two teen girls on couch

Humility

Skill-building

Staying humble goes hand-in-hand with being curious.

By cultivating a mindset of humility, we’re able to accept that we don’t know everything—and we especially don’t know everything about another person’s experience. Humility also allows us to own when we’ve made a mistake. There can be a false assumption that being humble means being “weak.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Humility means you are strong enough to admit you don’t know everything. Humility is critical when it comes to big feelings and difficult situations.

The Key is Compassion

This short clip from Speaking Grief, Grief Advocate and Educator Alesia Alexander, describes the importance of humility and compassion (for self and others).

Offering support to someone you care about is a continuous work in progress. Something you can do to help guide a kid or teen through the discomfort around these situations is to normalize mistakes. Assure them that, even when we have the best intentions, we sometimes get things wrong, and that is okay.

Coaching Humility

Consider sharing an example from your own life of when you accidentally said or did something that hurt someone you intended to help.

Turn Compassion Inward

Self-compassion is a must when it comes to supporting someone through difficult times. Be curious about your own thoughts, feelings, and behavior instead of judging yourself to cultivate self-compassion.

Self-judgement

“I feel like an idiot for what I said.”

Self-compassion

“I wonder why I reacted the way I did.”

Self-judgement

“I’m a bad person for reacting that way.”

Self-compassion

“What was going on for me when I reacted like that?”

Self-judgement

“I should have known better.”

Self-compassion

“I did the best I could with what I knew at the time.”

Sharing What You Know

Humility doesn't just help you improve your efforts to support someone; it also helps you guide the kids and teens in your life as they work to learn these skills. The very act of being honest with them and sharing that, even as an adult, you don’t always know that you’re doing helps normalize that it’s okay to admit when you feel unsure about something.