I was born in a working-class community in Puerto Rico in which people were judged on their integrity.
Integrity being the ability to provide food, shelter, pay off the corner store at the end of the week, and clothe your family. Religion kept the desire for extras at a minimum -- piousness quelled our desire for beautiful expensive things and our mother discouraged us from decorating ourselves. We were not to want ostentatious things, nor were we ourselves to become ostentatious things to become desirable objects.
In order to adhere to religious tenets, which promised safety from harm if we embraced and accepted an austere life, we were encouraged to aim for invisibility. Being invisible was part of having a sense of integrity; if you had your children and wife under control, they were invisible -- not gossip-worthy, but not praise-worthy either.
My experience was very particular. After moving to the South Bronx, I discovered people were not judged on their integrity; they were judged on their ability to earn and buy new things.
The income gradations could be very subtle but people found ways to pounce on each other with criticism and jokes. Shame about poverty was brought into the equation upon our arrival in New York City. The desire for invisibility, which had originally been borne of a need to protect the family's reputation, now shifted to a desire to hide the family's poverty.
In Puerto Rico, surrounded by nature, within walking distance to the beach, listening to the rooster crow in the morning and watching people take fastidious care of their tiny plots of land and no one ever daring to throw garbage on the street was not poverty. We had fresh fish, ate our own organic produce, home-cooked meals, walked to different relatives homes and could leave the house alone to visit a neighbor.
Internalization of your surroundings and fear of ownership of your talents
The streets were filthy, people urinated in the elevator and there was a steady stream of heroin addicts nodding out with arms bleeding and some who used the lobby to shoot up. My mother told me to not look, but I looked because I was born a writer. I had to take notes upon God's recommendation. I looked and saw people doing horrible things to themselves and their loved ones.
Internalization of the ugliness of our surroundings was something everyone did to a certain extent. And this did breed insecurity in all of us to varying degrees; luckily for me, I was able to counter this insecurity with teachers in school calling me a genius. So, I vacillated somewhere between considering myself worthless and considering myself a genius.
Rural Puerto Rican humility/invisibility versus American self-congratulatory Culture
In a new culture, which encouraged us to aim high and aim to be noticed, we became confused.
At home and in the non-community, in the South Bronx, which we now lived, surrounded by insecure people, to speak of my accomplishments was seen as bragging -- an abhorrent thing. To speak of my accomplishments around insecure people who felt they had no accomplishments was asking to be criticized and brought down a notch or beaten up. The honor students were fighting a hard battle and the prison track kids were ones who had been severely beaten down physically, emotionally and psychologically -- they underperformed to save their sanity. The honor students risked their sanity and safety to believe someday, we might be in an environment appreciative of our merits and in which we could express ourselves without fear of criticism or attack.
It was the typical clash of cultures in which one is constantly choosing which aspects serve to move one toward a particular goal.
Choosing to surround yourself with insecure people can prevent you from attaining your goals
If you were trained to believe invisibility, not accomplishing too much or earning too much is somehow safer, you will gravitate toward insecure people. Insecure people do a lot of comparing and become jealous easily. This kind of energy is not conducive to reaching goals, and it is tempting, when surrounded by insecure people, to hold back, not share good news and to generally become a diminished version of yourself in order to not injure. The other temptation is to become the mentor to everyone around you, which is another method to avoid reaching your potential.
What is humility?
In my sometimes humble opinion, humility is acknowledging that our gifts and even the willingness to use them are God-given, treating people with loving kindness and compassion, and being patient with those who have a different knowledge base or who process information differently.
Why are you fearful of reaching your potential?
What stories do you tell yourself about the negative repercussions of high achievement?
What triggers you to sabotage great opportunities?
Would you dare surround yourself with people who are ready and willing to do anything to achieve their goals?
