Six Signs of False Nobility
- Brainz Magazine
- 3 hours ago
- 9 min read
Written by Latasha Nicole Phillips, Life Purpose Coach
SoulFlwr LLC is a sacred service-oriented business with a focus on assisting those who come in contact with personal development progression with a focus on the self.
Nobility is the practice of being honorable and good. It is an ideal that many of us claim to possess and aspire to embody. However, how we define our individual nobility can lead us into unnecessary experiences that cause self-betrayal and abandonment. In this article e ill clarify six major signs of ho our nobility can be false and we are just playing small.
The stigma of the nobility code
Many of us have a code that we live by, and it is predicated upon our individual and collective principles that we have adopted over time. This assists us in navigating our experiences in ways that bring meaning and expression to our lives.
All of this is fine and dandy until it includes some sort of bypassing or cognitive dissonance that hinders our personal growth and expansion. Many of us do not see these fallacies in our perception due to a lack of self-awareness and its various roots in our belief systems, some of which have been passed down for generations. Because of our strong identification with our desire to be “good”, we do not realize that these are the very traps that we desire to avoid. They are filled with outdated principles that create opportunities for us to be used, abused, manipulated, gaslit, and taken for granted.
If you are reading this, you could be one of those ‘good’ people. You do what you are supposed to do and treat others how you want to be treated. Still, you may have unintentionally fallen into this trap. You possibly even have your own stories to tell about how others have taken your kindness for weakness or used your integrity against you.
I am also certain that you may have a history of some form of codependency, hypersensitivity, trauma, or other form of energetic resistance that prevents you from seeing the truth of who you really are: the potential for greatness. But take heart. If this is being exposed to you, then you have the opportunity to turn all of that around.
So let's get more clarity, shall we? Here are six major signs that you possess false nobility. We will then discuss how to come to a balance in healthy healing ways.
1. You allow fear to dominate your choices
A great example of this is how an incompetent boss is promoted while the competent person for the job remains completely silent or overworks in the background. They are usually the ones that is holding everything together. Many co-workers know that the competent one is more qualified and wonder why they do not fight for the position, however the competent remain insecure and crippled by the idealogy that ‘nice guys finish last’. This leads to their true potential being unrealized and their character being misrepresented on individual and collective levels.
2. You wait for others to validate you, your choices, and behaviors
It's natural. As human beings, we desire to love and be loved. In our groups and cultures, we desire to belong. This is perfectly okay. The issue arises when we develop insecurities surrounding these natural instincts. This hinders us from moving forward with the goals and aspirations that we have for ourselves. It also creates self-sabotage for the things we truly deserve, like the unconditional love and support of those who say they love us.
What we do not realize is that validation is not the responsibility of those we seek recognition from. It is our job alone. Others are to reflect that validation back to us, or we remove them from our experience.
In my own life, I have faced many situations where I had to overcome my need for validation from my family, friends, and past romantic connections. Because I suffered from codependency, I found myself in situations where I was overwhelmed with the problems of others, as I called myself assisting them while neglecting myself. Then I would enable them in their toxic cycles, granting them the benefit of the doubt because we were supposed to love one another. I thought it was a form of ministry, so it was noble.
In reality, I was fooling myself, and those who benefitted from it took great advantage. I found myself in situations with people who cherished image instead of ethics and integrity and they abused me across the board as a result.
After much inner work, I let go of my false perception of what it meant to be noble. I know now that the first person (and only person) qualified to validate me the way that I have always longed for is myself. And despite popular belief that it is not real validation, I love it here. So will you.
Especially when you experience the inner peace that comes with doing the inner work around your need to be “noble”.
3. Inauthentic sense of self
When we create a modified self, i.e., a mask, we blind ourselves to the fact that this self is how we really want others to see us in order to get their love, validation, and approval. The self-modified image serves us well because many times we include our natural gifts and talents into our masks. We see them as our personal power and appeal. And to an extent, they are our best steps forward. But the issue is that our best self is not our only self. We have a shadow to face and ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. It just casts a bigger shadow due to feeding it our denial, rejection, suppression, and repression. Ignoring that causes us to become a self-fulfilling prophecy of self-sabotage or worse.
What I have learned is that in order to truly be noble, we must acknowledge the parts of us that we hide from others. In doing this and showing this to others, we grant an excellent opportunity for them to decide whether they desire to connect with us or not. Plus, we get to honor whatever choice they make, knowing that it is for our highest good. Most of all, it ensures that we get what the self-modified mask cannot provide: Genuine love and connection with ourselves and others.
4. You down play your success
A few years ago, I used to work for a plant that made car parts. It was a great challenge because you had to be fast and strong. The parts could be up to 50 pounds each, and we were lifting one every 14 seconds for up to 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. It was a production job, so we had to make a certain number of parts every hour.
