I began learning the language properly, I couldn’t make the connection. I kept studying these cases, but nothing was really sticking. I was learning bits and pieces, but it still felt like there was no sense to the madness for me. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, it did all click. They just made sense to me. Consciously, I can’t explain what happened. There wasn’t anything special to that day that I finally understood. I was just studying and, for the first time…just saw it. It was clear. 

All progress happens like this. You can’t predict when you’ll hit your “aha” — your “click” — moment, which is why it’s so humbling. It feels like there’s no click in sight — until it’s right in front of your eyes, clear as day. The uncertainty as to when or where is the heavily humbling part. When you’re putting in constant effort and it feels like it’s to no avail, it makes you question your ability, your methods, and your identity. And you feel very, very exposed. It feels like you’re willingly showing everyone how much you’re not that thing which you want to be. This is the valley of humility. 

People call it the valley of despair, but I believe the more accuration expression is the valley of humility. Because that’s what the valley calls out from you: humility. It calls you to lay down ego. Despair sounds so sad. It’s not sad, it just feels humiliating. That is, if you’re too overattached to your ego. In this period of time, while you’re working hard, seeing no results, and feeling just as lost as ever, it requires humility. 

It requires one to say, “It’s okay if I look foolish right now.” The stoics advise us to be content to appear foolish or stupid. Be content with it, because while you’re in the valley, you will look lost, unorganized, and all over the place. 

I recently began playing tennis, and for some reason, just loved it. I started playing with people and actually did have people make fun of me for my mistakes. In the meantime, I would go to hit with the ball machine and work on my form. One day, as I was practicing my back hand for the first time on the ball machine, an older gentleman asked if he could give me advice. I happily accepted. 

As he was giving me advice, he was kind of ripping into me a bit — just being harsh because of how much my form needed work. I told him something that I’d recommend you to remember when you want to be harsh on yourself: “Take it easy on me, I’m learning.”

The easiest thing to do is to be harsh. Gentleness requires restraint, calm, and perspective. When your inner-critic, or the critics of the world, try to tell you that you’re not good enough, you don’t have it in you, and you should just stop, just remember to say to them, “Take it easy on me, I’m learning.” Because one day you will learn, as long as you don’t stop. Don’t let the fear of humiliation make you stop before you complete your learning arc.