We hear a lot about pride. Companies are ubiquitously proud of something, Britain is proud of Andy Murray and people are always telling us to feel proud of what we achieve. No wonder, most people aspire to being proud. Pride feels pretty good. We have done well. We can see we’ve done well – got a job, passed the exam, have a partner, money in the bank etc.
Yet, there’s plenty of evidence that pride isn’t all it’s cracked up to be….
The problem with pride is that it is dependant on external conditions; so what happens if those external conditions disappear or threaten to disappear? We get anxious about the F-word…. failureaaaaaghhh!!!…and sliding down the emotional ladder to low energy levels like fear and shame.
In relation to those emotions, pride feels quite good. The rise in self-esteem is a balm to the suffering experienced at lower energy levels. Yet, according to research by kinesiologist David Hawkins*, the human body does not react strongly to pride. It has a slightly negative reaction, to stimuli that invoke pride.
Pride remains a weak emotion precisely because it can be knocked off its pedestal back to shame. The ego is vulnerable to attack and so pride can prevent us from learning what we need to learn. When things are not working out or going the way we like, our pride can help us to create a story that allows us to deny the responsibility for the situation we find ourselves in.
The problem of denial, of course, is that we are just storing things up for a bigger fall. If we fail to recognise what we need to change, the cracks eventually open up big and wide. Pride goeth before a fall as the saying goes.
Attachment to pride can leave us in relationships that don’t serve and jobs we don’t enjoy doing, too weak to face the truth and make the changes necessary that will lead us to positive energies of love, joy and purpose.
Instead, we do what we need to do to receive the external approval necessary for pride rather than listening to our hearts desire and making courageous choices to manifest what we really want. What if we fail? The voice says, ‘nobody likes a failure’ etc.
Failure is a part of life though, it is how we process that failure which really causes the change in how we feel. If we resist and process it personally, ‘I’m a failure’ ‘I’ll never be good enough’ etc. we will slide down to shame or if we process it as ‘a shot we took’ or a valuable learning experience that we can use next time we will climb up to the zen energy of acceptance and higher if we are really nice to ourselves.
So how’s your inner game? Have you noticed how you’re processing the downs of life? Give some time to self observation in those sticky moments, it will give you a big insight into whether PRIDE is getting in the way of your growth and development.
* Power vs Force – David Hawkins
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