I Am Not Proud Of My Pride

What I’ve learned after years of having too much pride

Raymond Tung
ILLUMINATION

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Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

“I just benched 2 plates and I am proud of my accomplishment.” Three years ago, this was something I pride myself in — being able to lift more weights than most of my friends. But what exactly is pride? Does it help us or destroy us?

What is pride?

The dictionary.com offers multiple definitions for “pride.” There’s a positive one: “pleasure or satisfaction take in something done by or belonging to oneself or believed to reflect credit upon oneself.” This seems like a healthy way of thinking about pride. However there’s another definition of pride: “a high or inordinate opinion of one’s own dignity, importance, merit, or superiority, whether as cherished in the mind or as displayed in bearing, conduct, etc.” This seems not as healthy as the prior definition and we see this in our everyday lives, “Her boyfriend broke up with her because she had too much pride to admit she was wrong” or “The boss slowed innovation because his pride prevented him from listening to his employees.”

My experience with pride

Although “pride” has conflicting definitions, both of these definitions applied to my achievement of hitting a 2 plate bench press. Reaching that milestone, I felt an immense flow of pleasure and satisfaction and it was the best feeling ever. However, I also let my accomplishment define who I am. The moment my friend surpassed the weight I lifted, I instantly lost my self-worth and wanted to accomplish more. This was when I realized achievements are short-lived and can become a trap. If you place too much attention on accomplishing bigger and better things to feel sufficient, then we become addicted to external sources of gratification.

On the contrary, a more genuine and stable form of pride is based on validating, affirming, and valuing ourselves as we are. Our self-worth is a function of living with dignity, which exists apart from any accomplishments. Dignity can live inside us regardless of our successes and failures. There is no need to prove your self-worth to anyone or even ourselves. If you start a business and it fails, you will feel like a failure if you tie your self-worth to that business. Thomas Edison didn’t think he was a failure when he failed 10,000 times, why should you?

Pride is toxic

There may be a good reason why pride has been considered one of the seven deadly sins. Naturally, we avoid people who have an inflated view of themselves. They talk about themselves excessively and rarely show interest in others. They like to feel superior by being over-confident and arrogant instead of relating to people as equals.

Pride is often driven by poor self-esteem and shame. We feel so badly about ourselves so we compensate with feeling superior. We constantly look for flaws in others’ to conceal our own. We criticize others to defend against recognizing our own shortcomings, preventing us from acknowledging our normal human vulnerabilities. The simple act of saying “I’m sorry, I was wrong” becomes uncomfortable. When we allow pride to consume us, we believe we’re always right. This makes building intimate relationships difficult.

Final thoughts

After surpassing my friend once again, bench pressing a solid 255 easily. I wasn’t any happier. A good friend turned into a source of competition and that’s when I realize it’s okay to be content. We don’t have to be the best or perfect. Showing weakness and vulnerability invites people towards us. We become welcoming rather than intimidating. We recognize that we’re all humans with different strengths and weaknesses.

It is the most freeing feeling ever; we no longer need to achieve “greatness” to feel self-worth. We are great as we are and pursue excellence because it feels meaningful, fulfilling, and purposeful not because it defines who we are as a person.

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Raymond Tung
ILLUMINATION

Just someone in Tech with a passion in fitness & traveling around the world