Why Build Healthy Pride with this Essential Guide for your Life Fulfilment
Lucy Colson
Entrepreneur, Coach, Writer and Speaker dedicated to becoming best in the world at helping people create fulfilling, joyful, and meaningful lives.
It is an?intensive how-to guide to Build Healthy Pride via intentional personal growth?and why it is vitally essential?for your life satisfaction?
Contents:
Introduction: Why is Building Healthy Pride so Important?
There are three main reasons you should care about pride, personality, and the two interconnectedness for your life satisfaction.
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The Barriers to?Building Healthy Pride
The social function of pride is to express high status. High status is sought after due to the respect you receive from others. The greater?your pride, the higher you signal in the social hierarchy and the more respect you receive from those around you.?
However, there is more than one route to gaining pride, and each route, or status maintaining strategy, creates a different kind of pride. The first leads to a life of greater satisfaction; the other leads you to an endless dark tunnel in where hope to find happiness.??
Tracy and Robins 2007 established the two-facet model of pride. First,?evolutionary theory differentiated authentic (healthy) pride and hubristic (unhealthy) pride.
The former comes from an internal sense of peace and confidence and is associated with satisfying social relationships, prosocial behaviours, achievement-orientation and, what we’re most concerned about, mental wellbeing.
On the other hand, hubristic pride presents itself as narcissism, disagreeableness and lack of conscientiousness.
When you’re authentically proud, you’re open to sharing your resources and entering relationships for what you can give instead of what you can take. Relationships built on the intention to be generous by all parties are called transformational relationships. For reasons explained in this article, being generous leads to a greater amount of oxytocin, a natural antidepressant, in the blood. By being authentically proud and entering transformational relationships, you hook yourselves up to an endless supply of a feel-good drug that protects and strengthens your mental health, thereby enabling you to live a more satisfying life.
However, you and I don’t live in a culture that encourages?authentic pride. It doesn’t promote finding confidence in our personality and who we are without our possessions. Nor does it encourage prestige-based status maintenance strategies like freely sharing our resources with no expectation of anything in return that builds and maintain authentic pride. So instead, for a while now, as a collective community, we’re teaching each other dominant status maintenance strategies; ruling with carrot and stick, being unapproachable, taking and hoarding for ourselves social status indicators like education, occupation and wealth, which build hubristic pride.
The barriers to building healthy pride?are too few realise the scarcity mindset, is leading to more hubristic pride, damaging our mental health and stopping us from living the satisfying life we’re taking so much to gain.
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The Building Healthy Pride Loop
To understand the pride to personality loop, first, you need to understand exactly how most?of psychologists define personality.?
For starters, there are no personality groups or types. I’ll explain more about that later.
Instead, personality is an overview of five spectrums:
or OCEAN for short.
Authentically proud individuals?are more likely to score highly on openness, conscientiousness, extraversion and agreeableness. Conversely, they’ll score low on neuroticism.
People who show hubristic pride are the opposite; likely to score low on openness, conscientiousness, extraversion and agreeableness and highly on neuroticism.?
The nail in the coffin is that behaviour is addictive, and humans are creatures of habit; therefore, it will be self-reinforcing whichever pride camp you fall into.
Meet Bailey the Butterfly ??. They’re authentically proud and so are more open. By being so, they share their resources in the form of ideas, effort, time, money with the people around them, and because humans are social creatures who a relational to one another, they feel good and want to be more open. By being more open, they feel even better and want to be more open still?
Charlie the Caterpillar ?? however, has hubristic pride.?Charlie?wants to protect and gain as many social status symbols as possible and therefore isn’t open and?doesn’t feel good. Instead,?Charlie the Caterpillar????feels empty and wants to take more and give less, so they are even less open. In addition, by being disagreeable, neurotic and unconscientious,?Charlie?the Caterpillar????is less likely to build strong connections and more likely to feel lonely, which is disastrous for their health and life satisfaction.
