Ericast 284 - Confidence With Humility

You never quite know what's going to drive me back to do a podcast episode, and this week it's a profound throwaway comment from my boss.  Curious?  Here's your show. Website viewers: Click here to listen to this week's episode! Podcast listeners: Click here for a link to the show notes page! Everyone: Call 701-645-ERIC (701-645-3742) and comment "Not since 2011 has the Ericast been confronted with a five-syllabale year! How will we survive 2017?!?" Remember when the world was going to end in 2012?  (or 2000? or 1999?) Exciting task over break: We cleaned up Studio A.  Now featuring "a desk on a desk" "Between the extremes of 'arrogance' and 'self-loathing,' kindness forms a healthy range of 'confidence with humility.'" In the context of conservative religious positions, or some extreme political positions (not necessarily politically conservative) We decided that the right "balance" is to be confident in what you believe you know, but humble enough to know you might be wrong, and that the driving force behind that balance is kindness to keep an open heart and listen to others. Roger Thompson defined balance as something you're always "moving through" -- you never "achieve it".  As a person, that's true -- try standing on one foot.  You're not a pile of rocks on a beach, that are stacked to be balanced and then stay there. The extremes you have to guard against are arrogance on the confidence side, and self-loathing on the humility side. And I'll admit that I'm sufficiently in touch with myself that I've been able to identify both in myself.