Pride

 

Growing up, I was taught to take pride in what I do because anything worth doing requires focus, determination, and commitment. It was engrained in me at an early age that there is not a lot to be proud of when you give less than full effort and take the path of least resistance. Like most young people, I tried to get away with partial effort and doing things the easy way, but in the end, I was left with a very empty feeling because the finished product could have been better if I just would have put in a little more effort. Once I finally figured this out, I chased the feeling of pride in everything I did because it was addictive and it made me feel good to be able to say that I gave my absolute best in everything I did and I was proud of what I accomplished. At some point, however, I finally realized that I was chasing the impossible. Pride is a great feeling until it isn’t.

C.S. Lewis once wrote, ““For pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.” By definition, pride is an excessive view of one's self without regard for others. It takes on many forms, but at its basic level, pride is demeaning other people or feeling an aversion to others. Pride is about competition and wanting to defeat others. This is a common method of motivation in our sports based culture, but what we really need to grapple with is whether this is the correct way to go about teaching people to grow.

Don’t get me wrong, taking pride in what you do IS NOT A BAD THING until it comes at the expense of others. Too often in my own life, I have taken on projects or tasks because I have felt that the only way it was going to get done correctly was if I did it myself. I was convinced that I knew the best way to do it and I shut others out because it had to be done my way. My pride took over and in the process, I hurt relationships with people because I was convinced that they couldn’t do it better than me. I was being competitive because I wanted to prove that I could do it better, faster, and more efficiently than anyone else. What I was actually doing was sending a message to others that they needn’t even try because it wouldn’t be good enough. I was the worst kind of teammate because I wasn’t wanting for others. In reality, I was wanting for myself.

Schools are built on pride, but the absolute best differentiate themselves from others based on the pride they exhibit. School cultures that celebrate the collective efficacy of everyone and embrace the idea of vulnerability and teamwork are more likely to be successful and great places to learn and work. Those that are built on the notion of pride at the expense of others so that there are winners and losers, may find some success in certain areas, but they will fall woefully short in the areas that matter. The question we all have to ask ourselves is what type of pride in our school do we want to show off and then demonstrate that pride in all facets of our school, starting in each and every classroom. In the end, that school pride can be something we are proud of or something that will rot our cultures to the core. 

#OwnYourEpic #embrace