272. From Rumination and Defending to Right-Sizing: Recapping the Science & Tips to Build Humility for Mental Health & Wellbeing

June 24, 2026

Humility is one of the most quietly powerful practices for positive psychology and mental health. It's also one of the most misunderstood. Here's the heart of it: humility is not a weakness. It's not about making yourself small or performing modesty for social approval. It's an accurate, grounded sense of self, what Dr. Daryl Van Tongeren calls "right-sizing." You own your strengths and weaknesses. And you hold your worth steady through all of it.

We explored four types of humility this month: relational, intellectual, cultural, and existential. And we worked through three core ingredients to build humility up:

Know Yourself. This is where self-compassion becomes essential. Self-knowledge without self-compassion tends to slide into rumination — that harsh, looping self-focus that keeps us stuck. Dr. Kristin Neff's research reminds us that genuine self-reflection requires feeling safe enough to look clearly, without bracing for an attack. When self-compassion is in place, honest self-awareness becomes possible. So does recognizing things like the better-than-average effect, which is our tendency to unconsciously and inaccurately position ourselves as a little more right, and others a little more wrong. Humility gently corrects that drift.

Check Yourself. This is ego territory. When we feel threatened, the ego rises up. We deflect, deny, shut down, intellectualize. It's a very human, very normal response. But it doesn't have to run the show. One of the most practical tools from this series: when you feel defensive, pause. Breathe. Then ask yourself, "What would I think if I weren't feeling defensive?" That question can create some space for the ego to stand down and lets emotional regulation take over instead of reactivity.

Go Beyond Yourself. This is where the magic of humility really shows itself as we build a genuine curiosity about other people and life's bigger questions. The self-forgetfulness that C.S. Lewis describes as essential to humility puts it all into action. When we're not so consumed by ourselves, the world opens up. And that's where connection, meaning, and joy actually show up in more noticeable, lasting ways.

If you've worked through this series and feel less certain than when you started, that's not a problem. That's the practice of humility in action. Sitting with uncertainty, tolerating what's unresolved, resisting the cultural pressure toward easy answers and performed confidence is peak courage. It's often uncomfortable and it's always worth it.

If this work has stirred something that feels bigger than you want to carry alone, please reach out to a therapist, a trusted friend, or a support community. Seeking support isn't weakness. It's an act of humility and one of the most courageous things you can do.

And for Joy Lab Program members: your Episode Experiment includes a guided meditation and journal prompts to help you harvest and integrate the work you've done this month.

We close with Rilke (we know, we close with Rilke a lot!): "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves."

Keep tending to your humility. It grows good things.

About: The Joy Lab Podcast is an Ambie-nominated podcast that blends science and soul to help you cope better with stress, anxiety, and depression. It's hosted by integrative psychiatrist Dr. Henry Emmons and holistic mental health researcher Dr. Aimee Prasek. The podcast is best paired with the Joy Lab Program (get your 7-day free trial!). Bonus: spread some joy and keep this podcast ad-free by donating (Joy Lab is powered by the nonprofit Pathways North and your donations are tax-deductible).

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Sources and Notes for our Element of Humility:

Joy Lab Program: Take the next leap in your wellbeing journey with step-by-step practices to help you build and maintain the elements of joy in your life. Start your 7-day free trial now.

Episodes in this Humility series:

Book: Humble by Daryl Van Tongeren, PhD
Tara Brach's website
Find more about Neff's work on Self-compassion at Self-Compassion.org
More on C.S. Lewis from the C.S. Lewis Foundation.
Hagá & Olson. ‘If I only had a little humility, I would be perfect’: Children’s and adults’ perceptions of intellectually arrogant, humble, and diffident people. Access here.
Nielsen & Marrone. Humility: Our current understanding of the construct and its role in organizations. Access here.
Porter et al. Predictors and consequences of intellectual humility. Access here.
Van Tongeren et al. Humility. Access here.
Weidman et al. The psychological structure of humility. Access here.
Wright et al. The psychological significance of humility. Access here.
Wendell Berry's book Standing by Words

Common Questions:

Q: How do I stop being so hard on myself without losing self-awareness? A: Self-compassion and self-knowledge are partners. As researcher Dr. Kristin Neff puts it, "You can look clearly at yourself when you're not afraid of what you'll find." Self-compassion creates the psychological safety for honest, accurate self-appraisal, replacing harsh rumination with compassionate self-reflection. Humility is the result: an accurate, grounded sense of self that's neither inflated nor deflated.