“Social isolation is as potent a cause of early death as smoking 15 cigarettes a?day; loneliness, research suggests, is twice as deadly as obesity. Dementia, high blood pressure, alcoholism and accidents – all these, like depression, paranoia, anxiety and suicide, become more prevalent when connections are cut. We cannot cope alone.”
- George Monbiot
While the feeling of loneliness is a natural urge to want to reconnect, habits die hard. So for?Charlie?the Caterpillar ?? to change from their hubristic pride and build their authentic, healthy pride, they’d have to change their personality.
But hang on, is the person?Charlie?the Caterpillar ?? has been all their life the same person they are today and the same person they’ll always be?
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The Fluidity of Personality
The short answer is no.
How about you? Do you agree with every decision you’ve ever made? Are you as quiet or as loud as you were as a child? Are you as caring? Have you stopped saying yes to everything? Do you give more now than a time before?
You might not have to think too long, but if for long enough, you’ll inevitably come to see the vast differences between the present you and the past you. While the same person, you have different personalities, and that is normal?
The truth is personality is not innate. It is trained into you from a young age by the examples you saw growing up and the examples around you now.?
Your personality is never static, always dynamic and little by little every day adapting to the new challenges you face to achieve your goals and make the most of your opportunities. (You may call them obstacles???♀?)?
However, what is fascinating is that despite knowing that we have changed in the past, most humans do not believe they will change as much in the future. Called the End of History Illusion, people vastly underestimate the amount of change they would experience over the next ten years of their life.
Being deluded like this is dangerous because it causes us to be more inclined to indulge in our current behaviours and not invest in?a bet?future for ourselves.?
Charlie?the Caterpillar ?? suffering from the end of history illusion will continue to engage in the dominant status maintenance strategies because they don’t have a clear vision of a future where they behave in any other way so cannot begin to live a satisfying life.?
The person you are today is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you've ever been.??
- Dan Gilbert, Harvard Academic.
Ultimately, Building Healthy Pride?is so important because the wrong kind of pride, hubristic pride, can severely damage our mental health through an invisible self-reinforcing cycle that?stops individuals from living a satisfying life. It is especially dangerous for those unaware of how their personality has changed in the past and will change in the future, for they are more likely to continue in the pride to personality loop and suffer the harm it causes.
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Section One: Why should you be wary of your perception of your present personality for building healthy pride??
The Incorrectness of Causal Determinism of Personality
Before we can start understanding how to build healthy pride via personality, we must disillusion ourselves with?what personality is thought to be.
Causal determinism is the idea that every event is necessitated by previous circumstances?and conditions together with the laws of nature; that one event, like a domino, sets off the next and sets off the next.?
Applying causal determinism to personality, many believe the greatest predictor of who you are is who you’ve been.
You see this in how people often refer to themselves.?
Thinking back to when I asked you about the differences between your present self and past self, what did you base your perception of your present self on??
I’d bet it was recent prior events.
If that was the case, you weren’t comparing your present self to your past self; you were comparing your past self to a more recent past self and, if your personality is fluid, then your more recent past self will be different to your present self.
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Separating Your Past Personality from Your Present Personality
Every time we access a memory, we alter it.??
“We reinterpret or reconstruct our memory in light of what our mental set is in the present. In this sense, it is more accurate to say the present causes the meaning of the past, than it is to say that the past causes the meaning of the present”
- Dr. Brent Slife said in Time and Psychological Explanation;
Human memory is very malleable and therefore untrustworthy when it comes to telling any fundamental truth.?
Using our past as the foundation of our personality can easily delude us of who we are now.?
How we describe, interpret, and identify with our past has far more to do with where we are, here and now, than it has to do with our actual history.
Therefore, your past is not a representative source to use if you create a picture of your present.?
Even the self you were yesterday, your past self is in some small way different from the person you are right now.?The more you realise and respect that fact, the wiser the position you put yourself in.
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Reinforcing Who You Are with the Theory of Narrative Personality
The Theory of Narrative Identity or Life Story Model of Identity by Dr Dan McAdams supposes individuals create meaning and value in their lives by internalised and ever-evolving narrative of themself.
