Humility and arrogance

The quality or condition of being humble, modest opinion or estimate of one’s own importance, rank, etc.

Humility is very powerful, if you humble yourself towards someone, they will help you with whatever you ask. It is like you are serving the person you are being humble towards.

If a person talks about themselves and shows off about themselves, people will hate them as it makes other people feel small and ignored.

Someone who is sad, bent over, looking up at the other person, hands open in the begging position, it is very powerful.

People become sympathetic, compassionate and want to help someone who is worthy and in such need.

A person is either:
▪self serving by saying how wonderful they are and showing off.
▪serving others, without thinking of, talking and showing off about themselves.  

It all comes down to someone serving others, or serving themselves. 

The most powerful thing is when somebody gives incredible service, but does not run around saying how wonderful they are.

Be careful of mockery though, that people giving you things because you behave like a clown, like an idiot. It is not about putting yourself down, it is about not showing off.

However be careful of using humility to get things, if someone feels sorry for you, and you are getting sympathy, compassion and they are giving things to you. It does not mean they want to be with you and probably will not want to be with you. Just like how out of charity people will give things to a beggar in the street, but not want to be with.

Arrogance

Although a person should think they are good and capable. A person should not think they are better than others just for their own satisfaction, especially if results in life show that they are not.

People want to win, be the best, so they want to think they are better than others. They think they are better than others, just because they like it and so indulge in that thinking.

This is especially dangerous as it prevents them from learning things from other people who actually are better than them. They think they are better than people who are actually better than them. As a result they do not learn from those other people.

Coping mechanism

Arrogance, showing off, talking about oneself and putting down others, is often a wall used by rubbish people to defend themselves as they cannot cope with not thinking they are better than others.

They are too nervous to let go of this rubbish and just be themselves.

They cannot cope with just being themselves, so they falsely fantasise and pretend they are better than others, to be able to cope.

However this creates a wall between them and other people, which leads to them not being able to communicate through that wall. People can only connect with other people and others respond to them if there is the real person.

Being humble does lead a person to be open to other people, at the mercy of others and many people cannot cope with that.

So need to be humble with God and with good people, but not so much with bad people as need to protect oneself.