Q: Why does being humble feel so uncomfortable and countercultural? A: Because in many ways, it is. We live in a world that often rewards certainty, self-promotion, and being right, even when those things don't actually nourish us. Building humility means opening up to uncertainty and the unknown, which takes real courage. The good news is that discomfort is also building something called uncertainty-tolerance, a form of emotional resilience that reaches across every area of your life in really nourishing ways.

Key moments:

[00:00] Welcome & orientation — Aimee frames the three-part humility arc (Know Yourself → Check Yourself → Go Beyond Yourself)

[01:30] Henry's realization: humility, like every Joy Lab Element, is ultimately about learning to love well and connect more deeply

[03:00] Why humility is the antidote to loneliness — the difference between being surrounded by people and being genuinely seen; how isolation is really a form of alienation

[05:00] What it feels like to be with a truly humble person — and why humility makes us safer, more trustworthy, and more magnetic in relationships and communities

[06:30] The traffic circle of defensiveness — Aimee on why the risk of being burned by someone is still better than a lifetime of self-protective looping

[07:30] Epistemic humility explained — the idea that your understanding of reality is always partial, always filtered, always a vantage point. And so is everyone else's. (Plus: a pronunciation debate.)

[08:45] Why disagreement doesn't mean someone is wrong, and how truth is larger than any one person's grasp of it

[10:30] William James on the deepest craving in human nature: to be appreciated and seen

[11:00] Two practical strategies for going beyond yourself: (1) deep, active listening as a humility practice — not formulating your response, but truly receiving another person; (2) seeing the innocence of others

[12:30] Thich Nhat Hanh: "Listen until they empty their hearts." Henry shares this as a guide for showing up and listening

[13:30] Seeing the innocence in others — Henry's 30+ years of clinical wisdom distilled: most people are doing the best they can with what they have, right now. How holding that awareness softens judgment without eliminating boundaries

[15:30] Aimee reflects: "That's the wisdom I'd want somebody to hold when they see me messing up."

[16:00] Experiment preview for Joy Lab Program members + closing Rumi quote: "You are not a drop in the ocean, you are the entire ocean in a drop."

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Episode Transcript

272. Recapping the Science & Tips to Build Humility for Mental Health & Wellbeing
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[00:00:05] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Welcome back, everyone, to Joy Lab. I am Aimee Prasek, just me. Henry is actually prepping for our next Element, which is Confidence. I probably — maybe I shouldn't have said that, but it's Confidence. I'm really excited. But let's stay focused on Humility for this last week here. So whether or not you've gotten all the Episodes in for Humility — you could go back if you haven't — I'll give a really quick recap that can help us kinda harvest what we've done.

So here's some key takeaways. Humility is not a weakness. It's not about shrinking yourself. It is an accurate, grounded sense of self. Not inflated, not deflated. That means you can let the world in; you can be in the world, really be in the world, more present; more yourself.

There's four types of humility that we noted: relational, intellectual, cultural, and existential.

And then we worked through those three ingredients to build up Humility: knowing yourself, checking yourself, and going beyond yourself. With knowing yourself, we grounded that kind of self-knowledge in self-compassion, because as self-compassion researcher Dr. Kristin Neff wrote, "You can look clearly at yourself when you're not afraid of what you'll find." So self-compassion creates that space for self-knowledge.

We also talked about the difference between reflection and rumination. Our goal is compassionate self-reflection that supports self-knowledge, not rumination.

[00:01:56] Aimee Prasek, PhD: And that's what we need to face some of the obstacles we explored that do make humility pretty hard. Like the idealized-self we discussed, and how we can just put up these impossible standards for ourselves, these expectations that are completely unfair, and that really keep us in rumination and [a] more critical self-focus.

