I take pride in my accomplishments because there are things in my life that I’ve worked really hard to achieve. When I achieve those successes, it fills me full of pride. But I think pride has this negative vibe to it. People often see pride as a negative attribute. We have sayings like “pride cometh before a fall”
Taking pride in your accomplishments can sometimes feel really good and it can sometimes feel really bad because of the way you think about pride. I live in Norway where pride is often packed up into what they call Jante Loven which is Jante’s law, which basically sets down principles of life. It says you shouldn’t be proud of your work. I’m paraphrasing here, and I’m sorry if I’m misrepresenting what Jante Loven is. But it basically, says that you should be humble.
Humbleness is a very valuable attribute in itself, but when it comes to accomplishments and it comes to taking pride in those accomplishments, I think we have to find a middle ground where we’re not being prideful and at the same time not completely diminishing or repressing our accomplishments. We have to find a middle ground where we can say, “yes I’ve achieved something” and that really matters to me and maybe it matters to others too.
I think that can be a really critical aspect of what it means to accomplish something. I think when we’re talking about accomplishments, it’s important to look at what meaning they have in your life. When I talk about my accomplishments and their meaning in my life, to what extent do I identify with those accomplishments. To what extent are those accomplishments so packed up in my identity and who I am, how I think about myself, that they’re almost inseparable.
I want to challenge you to think differently about your accomplishments because ultimately, we are not our jobs, we are not our roles in our family, we are not our degrees. We are something else, and I think it’s important for us to realize that our identities are not the same as what we do or how we live, or even where we live. This is because all of those other things in our life, like it or not, are impermanent.
Our houses can be destroyed. We can move to other places. Our families can fall apart, and we can lose our jobs. Those things can be really devastating if you’re identity is so closely packed up with those other things in your life. Not only will you experience the loss of those things but you’ll also experience an identity crisis because you’ll be looking at yourself and saying “I am not a teacher, so now who am I?” or “I am not a husband or wife or father or mother or son or daughter who am I?” or “I’m not a person who lives in that home any longer, I don’t live in that neighborhood or on that street or in that community, who am I?”.
Trying to recognize that all the things in our life are impermanent, that fundamentally, they can be taken away from us, and trying to acknowledge that we are something greater than those things that are in our life can be really empowering. It can help us take our accomplishments and separate them from who we are and in doing so we kind of separate that pridefulness that negative attribute from that overly drawn-out sense of humility. Who are you? Are you the place where you live? Are you your role in your family? Are you the work that you do or are you something greater?
