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How Humility Can Improve Your Writing( Among Other Things)

Writing can be a very rewarding experience, but humility is one of the most important traits to have when you are doing it.

By Aaron DrottsPublished 2 years ago 4 min read
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Writing can be a very rewarding experience, but humility is one of the most important traits to have when you are doing it. That’s because humility makes us realize what we don’t know and how much there still is for us to learn. This means that humility is something that all writers need in order to improve their craft.

A lack of humility can lead any writer to become over-confident in their abilities. That’s not necessarily a good thing since then they start believing that they already know everything they need to about writing or even life.

On the other hand, humility makes it easier for us to accept criticism and use it as an opportunity to grow and improve. Everyone makes mistakes and humility is the willingness to admit that we’ve made them and try to learn from them so we can do better in our future endeavors.

The Benefits of Practicing Humility

In a time when humility seems to be lost upon the world, at least not as commonly observed as it should be, its benefits for your writing should not go unnoticed.

The first way humility can affect your writing is by making you a better listener. One of the biggest problems with being prideful is that we forget those who have wronged us or those whom we consider less than ourselves do not think as we do. By forgetting that other people may have different opinions from our own or having preconceived notions about another person’s before getting to know them simply because of their background or traits, we cut ourselves off from valuable insight. By being a good listener and not shutting oneself off from the world in fear of the unknown, humility can help you become a better writer by allowing others to share their experiences with you.

Another way humility can help improve your writing is by making you more willing to learn. Pride, like humility, has numerous factors that contribute to its nature; yet one thing pride does well is it makes us feel as though we know everything there is to know about something when that may not be true at all. It affects our listening skills because rather than hearing what another person has to say about his/her experience on any given subject, we feel as though they are wrong simply because our opinion is different. By allowing humility to help you become more open-minded, your writing will benefit immensely.

Another way humility can improve your writing is by making you a more creative writer. Pride can sometimes make it difficult for us to take criticism because we feel as though the criticism reflects upon our skill or intelligence rather than simply being feedback about what worked well and what didn’t work well within the given piece. As previously stated, humility allows one to be an excellent listener which enables them to receive this valuable feedback from others in order to better their writing.

A final way humility helps improve your writing is through teaching you that there are other ways to express certain ideas. It could be said that humility teaches us that not everything comes down to black and white or right and wrong, but rather there are varying shades of gray within matters. By realizing that not all points of view are distasteful helps us to think outside the box in order to find other ways to articulate our thoughts.

I Know It Can Be Difficult, But Are You Ready to Start Practicing Humility?

What humility looks like is different for everyone, but it’s something you have to practice if you want to reap these benefits. It’s easy to be humble when things are going our way, but humility requires us to step outside of ourselves and consider other people. You need humility so that you know how much work it takes to produce a good piece of writing. That means trying your best at whatever challenges are placed before you, but also knowing when it would be better to ask for help or pass on an opportunity since humility will prevent you from giving in to hubris. By continually exercising humility in all that we do, writers can improve both their art and their characters.

Knowing yourself is important whether you’re an artist or not, but humility gives us the opportunity we need to pursue self-discovery. Humility also gives us the strength we need to keep going when things get tough and let’s face it: writing isn’t always easy even if you love it. By having humility and practicing humility in all that you do, you can improve your writing and become a better person in every facet of your life.

Through humility, you can improve your writing by becoming a better listener, learning more about the world around you, becoming more creative, and thinking outside the box.

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About the Creator

Aaron Drotts

Digital Marketer | Lifelong Learner | AmeriCorps Alum

I love writing about all the beauties seen and unseen in this world.

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