Superlative achievement in anything -- engineering, art, sport, and even living a joyous life -- all require one most important pair of characteristics: humble

Superlative achievement in anything -- engineering, art, sport, and even living a joyous life -- all require one most important pair of characteristics: humble seeking of excellence via hard graft. We first need to set high standards for ourselves, and then undertake honest self-reflection to determine if what we have done is good enough. If it fell short, we must admit it and endeavor to learn how to do better. No, we shouldn't beat ourselves up about it, but we should learn how to work harder and work better by paying better attention to our progress. Over time, we have to learn how our standards, themselves, can be improved. That is the single most important result of the Dunning-Kruger study: the true experts tended to undervalue themselves because their honest humility did not let them rest on their past achievements and kept driving them forward to ever expand their skillsets. The overconfident non-expert group were so complacent that they were fine weaving a tapestry of lies that they were already above average and needed no further work. We can each choose to believe anything we want, either honestly correct or mistakenly wrong. We each have the choice, and being humble is the best way to find ever better truths and with them, better results.