When you tell the story of who you are, you likely tell the story of your past, of who you’ve been, as Dr Slife suggested.?We look at our recent prior behaviours and use them to create a picture of our present self - this is called self-signalling. Our behaviour signals to us who our self is.?
According to consistency bias, even when it acts against your best interest, we all tend?to be consistent with our prior commitments, ideas, thoughts, words, and actions; by basing your identity narrative on your past self, you are going to tend towards staying consistent with your previous behaviours, you won’t break habits, and your comfort zone will not grow,
As time moves on, you will continue to engage in the same behaviours that will send the same signals that your subconscious mind will use to form the same or very similar narrative identity.?
By telling the same story, we reinforce what we already know and continue to behave as such and find ourselves in another loop preventing us from growing beyond who we are right now. We get stuck in our patterns.
To round out this section,
For?Charlie?the Caterpillar ??, if they’re going to stand a chance in building their healthy pride via their personality and improve their life satisfaction, they must first ensure they do not see themselves as who they’ve been.
Section Two: How should you Approach Your Personality to Build Healthy Pride?
There’s a lot of content about personality out there in the world. Unfortunately, most of it is not based on what science knows. Instead, it is outdated or just made up. Regardless, it leads to many?misunderstanding about what personality is and how we should approach it. If you stick with me and follow the upcoming science-backed advice, you’ll have the best understanding of personality for life satisfaction.
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The Double-Edged Sword of Labelling Your Personality
The following?personality faux pas many make is the use of labels.?
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We’ve labels for everything and, as a way to compartmentalise and understand complex ideas, they’re effective like people.?
However, the more you try to label and put into boxes, model and frame something as complex as a personality, the less you’ll capture.?
The beauty of what makes us human is our inconsistencies, contradictions, and sheer inability to fit into a box.?
For example, no one is purely logically minded. All scientists and logisticians have a creative side. But equally, all creatives have a logical side. So, in an extreme labelling situation, you're ignoring their logical abilities and potential by calling someone who excels in art creative.?
Take our newfound friend Charlie the Caterpillar ??; they're introverted, quiet and shy, sad, depressed, lonely, narcissistic, antisocial and uncaring in a professional setting.
However, like all of us,?Charlie?the Caterpillar ?? has a multidimensional personality. Therefore, Charlie, the Caterpillar ?? can be loud, funny, happy and jolly under a specific context. In addition, they're highly social, and they'll offer a round or two.
In a different setting, Charlie the Caterpillar ?? shows an entirely other?side of their personality.
No one is always antisocial. No one is always generous. No one shows the same set of traits in every setting all the time.
The second important thing about approaching personality is realising it is contextual and that every time you try to pin it down, you will lose a dimension of that person.?
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The Danger of Personality Types?
An even worse way to approach personality than labels is with personality types.?
You may be shocked to hear, but there is no such thing as a personality type.?
While there are running themes and patterns in the traits, different people show, believing you fall into a model of personality stops you from seeing the fluidity of your personality mentioned earlier.?
In turn, you limit the person you can become, which is a sign of a very fixed mindset, one of the most robust blocks to any personal growth?
I won’t mention much about the danger of a fixed mindset because there are more detailed high-qualtiy sources than what I would provide. However, if it is something you are interested in, I recommend you read the book Mindset written by the leading academic in the subject, Dr Carol Dweck.?
One of my highlights from the book is this short passage:
People with a fixed mindset were only interested when the feedback reflected on their ability. Their brain waves showed them paying close attention when they were told whether their answers were right or wrong. But when they were presented with information that could help them learn, there was no sign of interest. Even when they’d gotten an answer wrong, they were not interested in learning what the right answer was. Only people with a growth mindset paid close attention to information that could stretch their knowledge. Only for them was learning a priority.
To bring this section to a close, think of our friend?Charlie?the Caterpillar ??. They’ve not strong connections; they’re lonely and suffering from mental unhealthiness.
