6 Ways to Overcome Your Pride
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Professional Development
December 6, 2017
Shea Drake
Topics
Leadership, Pride, relationships, Self DevelopmentPride is one of the seven deadly sins for a reason. It closes our minds to learning, makes us selfish, and jeopardizes our roles as leaders and successful business owners. But putting pride aside can help us in our endeavors to be better and more successful.
Whether you’re hearing something new from an intern, an in-law, or a child, there are lessons to be learned every day from people you’d never expect. As Vernon Howard said, “Always walk through life as if you have something new to learn and you will.”
The following six tips can help you put your pride aside so you can succeed professionally.
Be Aware
While pride shows you sufficiently value yourself and your accomplishments and it helps you work toward what you deserve, it’s dangerous in large quantities.
The first step to checking your pride is recognizing when you may be too prideful. Be introspective but not too hard on yourself. Once you start listening to your thoughts and thinking about others, you’ll be able to exercise better control over pride.
Don’t Take Yourself Too Seriously
Psychology Today explains that pride comes from fear of embarrassment or shame. If you’re willing to laugh at yourself, admit that you don’t know everything, and ignore prideful thoughts when they enter your brain, you can avoid creating a mental and personality block that will hinder your growth.
While confidence, determination, and respect are key leadership qualities, you won’t earn them or the admiration of others if you have too much pride.
Ask the Right Questions
An insightful book called Change Your Questions, Change Your Life teaches how asking learning questions versus judging questions can help you and those around you succeed.
But what’s the difference between these questions? How do you know if you’re even asking the right ones? The book highlights learning and judgment charts, with the former leading to a positive outcome and the latter to “the judger pit.”
To open the door to resolution and growth, ask “What happened?” or “What do I want?” instead of “Why am I such a failure?” or “Why are they so stupid?”
Be Open-Minded
Prideful thinking can be interpreted as “your way or the highway.” By staying open-minded, you’ll already be serving yourself and team members better.
If you feel yourself shutting someone down before someone even finishes a sentence, take a breath and make yourself focus on their opinion. If you don’t agree or understand, ask a clarifying question. Being open-minded will boost team morale and you’ll also wind up with better ideas and results.
Listen, Don’t Talk
Being a know-it-all has never had a nice connotation. It’s impossible to know everything, and people who pretend to are often resented for acting that way.
As Brant H. McGill so eloquently put it, “One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say.”
Listening is the antithesis to pride because when you’re giving someone else the opportunity to express themselves or their ideas, you’re putting your pride aside. Focus more on listening instead of talking and see how many new things you learn in the process.
Put Your Business First
Pride can be bad for business. If you’re struggling with pride, ego, and other unpopular human traits, put your business goals on a pedestal.
Whenever you feel yourself becoming stubborn, argumentative, or defensive (symptoms of pride), ask yourself this one question: “Will this help me become better at my job, move up in the company, or improve the business’s bottom line?” If it’s a no or even not an immediate yes, then you know you have pride to contend with and let go.
As you work to become less prideful and a better leader, employee, and business owner, cut yourself some slack. It’s never easy to change for the better, but when you put in the work to check your pride at the door, you’ll be amazed at the doors it opens and who’s waiting to teach you something new.
Active and Global Listening are good terms to google for resources on how to become a better listener.
Pride comes before a fall. In small doses it’s ok, but someone is gonna get hurt in the long run
Prayer and respect to duty help in eradicating pride,but master of all is the spirit of Christ Jesus
You can have pride by serving others also.
I like how you mentioned that it is a good idea to think about others when trying to overcome s with pride. I would think that it would be a good idea to serve those around you in order to become a better person. You could support a local organization that helps children in need or something similar to that.
Thank for this article
I like your speech may God bless you for that
Thanks for the article.
Thank you! These are very helpful!!
I am dealing with this now and need to take a breath. No matter how much I think I’ve got this I need to remember humility more.
thanks for this article. remain blessed
So encouraging
An amazing post with great tips as always. Anyone will find your post useful. Keep up the good work.
I am actually happy for this article. thanks so much
But how could you teach somebody else about pride, especially a loved one who is struggling over pride that bars her self-improvement, fearing shame and embarassment.
Quite phenomenal,and so stupendous.
I wish this can help me put into practice.
Am so grateful with the encouragement
When I talk with my team, they tell me I over reason them, I reason higher and they feel inferior and their reasoning is weak. Does this mean I show pride?