Can Pride Make a Difference in Your Life?

By , SparkPeople Blogger
Self-pride is the ability to see your own personal value and worth and serves as a gauge for how much you like, accept, approve, and respect yourself. Self-pride influences every aspect of your life because how you feel about yourself comes through in what you say and do. When you make decisions with an unfavorable view of yourself, you are more likely to demean you efforts, body, talents and abilities. As days, months, and years go by, that ongoing negative dialogue can result in feelings of anxiety, irritability, or resentment. Over time, those feelings can also lead to loneliness or depression.

Many of us spend a great deal of time trying to improve what we see as flawed and imperfect with a low sense of pride in ourselves. We remember who we were in a different time in our life and somehow expect that the person from back then can still exist in a new set of conditions, roles, and responsibilities. Although on paper we realize this is unrealistic, we continue to measure ourselves with an unrealistic measuring stick and as time goes by, we lose more and more pride in ourselves. The negative self-talk plays in our heads more than the positive and one day we realize we are in a cycle we never intended to be in or learned how to deal with.

One of the 5 things I talked about in my Giving Thanks – 5 Ways to Develop an Attitude of Gratitude blog a while back was giving up negative self-talk. Developing self-pride can help you get rid of those ongoing negative scripts that are playing in your head. Here are some ways to help you get started developing a stronger sense of self-pride.

  • Put yourself on the list for 10 minutes each day - In Spark founder Chris Downey's new book The Spark coming out December 29th, he shares about how 10 minutes a day changed his life. His 10 minutes focused on exercise and it ultimately changed how he saw himself. For you, beginning to see yourself more positively requires first putting yourself on the list and providing yourself the opportunity to get to know you better. You might take a gentle walk (without a focus of exercise) without any music and simply spend time with yourself. You might find space to be still, breathe deeply, and spend time with yourself. Or, you might simply stay in bed after waking in the quiet of the morning and spend this peaceful time of your day with yourself. However you can fit in 10 minutes of designated time and space everyday for you to spend time quietly with yourself is good and is a positive way to get to know yourself better. Hopefully after doing it consistently you will find that the 10 minutes you spend with yourself each day are the most peace-filled and happy moments of your entire day.

  • Focus less on what you should do and more on what you did - If your life is anything like mine, it is full of all the things we should do. The calorie level I should eat, the amount of time I should exercise, the work in my inbox that I should get to, the chores at home that should be done and the time I should spend with my family and friends. Of course, there are only so many hours in the day and my list of shoulds is far larger than the number of hours I have to accomplish them. So, many days are ended counting how many things are left undone, focusing more on what wasn't accomplished than what was. One of the best ways we can love ourselves more is to take pride in what we accomplish, period. Dr Phil often says that when you say "but", everything you say after that cancels out what you said before. So, if we say to ourselves at the end of the day things like "I did great getting up at 5 AM to exercise but I really blew it with the lunch at the restaurant", what is internalized is, we blew it. We all too often dismiss all the things we did well and only focus on what we see that doesn't measure up or isn't enough, perfect, super-human etc. etc. etc. Get rid of the but in your sentences and focus on what you accomplished and leave it at that.

  • Accept the responsibility and consequences of your choices and actions - In our home, we have spent many years teaching our teen children that choices and actions have consequences and that they have a say in whether those consequences are positive or negative by the choices they make. I am happy to see small glimpses that our teens seem to be getting it. Are you? Do you take responsibility for the choices and outcomes in your life or do you spend a lot of time blaming others. It isn't your fault there were treats at the office, you wouldn't have eaten them if someone hadn't brought them in. It isn't your fault that you stayed up too late and couldn't get up to exercise in the morning, if SNL or Sunday Night Football hadn't been hyped all week, you wouldn't have stayed up to watch them. I think you get the point. You are an adult that is capable of making choices and accepting the consequences of those choices and moving on. Accept the choices you make, learn from the experience of the outcome and use it to make a wise and self-supportive decision the next time.

  • Accept that mistakes and set backs are where personal growth is found - Everyone makes mistakes. Haven't we all heard that throughout our life? We tell children they should learn from their mistakes but do we? Problems, conflicts, failures, set-backs are all part of life and provide great opportunity for personal growth if we choose to look at them that way. The old Frank Sinatra song "Pick Yourself Up" expresses it well with these important words, "Will you remember the famous men, Who had to fall to rise again? So take a deep breath, Pick yourself up, Dust yourself off, Start all over again." Each choice that didn't work out, each intentional action that ended badly, each unconscious decision that wasn't thought out and brought on unwanted outcomes are all learning opportunities that can bring personal growth when we choose to use them that way. So, the next mistake you make don't sit there in self pity, self loathing or self denial, instead remember the Sinatra song. Take a deep breath (admit the mistake or error of decision or indecision), pick yourself up (decide what you will do differently the next time), dust yourself off (get right back into your preferred routines or lifestyle choices) and start all over again (tomorrow the sun will rise and you will have a whole new day of opportunities and choices) so you can rise again.
What positive actions will you take to improve your self-pride through ending negative self-talk so you can move toward your goals in 2010?

See more: emotional health