Humility and the Healthy Ego

Part 3, Identity and Transcendence

The argument I've made in this series is that the empirical research into humility opened up a doorway into the healthy ego, but that positive psychologists conflated health and humility. To be sure, as we've described over the last two posts, the healthy ego is humble, but it's health that is producing these ego effects.

If that is so, what is the health at the source of humility? What makes an ego quiet, other-oriented, small, self-forgetful, and non-reactive in the face of ego threats? In the last two posts I've pointed toward having a secure, stable, and grounded identity.

But what does it mean to have a secure and grounded identity? In The Shape of Joy I point to mattering, an unshakeable conviction of our value and worth. This was Brené Brown's big discovery concerning how mattering, feeling oneself to be worth of love and belonging, was the only variable she could find that conferred shame-resiliency. Brown's observation about the link between mattering and shame converges upon what we've reviewed over the last two posts. Shame is triggered by ego threats. We feel unmasked and exposed by our faults and failures. That fear of exposure causes us to hide from others and ourselves. But if one possesses mattering, a durable and unshakable conviction of worth, one can "dare greatly" in allowing our mistakes, faults, imperfections, and fallibilities to show. And it's precisely this willingness to be imperfect before others that gets described as a characteristic of humble people. So you can see the linkages here: Mattering, shame-resiliency in the face of ego threats, and the humility to let others see your faults, failures, and imperfections. It's all connected.

And yet, isn't this a bit of a chicken and egg problem?

Mattering is the antidote to shame, but isn't shame the feeling that you don't matter? As Brown describes, shame is the feeling that "I'm bad," the very opposite of mattering. If so, how do I get to mattering in the midst of shame? I highlight the psychological circularity between shame an mattering in The Shape of Joy to raise the crucial question: If not from our self-assessment, what is the source of our mattering? In the face of my shame, where does this conviction that we are worthy of love and belonging come from?

The argument I make in The Shape of Joy, following where the arrows of positive psychology are pointing, is transcendence. Mattering is a metaphysical conviction. Which is why psychologists describe mattering as cosmic significance or existential significance. Mattering is an ontological truth. Which necessarily pushes us into faith and spirituality. Just like it did for Brené Brown. As a transcendent truth, mattering isn't available to material or scientific observation. Our cosmic significance must be simply asserted and claimed in an act of ontological faith. This is what separates mattering from self-regard. Self-regard is subjective, self-generated, and self-referential. This makes self-regard both unstable and exhausting, in constant need of attention, maintenance , and rehabilitation. Mattering, by contrast, is objective, what I call in The Shape of Joy an "invisible fact." As an ontological conviction mattering is constant, stabilizing, and grounding.

This is the story I tell in The Shape of Joy, how mental health is inherently a spiritual journey, away from self-referentiality toward transcendence. As described in this series, humility flows out of a healthy ego, and a healthy ego is grounded and stabilized by a transcendent source of unconditional value and worth.