7 Ways To Overcome Pride
Being arrogant and prideful is a good way to not make friends. It’s also a good way to push away the people you have in your life.
Nobody wants to have any kind of relationship with a prideful person. You, yourself, probably don’t want to deal with a person who has pride.
Pridefulness can make us selfish and uncaring. Beyond pushing people away, pride can keep you from growing as a person. Thinking too highly of yourself means you won’t listen and learn from others.
Here are some tips to help you be less prideful and have less ego. You can also learn more on this topic in our article on How To Be Humble But Confident.
1. Be self-aware
Verywell Mind describes self-awareness as being aware of our traits, behaviors, and feelings. Stop to consider if something you’re doing right now is too prideful. Questions you can ask yourself are:
- Do I brag about myself a lot?
- Do I often refuse help from others?
- Have I acted like I’m better than someone recently?
Be as honest with yourself as possible. Ask someone you trust if any of these things seem true about you. Knowing how you’re prideful can help you better know how to change.
2. Stop comparing yourself to others
A part of pride is thinking we’re a lot better than others. It takes comparing yourself to someone to do that.
Choose not to think about who you are as a person compared to someone else. You don’t need to look down on someone else to feel good.
We’re all unique in our own way. Appreciate your uniqueness, and appreciate everyone else’s uniqueness.
3. Follow someone’s leadership
Prideful people usually want to be the boss of everything. You can learn to be humble by following someone else’s leadership.
Being a follower means you have to respect someone else’s authority. You have to accept someone being in a higher position than you.
Being directed by another person takes humility. Find a group or work situation where you have to follow someone’s leadership. When you’re in this situation, be respectful as you get told what to do.
4. Let people help you
A good way to be more humble is to let people help you out more. Ask someone for advice on something you’re struggling with.
Request a favor from somebody. Go out of your way to seek help from someone. Allow yourself to be helped and thank the person for doing it.
5. Praise others
As mentioned earlier, pride can lead you to spend too much time praising yourself. When you’re tempted to brag about yourself, try bragging about someone else.
When someone tells you something they did, compliment them for it. Avoid trying to one-up them by speaking about something you did.
People appreciate it when others say nice things about them. Who knows, they might even say something nice about you in return.
6. Serve others
Pride makes you focus too much on doing things for yourself. Take time to focus on doing things for other people.
You could go out of your way to take care of a problem someone has. You could do a favor for somebody when they need it. Focus more on being selfless.
7. Forgive people
A prideful person tends to not be very forgiving of others. They hold a grudge towards any and everyone who’s wronged them.
You can take a step towards being less prideful by forgiving those who’ve wronged you. Choose not to let go of your anger towards that person so you can have more peace of mind.
It’s easy for us to get full of ourselves from time to time. Remember that being humble is better for you in the long run. You’ll have better relationships and a happier life.