How to be Proud... Without the Fall

Have you ever made or done something you're so proud of that you just keep going back to look at it or admire it? Wouldn't it be nice to keep that feeling all the time?

I often create work that I love with my writing. When I get going with pen and paper or with my keyboard, the insights just pour out of me. Things just click. My mind gets crystal clear. I feel like I'm having a conversation with my higher self or my very best friend in the whole universe.

When I write something that I like, I become a narcissist; I feel like I am awesome, beautiful, and amazing. I feel like I can do anything. Then I go back and re-read what I wrote over and over. I get on the library computer and check it out. I have a chat with someone and get around to the topic that I just wrote about and ask them to pull the post up on their blackberry so I can show it to them.

But there's an uncomfortable feeling that is part of all this. I can't quite put my finger on what this icky feeling is, but the joy starts to dissipate pretty soon. It's a sort of not-quite-perfect-enough feeling.

I keep noticing typos, for example, and feel compelled to edit the article a few dozen more times after it's done. I get mad because I don't get enough (or any) compliments on the piece. I realize that by writing this piece, I have to write another one to clarify something I wrote in this one and then I feel dissatisfied because I haven't written that article yet. I notice a glitch with my website and I get ticked off because, even though I wrote this wonderful piece, it's dampened by my lack of understanding of (and help with) the technical details of web publishing.

In short, the wonderful work I did, the effort and sense of achievement... feels like it's completely not worth it. It's like trying to pour an ocean through a keyhole. "Wow! I poured five million litres of water through this here keyhole today... oh God there's still most of an OCEAN left! NNnngghhhhhhrrGGGAAAAHHHhhhhSHOOTMENOW..."

Pride goeth before destruction; and the spirit is lifted up before a fall. (Proverbs 16:18, Douay-Rheims Bible)

Achievements that we can be proud of are what makes life worth living. But we have to be prepared to go beyond that, or pride itself will kick our teeth in and make a mockery of us.

It's the attachment that's the problem. Doing something amazing, something that you are delighted by, is one thing. Being attached to how delightful it is and how important it is that it be delightful is another. Pride is a combination of both these feelings: your spirit is lifted up because of the goodness of what you have achieved, and your attachment to how good it must (but can't possibly) be is the destructive force that throws you down.

Pride is saying "Holy crap! This delightful thing I did proves that I am more awesome than anyone else!" You're making a comparison, which is the job of the ego: a survival tactic. Now all your subconscious baggage comes up:

• Am I really more awesome than anyone else?
• What about that guy who wrote the article that inspired this article that I wrote?
• if my work was so great, why isn't anyone else raving about it?
• how come the only one who even looked at this thing is that idiot who I don't like?
• I suck

That, my friends, is the fall that pride goeth before. We've all been there.

What too many of us do at this point is decide that achieving things is a horrible experience and we're not going to do anything to be proud of again. We choose to stay down, rather than let our spirit get lifted up to haughtiness that comes before the fall. We stay down in anger, desire, apathy, shame. We stay there to avoid falling to there. Down in shame, there's nowhere to go but up.

Thank God, because shame is horrible.

But, try as we may, it takes a lot of practice to get knocked down enough to be able to stay down. That's because you're on a pathway of development of your human potential and that is written into your biology and your spirit. If you give way to it, you'll automatically buoy upward all the way up to pride again. Everything you do in life propels you toward something to be proud of. You need a lot of baggage to hold you down low enough that there's nowhere to fall to. So, sooner or later, you start trying again, start experimenting with life and learning new things.

And then, when you get to pride - uh oh! Down you plunge again. I mean, can't you just have a rest?

I began to experiment with breaking out of this cycle about nine years ago when I started on the path of mindfulness. I'm very proud of myself for making that choice. The results, for me, have been beyond anything I could have imagined at that time. So now I'm going to recommend that choice to you.

How to Do Something to be Proud of... Without the Fall

Next time you've done something that you think is worth being proud of, consciously find even more things to be proud of... only let those things be things that are even better than what you accomplished. Like this:

• Am I really more awesome than anyone else? Well, in a way, yes! My true self is awesomer than anyone's (including my) ego self.
• What about that guy who wrote the article that inspired this article that I wrote? Well, I'm proud of my ability to have found his article and to have made something more out of it. I'm grateful to have been able to contribute to the world in this way, as well as to have a connection with that other person.
• if my work was so great, why isn't anyone else raving about it? Perhaps this work is just for me to enjoy right now. Maybe I need to learn how to accept a compliment. In fact, I'm proud of my ability to create wonderful things without needing others' validation.
• how come the only one who even looked at this thing is that idiot who I don't like? Hmm... the reason I don't like that idiot is because she's too proud and egotistical. Now that she's read my wonderful article, she's someone I can respect. I'm glad she likes what I did.
• I suck . Yup. Just getting the hang of being a decent writer. It sure is more exciting than filling out paperwork, which I'm really good at and hate doing. I've created something wonderful, even though I still, technically, am a beginner at this... this means that, when I do get good at this, I'll be really good! Wow! I'm awesome!

See how cool that is? This process uses egotism - pride itself - as a reminder to you to become more conscious instead of picking up more baggage. If you do this, you're effectively grabbing hold of your own ego and using it as a servant for the greater good. What all of this is about is propelling yourself upward, out of egotism, and it isn't far to go because pride is the last stage before graduation into a consciously-lived life. But you have to be proud enough to transcend pride.

If and when you do that, you will experience the true joy of being able to affirm for yourself that what you have created is something wonderful and was worth doing, no matter what. The higher you go up this path, the deeper and more sustained that feeling becomes. There even comes a point when you pick up baggage for the fun of it, not as an adaptation to avoid pain. You become ineffable. You become awesome.

And you know it.