Joe uses the image of being a hollow bone — borrowed from the Lakota healer Fool’s Crow — to describe how humility works. Your job is to keep the channel clear so that life can move through you. When someone gives you a compliment and you deflect it (“oh no, it was nothing”), that’s ego, not humility. The humble response is to let the compliment move all the way through.
“If you let a good compliment move all the way through you, it just takes out your ego.”
This applies to coaching and facilitation as well: the facilitator’s job is to be invisible, allowing clients to project whatever they need — the bad dad, the perfect authority — and letting those projections move through without getting caught in them. Being a mirror means there’s no “you” there to defend.
Related Concepts
- Receiving compliments dissolves unworthiness
- Receiving requires vulnerability
- Humility is not taking life personally
- False humility is a defense against being seen
- The hollowing out process never ends