I'm a million times as humble as thou art.
I was one of the top three students of my graduating high school class, so everybody knew who I was in that little bubble. I began making self deprecating jokes to try to be more approachable.
After I left high school and was no longer one of the big fish in my little pond, those jokes stopped working well. While I was homeless, I began making a more concerted effort to break that bad habit because it only convinced people I had terrible self esteem which was not true.
I didn't need random internet strangers trying to pick my self esteem up off the floor and there was never a good way to explain that, so I doubled-down on finally breaking that bad habit and mostly stopped doing it. Though I'm human and still occasionally crack such jokes, it's no longer a deeply entrenched bad habit.
While homeless, I was active on a forum with a lot of programmers and very open on that particular forum full of well-heeled IT professionals about my dire poverty and technical needs, which in some sense was a case of eating humble pie -- of not worrying about my social standing, not hiding what many people would have been embarassed to share about their lives. On that forum, I used to bitch a lot about "I'm on a tablet and it's the only computing device I have and I can't do that. That doesn't work for me."
Eventually the internet started working better for both tablets and phones and I stopped making that complaint. People who were not willing to help me directly but who worked in the IT world likely kept that in mind -- even if not consciously -- when doing what they do at work and that likely pushed things over some important tipping point leading to where we are today with our mobile-first world.
Because of that, in the little tiny bubble I live in I already get told that I have changed the world and I have made a difference. Of course, I cannot prove it and will likely never get any credit for that.
While homeless in San Diego County, I began collecting recyclables. I feel quite confident that me doing so directly led to other people in the region -- including other homeless people -- doing the same.
I touched on that briefly here. At least three local malls that were at death's door sprang back to life and crime came down.
My understanding is that malls don't typically come back from a death spiral. Everything I have ever read suggests that once they begin their decline, death is inevitable.
San Diego County is one of the most densely populated counties in the US and California has a terrible homeless problem. I think I made a dent in both those issues and I think that had to have been a case of a stitch in time saves nine though I cannot begin to speculate what dire events might have gone down without that little stitch of mine helping to stabilize that influential area of this country.
I have spent two decades or so getting myself healthier while the world says it cannot be done and yadda. I needed to be poor to do that. Fasting while broke and owning next to nothing is part of what helped me heal and helped me avoid potentially millions of dollars in conventional medical treatment.
During those years that other people saw me as nothing and nobody, a loser and a ne'er-do-well, I felt very strongly that I was getting stuff done, that I was somebody, that I mattered and made a difference.
My self esteem was in fine shape even though my wallet was not. My circumstances were humble, but I did not feel my accomplishments during that time were at all small.
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, it makes no sound. Still, it falls.