Charlie is under the end-of-history illusion, so cannot see a future version of themself that behaves differently from today. so, they continue to tell the same story of themself and using their dominant status maintenance strategies to prop up their hubristic pride, which only makes their mental unhealthiness worse, damaging their life satisfaction.?
To top it all off, Chalrie's fixed mindset and incorrect approach to personality step in the way to stop them from adapting to a new better life of mental wellness and satisfaction.
The second step for?Charlie?the Caterpillar ?? to stand a chance in building their healthy pride via their personality and improve their life satisfaction is to give up any view of personality types and always take labels with a pinch of salt. Personality is multidimensional and is always understood more by adding a new different perspective.
Section Three: How to blueprint Building Healthy Pride?with personal growth?
Step 1: Forecast Your Personality
Bill Burnett and Dave Evans crafted the Odyssey Plan at the University of Standford in the U.S.A.?
It is a straightforward plan with only three steps. We will do the first now!
As a brief introduction to the Odyssey Plan, this is how its creator Bill Burnett explains it:
“And so we've designed this thing we call an Odyssey Plan, which is really a little bit of a misnomer because we don't believe so much in planning, but we believe a lot in having ideas, ideation. So what an Odyssey Plan is is a sort of brainstorm about how might my life work going forward maybe five years or ten years and coming up with all of the elements that would make that life rich and fulfilling.”
For the first part of this exercise, write out what your current goals are.It doesn't matter how vague they are; maybe they're just targeted outlines or a dream, hope or wish; however, you must be actively pursuing its achievement for it to make the list.?
Next, in your journal, word document or notebook split the width of the page into six even spaces. In the header column write , On My Current Path. Then, at the top of each space, title it Year 1 to Year 5. The result should look something like this:?
?Then describe in as much detail the behavioural changes you can expect if you continue to aim only towards the goals you’re currently actively pursuing over the next five years.
Think about OCEAN (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism)
Think for yourself, is this the person you want to become? Is this the complete picture of the person you want to become??
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Step 2: The Mental Creation Process of the Personality for Achieving Your Goals
'Mental creation will always precedes physical creation’
-?Stephen R Covey
To physically create a personality you can be proud of and enjoy the benefits of authentic, healthy pride; you must first create a clear vision of that person in your mind.?
Mental Creation always starts with what you want to have. So if you've got this far, it's clear that what you want is authentic pride, so we can immediately move on to the next step; what do you need to do to have authentic pride.?
We already know this as well; we need to do prestige-based status maintenance strategies. We need to give our time and resources to others, via which we’ll subconsciously gain a sense of value and respect from our peers. However, to not feel like we're accountable to anyone and enjoy the process, we need to be internally motivated to do it for no other reason than to genuinely care for the betterment of other people.?
You can do this by centring our work around a purpose we are passionate about, which, by working towards, we are of service to others. Only this way can we feel a part of something larger than ourselves and a sense of belonging. Our value comes from the value that we freely give others.
Finally, we need to pinpoint the habits, the repeatable behaviours that match our purpose. So, for example, if your purpose is to home the houselessness, a practice could be to volunteer at the local houseless shelter for at least one hour a week.?
The Importance of Goal Lead Personality Change for Building Healthy Pride
“Your vision of where or who you want to be is the greatest asset you have. Without having a goal it’s difficult to score”
— Paul Arden
You can only unlock your desired future self if you are working towards the right goal, or as Dr Stephen Covey once said,
“If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster."?
We've established that personality is a fluid thing. So you can either guide that change in a direction that will satisfy you or let the environment around you guide that change.?
However, if you leave it to the latter, it is unlikely that your personality and behaviour change will benefit you.?
Most of the people around you aren’t invested in your emotional well-being. If you're not living a satisfying life, they're not going to be the ones to go out of their way to help you, especially if you're not helping yourselves. Instead, they're going to continue to act in a manner?that gets them closer to their goals.?Unless their goal is to make your life better, which we can both see is unlikely, their actions will probably detract from your satisfaction.?
