How to Be Down-to-Earth, Not Down On Yourself
How to be Humble While Staying Badass
I never graduated from college. My mother, bless her, when asked what my job is, tells folks that I’m “good with computers.”
This has led to a parade of people asking me to fix their stubborn printers, design business cards, or even spruce up their birthday tarpaulins and company signages.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind helping. It’s just that I’m not exactly the “tech gal.”
Here’s what I really do…
I’m a marketing designer.
I spend my days crafting digital campaigns I hope would become so effective, they’d make even the most seasoned marketers blink twice and question their life choices.
But for everyone at home, I’m just someone who gets her Vitamin D from the computer screen for 12 hours a day.
I wear many hats in this type of work, so I skip the specifics when asked about it. Yet, the temptation to prove myself kicks in from time to time.
I get compared to others a lot.
Cousins who finished college, peers working a stable job at the government, someone’s niece earning 6 figures abroad…
I would be lying if I say that it doesn’t feel like a punch in the gut when the issue of being a dropout resurfaces in the family table.
For someone who’s a little disadvantaged in formal education, that hurts a lot.
At 17, fresh-faced and bursting with ambition, I found myself enrolled in fine arts, with dreams of majoring in advertising. But like any other teenager, I had all the patience of a hungry cat at a fish market.
School? That slow, tedious crawl towards a degree? That wasn’t for me. I wanted to create, to make my mark on the world, right then, right there.
My heart was originally set on being part of the sparkling film industry, but my parents’ pockets were more in tune with the starving artist aesthetic. So, fine arts it was.
But even that felt too slow, too confined. So, I left school and dove into a 10-month web design course, embracing self-education over the traditional pursuit of a degree.
I thought 4 years was too long to wait. I remember thinking “I’d be too old at 21.”
I spent most of my spare time for years on self-education. I found that being an autodidact works better for me. I didn’t realize until later that a degree is a valued status symbol.
If it wasn’t for the friends who trusted me, I wouldn’t have made it in the corporate world without submitting a single resume.
“What a waste of talent, you could’ve done better,”
With pity in my Aunt’s eyes it breaks my heart she had to go through the disappointment of something she completely misunderstood.
But no matter how hard I tried to explain what I do, people who don’t work in the field of marketing and sales won’t budge. One time, I decided to up my explaining game a notch and showed them my website.
“This is what I do,” I said hesitantly. “I make businesses look better and sell more.”
And just like that, I came out boastful.
News spread of my “proud attitude” and folks no longer ask me to fix their printers or design their flyers. Since then, I’ve been wary about coming out proud of what I do, in the strange effort to stay modest.
You know the phrase “don’t toot your own horn?” I was socially tiptoeing not to come out as that.
Over the years, I’ve learned to just suppress my interests in front of relatives. Even to a few friends who are outside the industry I’m in. It came to the point that when asked what I do, I simply respond “I design stuff on the computer.”
I realized that people often glorify modesty and stigmatize pride.
Isn’t pride a mortal sin? However, I was truly proud of the work I do. This work gives me joy.
Since when did I become so self-conscious?
Since when did the fear of being perceived as ‘proud’ overshadow the pride I felt in my work? Since when did I start belittling my own achievements?
It was a sobering realization.
I was so busy trying to appear modest, so worried about what others would think, that I had started to downplay my own success. But why should I? I was proud of my work and rightly so. And it was high time I started showing it.
Because of this ‘modesty’ I was trying to cloak myself in, I allowed people to actually belittle me. Where else would people get the idea that I’m ‘a waste of talent,’ if not from my own fear of being out and proud?
My fake modesty echoed at work, where people don’t really see the value that I do because I avoid taking credit.
I realized then that my constant modesty had begun to feel inauthentic. Like a well-rehearsed script, I had become accustomed to underselling my work, my talent, and my accomplishments.
Just Be Honest
I found out that authenticity is being unapologetic for who I really am.
I was such a people-pleaser that I would belittle myself just to put them on a pedestal and get them to like me.
One day, I observed how my child parades his animations to everyone without shame. That innocent pride, without overthinking other people’s reaction. That’s how proud we all should be. Other people’s wins shouldn’t make us feel small.
Don’t be afraid to be weak. Don’t be too proud to be strong. Just look into your heart my friend, that will be the return to yourself.
The return to innocence.— Enigma, The Return to Innocence
It was a liberating realization.
I could be humble, recognizing that there’s always more to learn and ways to improve, but I could also be proud, celebrating my achievements and the joy that my work brings both to me and others.
This is the honesty I strive for, a life where I am not just the modest ‘computer fixer’ or the simplified ‘graphic designer,’ but a proud marketing creative, unashamed and unapologetic. Even if I’m still learning the ropes.
It’s a process, a journey of self-realization, and every day, I am learning to navigate this balance a little better.