We also talked about the better-than-average effect, where we tend to be a little off in our self-assessment, and oftentimes in a way — and surprisingly — that makes us more right, and other people more wrong. And so a big part of humility helps us to right-size ourselves. That's that great term that Dr. Daryl Van Tongeren discusses as it relates to humility. So we're not downsizing, or minimizing, or aggrandizing. We are right-sizing. You know, you own your strengths, you own your weaknesses, and know that you have value; you have worth, amidst all that, just like everyone else.

The second ingredient we explored was to check ourselves. We got into the ego a lot more here, how our ego can show up when we're feeling threatened. Our ego threat rises. We can go into denial, deflection, shutting down, intellectualizing, and it's really common. It's okay. And it doesn't need to hold us hostage. It doesn't have to be some extreme bodyguard. Henry brought up that kind of bodyguard metaphor. We can invite our ego to stand down in many ways, by shifting our threat-response to a curiosity-response.

We can also pause when we feel that bodyguard step up and try to defend us at all costs. We can pause, we can breathe, and then we can consider; we can ask ourselves, "What would I think if I wasn't feeling defensive?" It's such an interesting question to ask ourselves. It really is. What would I think if I weren't feeling defensive? Even just a little space, and that honest question, lets our ego back off a bit and lets our humility rise up a bit more. And that is, 99.9% of the time, a good thing.

And then the final ingredient we explored to build up our humility was to go beyond ourselves. This is really about a genuine curiosity about others and the bigger questions in life. It's deep listening as a form of humility. It's taking that self-forgetfulness that C.S. Lewis notes, as a kind of essence of humility, and it puts it into action. Because when we're not so consumed with ourselves, our world opens up. And here in this practice of humility, and the state of humility, that we can create and enter, that's where connection, and meaning, and joy really show up in noticeable ways.

Ooh, we've covered a lot. So, funny enough, if you've listened to all the Episodes — and even done the Experiments, if you're in the program — and if you feel like you know less about humility now than when you started, then I think you're nailing it actually.

That's — that's great. You're doing the work.

It may be slightly uncomfortable, or very uncomfortable. You know, that's the thing about humility — as we build it up, we are opening up to the unknown, to uncertainty. But we are building up something called uncertainty-tolerance, as well. But it is still uncertainty, and it can be tough to hold. And humility is, unfortunately — as we discussed in that first Episode — kind of counterculture in a lot of ways now. Not because we don't have it in us, but because we're trained to hide it, to kind of steamroll it [by] a world that often rewards certainty, self-promotion, and being right, over what actually nourishes us.

So it can feel kind of shaky sometimes as you move into this work. You might be questioning some deeply held beliefs that you've had, and I'd encourage you to reach out if you're feeling that. Reach out to a therapist; a friend. Seek out support to help put a bit of a foundation underneath you in the sense of, you know, you've got support here — a hand to hold. Reach out; seek out support. That is part of the practice of Humility, because what you're doing — it is so courageous. Know that. The courage to let go of some of the defenses, the pretending — the pretending that you have it all figured out, the courage to be not sure, that's peak courage. It is tough, and it is worth it.

If you're in the Program, head over to the Experiment for [this] Episode and you'll find a really helpful little meditation, along with some prompts, that offer a little bit more of that support, and to help harvest your work that you've done. And all of us — like, let's keep working on our Humility. It is so needed right now. It is so essential. We work on a new Element of Joy every month, yes, but these all stay with us, and each Element of Joy that we work on kind of feeds the other. So, you know, we work on one, it feeds all of the others that we've worked on in the past, and that continues to happen. It's the upward spiral we talk about here, and it's really effective.

So to close us today, I wanna share some wisdom from Rilke — some motivation to keep working on this. Keep tending to your Humility, because it will grow some good things for you. Here's what Rilke wrote: " Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves."

[00:08:40] Thanks for joining us!: Thank you for listening to the Joy Lab podcast. If you enjoy today's show, visit JoyLab.coach to learn more about the full Joy Lab program. Be sure to rate and review us wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

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272. From Rumination and Defending to Right-Sizing: Recapping the Science & Tips to Build Humility for Mental Health & Wellbeing

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