Humility isn’t found easily. I’m not saying you have to be humiliated to experience it, but it does seem to be found in painful places.
So, I was thirty years old. I knew it all. This was waaaay after when I was nineteen and knew it all. Long after when I was twelve and really knew it all. No, this was thirty and I had just published my first book after a successful blog run.
I went by NutritionLuke and I had a blog about nutrition and mental health. Oh, I was also a budding therapist at the time too, so now I really had some weight behind me.
I stood on a stage with a giant red dot on it and a sign behind me that read, TedX Lincoln. I was giving a Ted Talk about, you guessed it, nutrition and mental health.
You can view it here if you want.
I worked for months putting together and memorizing my speech. Also, I suuuck at memorizing things, just ask my Awanas instructors from grades k-8th.
So, I cut out a lot of material and I put together a speech lasting about eight grueling minutes, most of which was just a story about how I was an overweight kid who ate processed foods.
I mentioned in my speech about the correlation between processed foods and certain phsycial and mental health conditions and how food may be contributing to the opposite end of the fight, and it was winning.
According to the materials I had read and the articles I came across, I was cruising along confidently. Then I dropped one line so subtly in the speech “processed foods are leading to increased mental health disorders.” And then I said it, “including ADHD.”
Dang.
Yeah, I attributed a neurobiological disorder to what we eat.
Now, I am not saying certain foods won’t make symptoms of mental health worse, but to claim ADHD was derived from diet alone, well, that was wrong.
Neurobiology entails that something like ADHD is something developed from brain structure, pathways, chemistry, the sort of thing you are born with. This is why so many people have a family history of ADHD.
I claimed something and talked about it and I think there are like a thousand views on my my YouTube video and I can’t do anything but tell people that was like ten years ago.
But that doesn’t matter does it? I was wrong in what I said on stage and have been wrong in what I have said to people in other ways. I have been wrong many times. And so have professionals too. I mean like real professionals (remember COVID?).
From where I stand, we should all sit with our failures a little more than we should try to dismiss them. We should all be wrong a little more and feel that feeling the moment we realized that we were in fact wrong about something. No one is right ALL the time and when you get your slice of humble pie, eat it up nice and slow.
Being humble does not come by choice, one does not say how humble they are or claim that they have worked really hard on being humble. That would dismiss the humility in the claim. So, sit with the public shame of your YouTube, Insta-post, TikTok, or dig deep and notice the posts you used to put on FaceBook many, many years ago for some of you. Sitting with these embarrassing things and owning up to them might end up being the best thing that ever happens to you.
Classic Luke
From Where I Stand 