Humility Breeds Consistency
I look for role models. I've met or studied many high achievers who appear to have earned the right to be satisfied with what they already know. However, the highest achievers are consistently the people who are the most eager to learn more. For example, Michael Johnson didn't stop improving when he became a World Champion sprinter. It was his continuous drive to be the best he could be that allowed him to set World Records and stay on top for his entire professional career (all 19 of his medals in the Goodwill Games, World Championships, or Olympics are Gold Medals). It's an ironic fact of life that the people who need the most humility usually have the least, while the people who seem to need it the least usually have the most.
Life really is, as author of Peter Pan Sir James Matthew Barrie says, a "long lesson in humility." I've been learning... Experience teaches me that when I am performing great and I get over-confident, something will happen very soon to cause me to lose my "flow." If I am not open to criticism, someone else will surely learn what I missed and pass me on the way up the ladder. If I am not respectful of others, I will forfeit my chance at the teamwork it takes to approach my own potential. Even in individual sports, I am much more powerful with the support of others. If I am not intense in my approach because I start believing this won't be too difficult, I do not give a best effort performance. If I lose my sense of urgency because I don't think the opponent is capable of humbling me, I sometimes get lucky - but more often pay a hefty price and lose when I certainly could've (most would say "should've") won. Why take that chance (and build poor habits in the process)?
Does the importance of humility defy the importance of confidence or interfere with aggressiveness? Not at all. Great athletes are confident, aggressive, and humble. They respect that giving a best effort performance is always difficult. Life and performance are balancing acts, but champions don't fall over because they maintain a hunger to learn and an eagerness to work. It is their preparation that allows them to consistently perform at a high level. Performance will always have ups and downs because people, by definition, are imperfect. However, with a disciplined, humble approach, great athletes achieve superior consistency because their dips in performance are shallow, not deep "slumps." Likewise, their peak performances occur more frequently and last longer. Their humility breeds their consistency!
What are strategies you've used to teach humility to student-athletes who have grown up in an Age of Entitlement?