When the US gymnast Simone Biles proclaimed herself to be the best in the world, people called her arrogant and cocky.

Yet the truth is she's won the World Championship 5 times, and is crushing the Olympics. So she literally is the best gymnast in the world.

She obviously wasn't saying it to seek approval because she got a lot of disapproval from it (and must have known this would happen). All she was doing was stating the facts. To say anything else regarding her gymnastic skills would be lying.

How is stating the facts “arrogance”?

We've been raised to believe that dishonesty is modesty; that humility means to downplay your strengths. This doesn't even make sense.

How is it humble to downplay your strengths with the goal being to seek approval? It's not humble to seek approval. It's selfish, narcissistic, and dishonest. It's people pleasing. It's manipulative.

It’s especially not humble to use the appearance of humility to show your superiority to others, like “I’m not going to say I’m better than you… which makes me better than you. I’m awesome because I’m modest”.

True humility has got to be linked to truth, which means you have to be honest about your strengths as well as your weaknesses.

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