Take Pride

In this talk, you will learn what best to be proud of and what not. You will be able to use the feeling of pride as a source of energy, and understand the benefits and also the downfalls of pride. You will be able to make use of pride instead of toxifying it, and learn to not vilify nor glorify pride. The feeling of pride is never the problem, the feeling of pride is healthy. It is understanding and dealing with this feeling the right way which makes all the difference.

Transcript

Now today we are looking at what to be proud of and what not to be proud of.

You will understand in what moments the feeling of pride gives you strength and brings you closer to happiness and when the feeling of pride is toxic.

Our goal is to understand the benefits and the dangers of feeling proud.

You will become conscious of pride and learn how to embrace it so you can make use of it.

Michael Christian said,

All your life other people will try to take your accomplishments away from you.

Don't you take it away from yourself.

Let's take pride and handle pride.

Before we start,

Let me invite you to neutralize the word pride.

Many of us have been taught to either never allow the feeling of pride to come up or on the other extreme to be proud of the wrong things.

I would argue that only a minority of us have a healthy or neutral attitude towards pride.

So let us enter today with an open mind and not have too many opinions of pride just yet.

Imagine no one has ever spoken to you about pride and you have no idea what pride is.

Take a deep breath in and out and let's agree to neither glorify nor vilify pride today.

Let us now talk about healthy pride and what that might look like.

Healthy pride is important because it motivates you to achieve things and also motivates you to share your achievements with people you love.

And sharing things,

The good and the bad,

Is always positive because it brings you into deeper connection with others.

So healthy pride can make you connect with people.

Next,

Another positive aspect of healthy pride is that it can get you through work that is not immediately pleasant.

If the outcome of your work is something that allows you and others to be proud of,

Then you will be more motivated to complete your work.

This means pride allows you to understand the importance of an outcome in the future.

For example,

If you work hard and harvest enough food for the winter,

Then others and you will be proud of your hard work.

This means the feeling of pride makes sure you and your community have enough food in the future.

Now,

Let us talk a bit about how to be proud.

When you accomplish something,

It is best to be proud of your qualities that allowed you to achieve things.

It brings the positive attitude you have to the forefront,

And it makes you celebrate certain qualities or mindset instead of your entire personality.

It feeds back to you that you have certain qualities in your personality that allow you to achieve something.

This is a great awareness to have for future growth.

So do not build your pride solely around achievements or your overall personality.

Build pride around specific parts of your personality.

There is a big difference,

Even though it does not always seem so.

The more specific you are as to exactly what personality trait allowed you to achieve something,

The better.

For example,

You can tell yourself,

I am proud of having gone through a big chunk of this course already.

I am a great person because of that.

Or you could say,

I am proud to be a person who has the maturity,

Discipline and willpower to go through an entire course around personal development.

The two look very similar at first but are actually extremely different.

Making yourself feel proud of the personality trait that led you to achieve certain things will make sure that you are attaching a positive feedback mechanism to these specific qualities.

You are not attaching the pride to your ego or even worse,

Thinking of yourself as an overall more advanced human being.

Use pride in a way that is healthy and serves you and others,

So that it will make you gain self-control and strength.

But there is one more tool you can use in order to make pride a healthy experience that serves you.

You can connect pride to the feeling of humility.

This sounds weird but bear with me.

No matter how great your achievements and skills,

You will never be the best in everything you do.

You will always have more to learn.

You will always be a student and you will also forever rely on others and to live a happy and fulfilling life.

You most likely can't even survive by yourself.

Embracing humility whenever you feel pride will make sure that your pride will not touch what it shouldn't touch.

It will never inflate your ego.

With ego brings us to our next part of today's course.

Pride can easily be unhealthy.

It is not a coincidence that pride is one of the deadly seven sins.

But why is that?

Mainly because every megalomaniac and also many other unhealthy and unstable people are outwardly proud of themselves.

They use the feeling of pride to rise above others and not to connect with others.

So let us look at the dangers of pride in a bit more detail.

One unhealthy way to experience pride is connecting the feeling to something you have actually not achieved yourself.

You have not achieved being born in a certain country or into a certain family.

You have not achieved being a man or a woman or having a sexual orientation.

None of these things you have worked for and none of them you should be proud of.

Now feeling a sense of community and belonging to a group or country is not necessarily unhealthy.

Quite the opposite.

Belonging to a healthy tribe allows you to be secure and to express your unique self.

But the feeling of pride towards a group or country is only healthy when it is attached to traits.

For example,

I can be proud of Germany guaranteeing its citizens freedom of expression.

But if I just say I am proud to be German,

I am fooling myself into belonging to something without understanding what and why.

Because so often the devil is in the details.

So the most important thing to do when dealing with pride is to allow the feeling to arise but to be conscious of it.

For so many of us feeling proud is hard when it actually shouldn't be.

Allow yourself to experience pride when there are valid reasons for it.

Good indication of valid reasons is the reaction from others.

When others pat you on the back or realize what personality traits caused this to happen,

Then raise your chin and allow yourself to take pride.

Now we arrived at the practical part of today's course.

Firstly,

I would like you to write down 5 achievements.

Write down anything that comes to mind.

It can be a mix of small and big.

Any type of achievement is fine.

It doesn't matter if you saved a forest or managed to cook an egg.

Write down 5 achievements.

Also,

Behind your 5 achievements,

Write down what character traits allowed you to achieve these things in the first place.

Pause the course now and come back to it when you have written out 5 achievements and observations.

Next,

I would like you to write down your thoughts and feelings about these 5 achievements.

And also please write down how you feel about potentially sharing this list with friends.

Become aware of how easy or hard sharing the list would be for you.

Again,

Pause the course and write down your observations.

Finally,

Over the next few days during this week,

I would like to invite you to raise your awareness about taking pride.

Once per day,

I would like you to share something you are proud of with someone else.

And I would also like you to tell someone else you are proud of them once per day.

It can be as simple as saying one sentence or writing a text message to someone.

It can also be as elaborate as having a long conversation.

When sharing with others how proud you are of them,

Make sure you attach it to a character trait of theirs.

This will raise both your awareness and theirs as to where good actions come from.

And please make a calendar entry now for when you will continue this course.

It can be in a couple of days or a week,

But please set a reminder now so that you will stay on your path.