The more definite your goals, the easier you can let go of your past and lean into your future. You can fully embrace a positive outlook and growth mindset of which the benefits are numerous.
Section Four: How to live authentically once you've Built?Healthy Pride??
The Importance of Authentic Personality
“The desire to be “authentic” keeps people stuck in unhealthy patterns, trapped in their insecurities.”
- Adam Grant
Let's start by agreeing that there is no authentic self. It is not who you are today, who you've been before, or who you will become. If anything, your authentic self is more profound than a static moment. Your authentic self is the combination of all the people you've ever been, are and will be.?
That means that your personality is not birth-given nor instinctive. But, equally, it is not something you must find or discover.
To truly live authentically you must remove all the limitations you have trapped yourself with and embrace the uncomfortable situation of growing through who you are.
The closest you can get to living authentically is by living in alignment with what you believe to be true, to commit to a purpose and goals in alignment with that purpose.?
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The Healthy Pride Daily Routine
“The most successful people in the world base their identity and internal narrative on their future, not their past"
- Dr Benjamin Hardy, Personality Isn’t Permanent
The more you talk about your goals and the person you need to become to achieve them, the more you’ll act consistent with that personality, the quicker you will adapt and the quicker you will succeed.?
Assuming that your goal aligns with your purpose, you'll live a more satisfying and fulfilling life.
While the most powerful visions of your future self are the largest and most detailed, it is important to hold your identity narrative loosely because, the more you try to box, model and frame a personality the more details you lose sight of.
While?Charlie?the Caterpillar ?? is working towards becoming a butterfly, they don’t know what colour their wings will?be!
Conclusion: How to apply this article to build healthy pride yourself??
If you do not have pride in your personality, or you have pride in your possessions, you will not have a fully satisfying life.?
Pride of possessions or hubristic pride leads to narcissism, problematic relationships, and poor mental health. On the other hand, authentic pride leads to satisfying social relationships, high self-esteem, prosocial behaviours, achievement-orientation and mental health.?
Long story short, you need not be feared but respected by your social group members because you possess cultural knowledge and skills and are open to sharing these resources. - That is how you gain and maintain authentic pride.?
But how?
Take our best friend?Charlie?the Caterpillar ??, the epitome of hubristic pride. How can they turn into Bailey the Butterfly ??, the epitome of authentic pride??
First, Charlie, the Caterpillar's ?? authentic pride stems from having a clearly defined purpose or direction in life. An overarching theme for their work. An impact or change they would like to make.?
From there, Charlie the Caterpillar ?? can define a goal - this is the single focus Charlie the Caterpillar ?? commits to every day to fulfil their previously set purpose. It must be measurable and challenging enough that Charlie the Caterpillar ?? cannot achieve it without changing their behaviour (and therefore their personality). Still, it's not so complex that it's daunting. A little resistance is always a good thing.
By taking action towards that goal, if it hits the challenging but not complex score posts,?Charlie?the Caterpillar ?? will be operating outside of their comfort zone, outside of what they know and outside of their current behaviour patterns.
Charlie?the Caterpillar ?? will start to learn new things they didn’t know before and behave in ways they never have before - this will signal a new identity narrative, a new personality.?
Once Charlie, the Caterpillar ?? has achieved their goal, that will build their confidence because confidence levels for anyone are built on prior recent success.
Charlie?the Caterpillar ?? can then start engaging in prestige-based status maintenance strategies of giving what they have openly to others with no expectation of anything in return. As a result, they'll increase the number of transformational relationships they have, and that will boost their mental wellbeing.
Charlie?the Caterpillar ?? generosity to give will build levels of their authentic pride, pride in their personality, and reduce levels of hubristic pride, pride of possessions. Their pride will be based on who they are, not what they have.
The more?Charlie?the Caterpillar ?? serves and help others, the more they will want to. So the Pride to Personality loop and?Charlie?the Caterpillar ?? will turn into Bailey?the Butterfly ??.?