How to feel more pride

Get comfortable owning and enjoying your achievements, big and small, and you will nourish your mental health and self-esteem

by Leon Garber 

 

Of the seven deadly sins, pride is in many ways the most nefarious. In excess, it overshadows and engulfs the virtues of philosophy – self-reflection, critical thinking, consideration for the broader community, and the sense of one’s finitude and fallibility. And yet there are also good reasons to feel more pride – it’s positively correlated with life satisfaction and happiness, and negatively correlated with depression and anxiety.

Imagine a world wherein Albert Einstein wasn’t proud, where his theories appeared to him to have been created in vain. Without pride in his accomplishments, would he have had the motivation to persevere to achieve more? Discovery and creation are only one side of the proverbial coin of success; you have to believe that you’ve achieved it, too.

What to do

Challenge your unhelpful beliefs and assumptions

The first step to feeling more pride is to challenge some of the unhelpful beliefs and assumptions you might hold about it. One way I help my clients do this is by having them ask themselves a series of questions related to pride, and then talking through their answers with them. Here are a few of the questions I ask and some of the prompts I use in discussion:

If I feel satisfied and proud, won’t it sap my motivation?

According to research into the concept of the ‘hedonic treadmill’, the answer is no. It has shown that part of being human is that eventually we grow weary of our achievements and seek out more of them. Although we tend to believe that some accomplishment will foster a state of perpetual happiness, in reality, we get bored with what we own, including our own memories and successes. In acknowledging human nature, we’re reminded that stagnation is only a slightly probable outcome. Almost inevitably, after celebrating, you’ll strive for something else.

It’s also worth remembering that, according to research on the Big Five model of personality, the major personality traits change over one’s lifetime only slightly, on average. So, if you’re highly ambitious, driven and conscientious, you are likely to remain so, regardless of whether you allow yourself to take pride in your achievements.

Won’t feeling pride make me a bad person or narcissistic?

Some people fear that pride equates with sin. Perhaps you too feel guilty whenever you aren’t an exemplar of modesty. Some religious beliefs can fuel this tendency by adopting a dualistic perspective on humanity that sees people as either good or evil. But, I would counter, is anyone fully good? If you never allow yourself to feel any pride, you are holding yourself to an impossible standard, I would suggest. Similarly, in religious philosophy, pride is often conflated with arrogance, thus it’s seen as a misperception of one’s status in relation to divinity. Such a perspective teaches that we must remain constantly aware of our servitude to god. Yet, the authentic pride I am encouraging you to feel more of has no relation to the divine. In feeling authentic pride, one doesn’t blaspheme against god, as this version of pride isn’t synonymous with conceit.

Did I dismiss a personal achievement because I didn’t see it being as good as another?

People who find it difficult to take pride in their accomplishments often utilise a cognitive heuristic known as ‘disqualifying the positive’, which involves giving yourself reasons why something seemingly good that you did actually isn’t so good. Often, you’ll do this by comparison with personal achievements that you consider superior. Rather than celebrating and taking pride in positive feedback at work, for instance, you’ll instead feel disappointed that you weren’t the office top performer, as you’d managed before. Big-picture thinking is a helpful antidote if you’re prone to considering your accomplishments in this way. In addition to comparing your achievement with a better one, also try comparing it with a smaller one. You can compare it with your own less significant achievement or even one belonging to someone else. When considering the broad scope of possible achievements, yours will likely fall somewhere between tying your shoelaces and preventing a nuclear disaster – and there’s no harm in celebrating wherever it lies.

Am I denying myself pride because of unrealistic expectations?

Individuals struggling with unhealthy perfectionism consider perfection across the board as the ultimate achievement, meaning they deny themselves a sense of pride until that impossible goal is achieved. You might think this goal is rational. In my case, if I’m a good therapist in Brooklyn, shouldn’t I also be one in Thailand? Yet perfection is much more context dependent than it first appears. Ideally, we’d love to thrive everywhere, but akin to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which states that you can’t know a particle’s exact position and exact speed at the same time, if we adapt to one aspect of the world, we move away from thriving in another. Essentially, ultimate perfection doesn’t exist, and the perfection worth striving for is always relative. Think of evolutionary adaption: when a creature through centuries of evolution develops a coat, she’s now ideally suited for a cold environment as opposed to a warm one. Thus, our instincts lead us astray when we chase total perfection as an ultimate end. Instead, try to celebrate and take pride in your smaller, more modest yet still worthy achievements, such as a good grade, exercising when you don’t feel like it, and effectively handling a squabble maturely.

Use mental time-travel to gain perspective

Having challenged some of your unhelpful thoughts and beliefs about pride and success, here is a specific exercise to help you better appreciate your achievements. It’s based on the fact that, in the short term, it can be difficult to perceive your own progress. So, ask yourself if the person you were five years ago or even last year would be proud of the person you are presently. Imagine your younger self thinking about you as you are today. Would she be proud of you? Would it surprise her to know that you’re the person she’ll eventually become? Could she have imagined that she would achieve everything you have? When you see yourself through her eyes, are you marvelling at who you are?

I bet that the you of a year ago would have been amazed at the you of today, and the you of today will likely be amazed at the you of one year hence. Additionally, when your life is conceived of as a process rather than a destination, you won’t be as eager to arrive at its magical end; in fact, you’ll likely be in awe of its development.

