I had the privilege of interviewing Ed Hess, the author of Humility is the New Smart.
We discussed the premise of his book: the many reasons why humility is the key to succeeding in what Ed calls the “Smart Machine Age.”
He has a section in the book about the importance of quieting your ego. This led me to ask him what the role of pride is as we move into a future more and more dominated by machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Ed thought for a moment and said, “You need to take pride in your humility.”
Needless to say, I loved this answer.
It’s primility in a nutshell.
Recall that Ed’s definition of humility is:
… a mindset about oneself that is open-minded, self-accurate, and ‘not all about me,’ and that enables one to embrace the world as it ‘is’ in the pursuit of human excellence.
Humility is the New Smart
If we take pride in cultivating this kind of mindset, then we are taking pride in being open-minded, in being self-accurate, in thinking about others, in being a good listener, and in being a lifelong learner, and so on.
This will work because practicing these humility behaviors will allow us to attain the kind of status indicators — success, security, wealth, etc. — that pride evolved to help propel us toward (as we learned from Jessica Tracy in Take Pride).
In one brief sentence, Ed defined better primility better than I ever have.
“Take pride in your humility.“
There’s your simple framework for a meaningful life.