Because I believe in self-mastery in all that I do, I kept working with every part in my department until I became faster than my team. Then I became one of the fastest people in my department overall with the exception of my trainer.
After I mastered the parts, I began helping others who were struggling to make the rates that were required. There were a lot of older and disabled people who were there who couldn’t afford to be fired. I think that they were the only ones who truly appreciated me.
The upper management was ecstatic that I was learning and mastering everything. To me, I was proving that I was an asset, thinking that it would grant me external validation and acceptance. It wasn’t long before I realized that the only thing I really accomplished was placing myself in a position to be overworked and abused by management. On top of that, I was envied by my co-workers. The men didn’t like me because I outworked them. The women didn’t like me because I outworked them.
They started treating me differently. Some even told me they were envious. Shocked, I began to downplay my achievements by remaining silent and validating others' work accomplishments. That made me the team leader in my co-workers' eyes. Once I began leading the teams without the official team lead position on the plant floor, things got progressively worse.
This intimidated the team leaders and supervisors, especially when we clashed on the floor. They valued their titles even though I did their work. I eventually had to leave because I discovered that they blocked any promotion that I applied for or asked to receive.
Just like in my private life, I stayed at that position way longer than I should have because I believed that it was noble to stay and help, even when they were stabbing me in the back on every side. And I received no real external validation. My promotion requests were a complete waste of time. They gave me employee of the month one time, and that was because the head of the quality department saw my value and gave it to me.
5. Settle for less because of belief that you do not deserve it
I know that in my own life, I found that even though I made great achievements and rarely failed to reach a goal, I never celebrated. I would just be on to the next thing to achieve. I believed that I needed to prove more because I needed others to validate it for me. Still, they only treated me like I was invisible. I used to believe that it was because maybe I didn’t. After all, I am a fluid black American female coming from a low socioeconomic background.
In reality, it wasn’t that I didn’t deserve it. I did. Society taught me that black women should be silent and allow the spotlight to fall on men or other human groups. Society also taught me that it would be arrogant of me to celebrate. Good people do not ‘toot their own horn’. I believed these lies for decades. Others acknowledging my accomplishments was the only validation needed. I renounced my own acknowledgment as arrogant. Experiences of my past were filled with those who resented me, even noting them. I was called everything but a child of God and it broke my heart.
Looking back, I now see it as ‘crabs in a barrel mentality’ at its best. But I refused to see the truth then because of my deep desire to be good and to be seen as good. And I loved the people who rejected me. So I settled, and as a result was bullied, abused, ostracized, and betrayed over and over again. They even convinced strangers to participate.
6. Keeping the peace instead of making peace
This was definitely something that I practiced with family, friends and loved ones. In conflict, I was the one who was vulnerable first. I was the one who apologized first. And I was the one who, after I admitted my responsibility in conflicts, sought to make amends. But it was never mirrored back to me. I was only taken for granted, judged, made fun of, talked about, bullied, and ostracized.
Because of my false ‘nobility’ code, I took all of the crap from those who said they loved me and dumped it upon me. Still, I clung to them, hoping that they would eventually see me for who I was in their life. I love deeply, and I was loyal to a fault. They never did. They didn’t have to. Because I allowed them to abuse me instead of standing up for myself, setting boundaries, and enforcing them, I was keeping the peace instead of making it.
Keeping the peace is about avoiding conflict in order to salvage the relationship, no matter how toxic it is or its effect on you. An example is a parent or sibling who thinks it is their privilege to mistreat you because you are a blood relative. They assert that you can’t set boundaries or sever the relationship because you are tied to them by blood.
Making peace is about owning responsibility for our side of the conflict alone and allowing the other person to decide whether or not they are going to do the same. If they don’t, then that is a clear sign that they do not value us or the connection. It is time to accept that we did our best in responding, set boundaries, and move forward with our lives.
Conclusion
Fortune favors the bold. False nobility is a wide road to deep suffering. Take it from me, I have plenty of scars. Being honorable and good is an excellent ideal to embody. However, it is self-betrayal and abandonment to consciously allow others to use and abuse you.
Playing small doesn’t help you or society. You matter. And you have a right to love and be loved and respected by those who claim to love you. We cannot do that without giving these things to ourselves first, so that we can recognize times when someone is offering us less than we deserve.
Equal accountability is the bedrock of healthy relationships. Therefore, seek to love yourself the way that you desire to be loved. That's why you are that special person that loves you, and you can recognize others who desire to genuinely love you for who you are as well.
Read more from Latasha Nicole Phillips
Latasha Nicole Phillips, Life Purpose Coach
Latasha Phillips & Shawn Cross are African American female leaders in mastery learning and meditation fields who assist others in personal development and self-improvement endeavours. They have two decades of experience with various tools and resources that they currently use to live lives of inner peace and fulfillment. They created Soulflwr LLC as a sacred service to all who are ready to heal their past and themselves.
