How Norway Helped Me To Become Super Humble
I used to be confident in everything I did in life. After becoming an ardent fan of Suits, the staggeringly arrogant lead character Harvey Specter subconsciously turned me into a cocky person. There’s a fine line between confidence and cockiness. That line became invisible to me.
After I moved to Norway, I often even quoted Harvey Specter to my Norwegian friends —
“What are your choices when someone puts a gun to your head? You do what they say or they shoot you, right? WRONG! You take the gun, or you pull out a bigger one. Or, you call their bluff. Or, you do any one of a hundred and forty six other things.”
“I’m not interested in great. I want to know who its Daddy is.”
“I don’t play the odds. I play the man.”
And my all-time favorite —
“It’s not bragging if it’s true.”
Little did I know Norwegians were not huge fans of not only cocky people but also cocky fictional characters. To many of them, even confident people seem arrogant. They look down on people who brag. They do an eye roll, which is adorable to be fair.
They hate to talk about themselves. The only time they would love talking about themselves is when they make fun of themselves. It doesn’t matter if they’re Prime Minister or Miss Norway. Self-deprecation is their go-to when they’re being forced to socialize, like British people. Except British people take self-deprecation too far, all the time.
Norwegians hate showing off that most of them post their pictures on social media only once a year — only to delete it the next morning — when they aren’t drunk and/or high. I used to post pictures on Instagram every week, like I was being forced to. After trying to understand their culture, my soaring activity on social media made me cringe.
