The education of values in the sports context that we develop in UPAD Psychology and Coaching is always moved by the same contents: respect, companionship, responsibility, effort, humility… Most of these values have such an intuitive name that even the children to whom we instruct in them succeed in giving an improvised definition. However, there is one of them that represents the exception that confirms the rule, and it is none other than humility.

Sometimes even we adults do not know what humility is , and even more so why it can be important in sport or in life, because, as he said, “too much humility is not good”.

What is humility in sports education?

Humility is defined as the knowledge of the scope of one’s abilities, that is, knowing how good we are and what we can improve on . This means that acknowledging personal merit in public is not a lack of humility (perhaps it is a lack of modesty). In fact, an explicit denial of a great achievement can be interpreted, ironically, as a lack of humility.

But then, is it humility to go around telling everyone I came across the great dribble I performed the other day? Is it humility to celebrate a goal by dancing in front of everyone? Is it humility to compare my record with that of a teammate or rival?

We can all quickly understand that, underestimating the merits of another athlete is not a sporting behaviour and, although it may be related to humility, it is perhaps more related to respect.

On the other hand, if we say that to be humble is to be aware of successes as well as of mistakes, it can be deduced that talking about such successes naturally can be related to humility, as long as we do not boast about them. However, the line between bragging and naturalness will always be blurred , so this would be an ambiguous criterion that might be useful to philosophize in this little article, but not to educate, in this very important value, our young sportsmen in training.

The criterion that solves this hole in the definition would be that this knowledge of achievements and skills to be improved, would not depend on the opinion of others. I can make a spectacular play, but if I need to validate it through my team-mates, opponents or spectators, I won’t be humble. If I need to make an exaggerated celebration to get more attention for my goal, I won’t be being humble. If I’m asked by a teammate, opponent, friend (or journalist) about that goal, and I express my honest opinion about it, then I’m being humble. If I celebrate the goal with my team-mates, like everyone else who has scored, then I am being humble.

Therefore, in order to optimize the value of humility, it is important to generate and strengthen self-esteem , since, following the logic of our discourse, it will be a consequence of the latter.

Managing self-esteem

It is common that people who brag most about their achievements, appearance or merits do so masking low self-esteem, as if it were an overcompensation as a defense mechanism. It is true that one of the sources of self-efficacy is the feedback we receive from others, so I can manipulate that feedback, or my perception of it, to protect my self-esteem.

However, the healthiest solution is to achieve a strong self-esteem, which does not need protection and is therefore not dependent on others. Therefore, it is vitally important to educate people in training to obtain such self-esteem through objective data that speak for themselves of their merits, as well as to be very conscientious about how we reinforce the obtaining of such merits .

In this way, if our self-esteem depends exclusively on the goals we achieve and our margin of improvement, we will have a strong self-esteem that does not depend on the valuation of others and, in turn, we will not need to display behaviors contrary to humility to perceive such self-esteem. Therefore, understanding humility in this way, I would say that not only is too much humility good, but it is, above all, healthy.