I often ask my clients to consider the evolution of species, enquiring about whether they believe speciation occurs quickly or gradually. If you think of success in the same way – as a gradual process rather than a sudden achievement – you might find it easier to think of your own life in a broader, more positive way. Remind yourself that evolution occurs incrementally. Species adapt to their environments over millennia, so why can’t you be a bit more patient with yourself?

Take a realistic look at your role models

Next, consider people you look up to. They might be athletes, musicians, politicians or even ordinary people. Ask yourself how long it took for them to become admirable. Most of the time, when we’re comparing, we utilise the fallacy of comparing apples with oranges. So, we compare ourselves, in whichever stage of progress we happen to be in, with those who’ve already achieved what we wish to, which leaves us disappointed and devoid of pride in ourselves. But it isn’t usually a fair comparison because our heroes didn’t just morph into their present selves.

Consider your heroes’ life stories, and ask yourself how long it took for them to become successful. Are their stories full of progress and regression? And did each evolutionary narrative describe a slow progression? Remember, if success were instant and easily attained, one probably wouldn’t enjoy it as much. Usually, the more intense the struggle, the greater the taste of its fruits.

View your life holistically

A life without pride – living only to succeed while not enjoying that success – can soon become bleak. If this is you, you might find yourself asking: ‘What is all of this for?’

If your basic physical needs are dependent on continual success, you’re likely living in harsh circumstances. But that is not true for most of us, at least not in relatively safe, prosperous nations. Yet so many of us treat further success almost as a necessity. We filter out the positives and focus on the negatives, recalling years of sorrow. We give ourselves a plethora of reasons why we will be happy only if certain things become different. So, take a holistic perspective of your life and enquire into what’s good about it now. Not in the future after you’ve achieved X or Y, but right now. Just as we have the power to forgive ourselves, we also have the ability to feel proud of ourselves now. Throughout your life, you make choices, even if automatic, about whether to allow certain feelings in. You may have habituated to rejecting pride, but you can always change your mind to let it in. Most people’s lives have great aspects to them, things that they’ve achieved and people whom they love. I implore you to focus on them and take pride in them. For example, consider the degree of difficulty involved in receiving a promotion at work or maintaining your marriage, and all the effort you put into those endeavours.

Create time frames in which to feel pride

If you’re afraid of stagnation, then give yourself a time limit: I will feel proud about a particular achievement for one week, and then attempt to achieve something else. This is important for those who struggle with black-and-white thinking, believing that pride is a slippery slope to idleness. By setting a time limit in which to experience pride, you’re able to acknowledge its finitude. And the limit can be completely of your own choosing. Additionally, if you prefer to improve further and think that feeling pride isn’t motivating enough, consider some kind of external celebration that’s calibrated in scale to the achievement. For example, if you receive a good grade on an exam, consider the amount of effort you put into studying, and ask yourself how much of a celebration is therefore warranted, then allow yourself that pleasure alongside a set period of feeling pride.

Keep a record of your achievements

Keep a journal of your goals, documenting when you reach them and even when you don’t. A record of your moderate and major achievements will motivate you to set future goals and provide you with the confidence necessary to overcome setbacks. (It doesn’t make sense to document minor goals as you’ll likely have too many to count.) You’ll be able to assess how much you’ve done while also reminding yourself of how much is left undone. And your documented failures will allow you to remain humble. Narcissism doesn’t permit the acknowledgement of failure, so this exercise will be especially useful if you fear that pride invariably engenders narcissism.

You can share your record with others if you prefer feedback and are unsure of whether something is worth being proud of, but remember: if something is hard for you, regardless of whether it is hard for another, you should feel proud of yourself for having done it. And even if you continually fail at something, you can feel proud of yourself for all the attempts made. Cultivating resilience should be as important a goal – if not more so – as any external achievement because of its staying power; you might not be a champion forever, but you can carry grit into old age. This doesn’t mean that you should never give up – sometimes it makes perfect sense to switch course and there is no shame in that.

 

Key points – How to feel more pride

1. Pride is distinct from self-esteem. Pride relates to feeling good about specific personal or group achievements, and helps form the basis for healthy self-esteem, which is an overall sense of self-worth.
2. Pride is often seen unfairly as a sin or as narcissistic. Authentic pride, which is based on achievements born of personal or collective effort, should not be confused with hubristic pride – which is a narcissistic sense of one’s overall and innate superiority.
3. Authentic pride is important to mental wellbeing. An inability to experience pride is a feature common to many mental health problems, such as major depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder.
4. Challenge your unhelpful beliefs and assumptions. Taking pride in your achievements won’t sap your motivation and shouldn’t be dependent on being perfect in all situations.
5. Use mental time-travel to gain perspective. Viewed up close in the short term, it can be difficult to recognise your progress and achievements. Instead, imagine how the you of one year ago or more would view the you of today.
6. Take a realistic look at your role models. An unrealistic appraisal of the people you admire can undermine pride in your own progress. Recall that, prior to their success, your role models too had setbacks and received rejection letters.
7. View your life holistically. Always pinning your happiness on future successes is unsustainable. Think about what is good about your life now and take pride in it.
8. Create time frames in which to feel pride. If you’re afraid of stagnation, then give yourself a time limit, such as ‘I will feel proud for one week’.
9. Keep a record of your achievements. A record of your achievements will motivate you to set future goals and provide you with the confidence necessary to overcome setbacks.