When does ego begin and self-respect end? When does the sibling called ‘humility’ come to chime in?

Having humility, being humble…. I get that they are virtues to live by. But when a job offers you to take a 50, 60 or 80% pay cut from what you believe your market rate should be and people around you tell you to be humble and take the pay cut… is it ego to think you are worth more or is it self-respect? Maybe a bit of both because the ego isn’t always the enemy.

To think you can beat the statistical odds and successfully build a business, I wager you’d need a bit of ego. There probably is a bit of ego to believe you can get into some elite institution, incubator, or prestigious company. I daresay, ego can’t be all bad if it lets you achieve the feats you desire. Whether they are games worth playing and feats worth achieving are different questions.

But when and how do you balance having humility and putting down the ego without losing any self-respect? I don’t think anyone knows. It probably depends on each situation.

However, a litmus test could be the point when you feel you can live with it. This might sound rather strange and ineffective because what if someone is so egotistical and has absolutely no humility? That’s fine because no amount of people telling the individual to be humble will make a shred of difference. Rather, continuously making decisions one can live with will probably guide them down the road of rebalancing ego and humility.

My humility might look egotistical to someone else. I’m learning that’s fine because I shouldn’t care. It’s my life and those I think have too much ego don’t care what I think either. Strangers can tell me I should be more humble when weighing options but if that makes it agonizing for me to live, then it’s probably not the right decision for me. Even if it ends up costing me financially and socially….when at a crossroads…I think I should choose the path of self-respect. To make decisions I can live with.

Ego and humility is something others will judge with as something I have and/or lack. So there is a social cost but there are plenty of people in the world. But self-respect is something only I can give myself so it only seems to make sense I always make a decision in favour of that. Granted, this doesn’t mean it’ll lead to positive results. But shockingly, I don’t think life is about making the “right” decisions for the outcome’s sake. I think making decisions focused on maintaining self-respect requires a lot of introspection. One that improves with practice and will eventually lead to a positive balance of humility and ego over time.

Life is about making an endless amount of mistakes and I think the focus is to strive to make decisions I can live with. I’ll probably regret an endless amount of things so the focus is to try and minimize it. It sounds frank and obvious but it seems to always feel like you’re caught in a shit storm that knows no end. At the very least, making the decision I know I can live with puts the onus on me to learn when I’m in a shit storm.