Dangers Of Pride And How To Deal With It

One of the things that have eaten deep into the hearts of people in this era, yet looks so subtle, is pride. A lot of individuals may not even discern the onset of pride, and before they know it, it has already wrecked some serious havoc. To make it very clear, there is a distinction between ego and pride. The former is necessary to develop confidence and self-worth, while the latter hinders personal growth. Pride is simply when you have placed yourself or estimated it above what it currently is, or above others. There are many dangers of pride which we shall look at, then we will talk about ways to overcome it.

The first danger of pride, which also manifests with the onset of pride is that it beclouds one from seeing their errors, limitations, and faults. When this happens, the person will be progressing in error without knowing it. If you see anyone that pride has taken hold of, one thing you will notice about them is that they will become unwelcoming to feedbacks and become resistive to corrections. When someone sees themself like they are infallible or that they are without errors and do not need correction, then it is a manifestation of pride. Without knowing your errors, you will not know how to correct them and you will be progressing on the wrong path.

Another danger of pride is that it makes you to lose valuable friendships and relationships. Trust me, no one would want to hang out with someone of proud nature - someone that sees only themself as the best and others as nothing. They often feel that they know it all or have everything, so they become repulsive by others. I once worked with a colleague who did not regard anyone. We came in together for internship from different schools but he felt "on top of the world" because he was from an expensive private university. He would talk to anyone the way he liked, and it made people not to like him. No one wanted to go close to him because of the attitude. Throughout the internship period and when he was leaving, it happened that way, that even when they were organizing the send-off party, no one remembered to invite him. How sad.

When you are proud, it will show in your social relationship with people and the consequences are often negative. It is worthy to note that pride is not a reflection of one's pocket size. That is, it does not mean that the people that are proud are rich while the others are poor. Trust me, there are very humble but very rich people. In the same way, there are very proud people with empty pocket. It is purely a reflection of one's mind - what one thinks in their mind about themselves and about others.

Now that we have talked about the dangers of pride, let us look at how to overcome it. The first step is to take a reflection inwards and understand who you really are - your vulnerabilities, your weaknesses, etc. When you understand that you are not omnipotent, you will bring your shoulders down. More so, what you think you have, a lot of others have them more abundantly. When you know this, it will help you to stay humble. You also need to understand that you neither know everything that needs to be known, nor do you have everything that needs to be had, so stay humble. Your destination is someone else's route. Someone once made a humorous by thoughtful remark to someone and I overheard it. He said:

Your total net-worth is someone else's weekend allowance, so be humble.

Another way to overcome pride is to understand that you are not in competition with anyone in life, so people care less of what you have or do not have. If you know that you are not in competition with anyone, there will be no point forming to be better than them. Then you have to learn to practice empathy towards people. The truth is that the more empathetic you are for people, the less you are to exhibit pride towards them, and the more humble you become. More often than not, try to put yourself in the shoes and position of others, thereby coming to terms with their thoughts, their feelings, and their emotions. This will help you to tilt towards humility.

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