Wisdom & Humility #3

I posted earlier about the connection between wisdom and humility. In order to be wise, we must practice becoming humble. Here’s some advice from Mother Teresa about how to do that:

1. Speak as little as possible of oneself
2. Mind one’s own business
3. Don’t try to manage the affairs of others
4. Avoid curiosity (this is a difficult one for me!)
5. Accept contradiction and correction cheerfully (another hard one)
6. Pass over the mistakes of others
7. Accept insults and injuries
8. Accept being slighted, forgotten and disliked
9. Don’t seek to be specially loved and admired
10. Be kind and gentle even under provocation (oh my!)
11. Never stand on one’s dignity
12. Yield in discussion even though one is right
13. Choose always the hardest

These are not Mother Teresa’s own words, but come from a book she loved, This Tremendous Love (1946) by Dom Eugene Boylan. The only original line is the last, “choose always the hardest.” These words are the lynch pin of the spiritual formation she taught to the sisters of her order, the Missionaries of Charity.

“If you are humble, nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are.” Mother Teresa

For more about humility see these posts:

Litany of Humility

The Gift of Humility

It’s Hard to be Humble!