I am no goody-goody but there is one thing I’ve learned from my parents over time – the simple grace of humility; that is, to NOT brag about your accomplishments (unless you are in a job interview, although there is still a way to highlight your accomplishments without sounding jerky).

I used to be perplexed, wondering why I always used to hear other parents talk about how their kids were so wonderfully beautiful or gifted and were “gold medalists”, like what the heck does that even mean, while my parents never said a peep about me. They avoided this because 1. It is obnoxious to brag, 2. Admittedly there may not have been that much to brag about, and 3. What God give-eth he may takeaway-eth. Or something like that. After all, pride is supposed to be the worst of the seven deadly sins, right?

So when did it become okay to blatantly boast about yourself? It doesn’t help that social media is somehow making this an acceptable societal norm. Think about it, when someone is talking about how they just got promoted while you are slogging your butt off and not getting anywhere, does it make you feel good? Or when someone is telling you how their kids are of above average intelligence while your child just isn’t.

Last I checked, no one likes a braggard so if you are demonstrating the following 7 habits of highly arrogant people, you may want to stop for the sake of your likeability or in celebrity terms, your Q score. Btw, Gwinnie’s (or Gwyneth Paltrow as some refer to her as) is quite low, in fact lower than Chris Brown’s, the admitted girlfriend beater, because of her excessive bragging and name dropping. After all, just because we “like” your post doesn’t mean we actually like your post.

  1. Notifying your extended friends and acquaintances about how your child performed in school, relative to their peers. This is basically like saying look at how much smarter my child is than yours.
  2. Proclaiming how cute/adorable/beautiful your child is.
  3. Humble bragging (yes this is also bragging) about how you got to do something really important at work even though *shocker* you just started/are the youngest there/inexperienced in your new field, etc.
  4. Constantly talking about your accomplishments or promotion status at work, without solicitation. News flash: no one really gives a crap except for maybe your parents.
  5. Taking a picture of yourself in first class, and posting it on social media and then adding captions to further remind us po’ country folk that you are in fact in first class, in case we couldn’t tell from the plane’s cabin appearance.
  6. I’ve mentioned this in a previous post but I think it’s repost-worthy: taking a pic of the long stemmed roses or jewelry your partner bought you and talking about how hashtagamazing your life is and how hashtagblessed you are.
  7. Taking a revealing selfie. It doesn’t matter how good you think you look. Put that away, and save it for your partner. Your cousin Bob in Minnesota doesn’t need to see it.

As a side note I recently attended the funeral of my aunt who passed away. She was stunningly beautiful and was quite possibly the world’s best cook but never bragged about it. She was a homemaker and didn’t really have a career. At her funeral, which was attended by many, all anyone talked about was how much she gave to others. In the end, no one really cares about your material accomplishments or successes; the measure of your likeability is simply how much you acted with kindness.