A parent asked me the other day how he can make his child more humble.
His child was starting to do things like say how much better he was than his dad and ignore his dad’s advice because he thought he knew better—and it was starting to cross the line from confident to cocky.
Telling him to just “be humble,” in my experience, wouldn’t do much good.
The way I look at it is like this: if confidence is success remembered… then cockiness is a disproportionate amount of success remembered compared to failures.
What I told him to try… is exposing him to more failures. Which might not sound like something a father would ever want to do to their son… but it’s exactly what builds humility—particularly in cocky individuals.
I told him to try having him learn a brand new skill… or a complicated sports move… or an advanced martial arts kick. And to have him do it while he’s surrounded by a group of kids who are better than him.
…Let him not be the best one in the room for a while. Let him struggle in front of his peers. Let him learn how to ask the other kids for help. Let him remember what it’s like to be on the other side of the learning curve again. Let him do the things he had to do as a beginner again—the things that got him as good as he got in the first place that he was forgetting about and taking for granted.
Let him learn… how to learn again.