Cae­sar paid dearly for his lack of humil­ity — 23 times, to be exact.

Liv­ing in a major met­ro­pol­i­tan area as I do, I’m often sur­prised at the sharp con­trasts I see between the peo­ple here and those in the more relaxed Mid­west­ern com­mu­nity where I grew up.  Some of these are positive:

• peo­ple here have a higher level of aware­ness of and respect for other coun­tries and cultures
• there is wide­spread inter­est in phys­i­cal fit­ness and nutri­tion and peo­ple take bet­ter care of themselves
• peo­ple have more moti­va­tion for suc­cess in their pro­fes­sional endeavors

How­ever, one trou­bling thing I have noticed is the abject lack of humil­ity in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Whether in a pro­fes­sional or social set­ting, I’m always floored by how quickly peo­ple will flash their busi­ness card, men­tion the Ivy League school they attended, or nod and smile dur­ing someone’s story and then inter­rupt them to talk about them­selves. But I don’t think these peo­ple are hard-wired to be ego­ma­ni­acs, instead I think they’ve made choices that have caused them to think single-mindedly about their own success.

Indeed, “no man is an island,” and that single-mindedness iso­lates the career-driven per­son from gen­uine social inter­ac­tion, a phe­nom­e­non of which he is prob­a­bly not even aware.

The oper­at­ing assump­tion this sort of per­son is mak­ing seems clear: “in order to be a suc­cess, to achieve great things, I need to act like I’m that impres­sive, and make sure every­one knows it.”  And of course, when you get more than a cou­ple of these peo­ple in a room, inevitable one-ups-manship ensues, to everyone’s disadvantage…

…So what are these hard-working go-getters miss­ing out on?

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