Do You Have a Pride Problem?

Sometimes it walks around looking like selflessness, responsibility, and discipline.

Have you ever had a moment, either deep in conversation or while journaling, when you find yourself saying or writing something you didn’t know you believed? But, as you say it, you realize it’s true? I had a moment like this a little while back, while drafting the “We Should All Probably Stop Complaining” post you likely read. There was a hint right here:

…I can become way over-focused on trying to get everything exactly right and make everyone happy (mission: impossible) because I’m still new and young in my industry and I’m just trying to prove that I’m worth being here (this is probably a whole post for another time)…

Well, this is that “another time,” so buckle up.

For all the time I spend saying I want to be good at my job so I can help my customers… Deep down, I actually just want to impress people. It’s my pride, not my selflessness, which motivates me to perform well.

There are loads of problems with this. One of them is that I get overly stressed about getting things right, worrying about one conversation for days or weeks. If I was truly motivated by doing what was best for my customer, I would be far more at peace because I did what I could and things will ultimately work out for them; but, because of this underlying pride, I can’t be at peace because even if things work out, maybe people won’t see that I was the one who fixed everything, the hero of the story. Everything becomes far more critical because it’s not just about the right thing happening, but it’s that I had to be the one who did it.

I’m taken back to a common experience I had as a young teenager at home. My mom and sister were, and are, excellent in all crafts of the kitchen. I don’t have as much inherent skill in that area—or, maybe it’s because when I was little, I would barter kitchen chores for barn chores so I just have much less experience… but I don’t like that answer as much as blaming it on inherent ability—and so I consistently didn’t do things as well. Whether rolling out a pie crust, stirring a saucepan of gravy, or folding egg whites into cake batter, there was always something they knew a better way of doing. While they were simply trying to help, I would become irrationally upset by their helpful tips: I didn’t care as much about the task being done well as much as I wanted to be the one who did it. I had no idea this tendency would translate into so many areas of my adult life.

One of the other key consequences of the pride problem is somewhat more sinister: in those times protecting our pride conflicts with a positive outcome for someone else—whether a customer, coworker, friend, or even stranger—we will inevitably choose our pride over the other person. If we have to trample over someone else to get to the top of the career ladder, our pride will make us do it. If we have to force a sale to make our numbers look good, our pride will make us do it. If we have to criticize another to take the attention away from our own failures, our pride will make us do it.

Is it just me? Or do you have similar struggles? It can be incredibly hard to identify—in part because pride is so clever at disguising itself as more admirable traits, and in part because we are so afraid to admit we have a pride problem. Yet, as my pride has been gradually revealed to me as I write, I’m discovering what I believe is how we get to the bottom of the pride problem: we ask ourselves two questions.

1) What am I afraid of?

2) Why am I afraid of it?

Pride’s disguise is peeled off when we get to the second layer, why we’re afraid of what we’re afraid of. It requires being incredibly honest with ourselves, and we may not even know the answer the first time we ask it. That’s okay. It’s important we keep asking ourselves anyway.

You may ask why it matters. So, what if I am motivated by pride? If I do good work as a result, is that so bad? That’s a fair challenge. I believe the more we pay attention to those underlying fears, the more we’ll realize what we’re missing by allowing the pride to fester. Maybe we’re doing good work now, but what if we could be even more effective if we weren’t shackled by the fear of letting down our ego?

Think about the last time you struggled to handle a situation, but you insisted on doing it yourself because you didn’t want to ask for help. What if you could have swallowed your pride—otherwise known as overcoming your fear of being seen as incompetent—and asked someone with more experience for help? Might the situation have been resolved more effectively? If we could move past our pride, we could focus on the outcome rather than who made the outcome happen.

The other reason I have come to believe this is so important is what I mentioned at the beginning—our pride negatively impacts our internal peace. Pride makes everything high-stakes, not because we want to do our best, but because we want to be perceived as being the best. It’s not healthy, it’s selfish, and it doesn’t pay off in the long run.

I’m nowhere near figuring this out. I mean, you’re along for the ride, and we haven’t even left the driveway. But, I’ve identified it’s a problem, and I guess that’s what they always say is the first step anyway. It’s my hope that by sharing this with you, you can identify if it’s a struggle you relate to, as well. And, if so, maybe we can work on it together. I’m starting with more awareness to my fears and where they come from, and we’ll see what we figure out from there. While I don’t know where it ends, I know one thing for sure: to live a life more free of pride is to live a life more free.

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Journal Prompt of the Week

Think about the two questions listed above—what are you afraid of, and why—and take some time to reflect on your thoughts. Try focusing on one area of your life to start: work, school, relationships. The answers may (or may not) be different.