Pride is at the root of every decision I make and it’s the principle I value the most in myself and in others. We can only see the world through one set of eyes, we can only think using one brain and we can only ever inhabit and control one body: our own. This is why I think it’s so important to love yourself. I like to think every action I take is made in an effort to impress myself and no one else. If I can love myself, other people will like me too. If they don’t… if someone has a problem with something I do, then obviously I’ll consider their point of view, but I won’t make a change unless I deem it to be the right move. Some may call it stubbornness, but I liken it more to a keen sense of confidence.
This is a value that is challenged often as a Broadcast Journalism student. If you’re a poor engineering, business, or technology student, there are objective ways to indicate your ineptitude. “You either know it or you don’t,” is a line teachers have been recycling for years and it rings true in most tracts of study. However, Broadcasting is more subjective. Sure there are a handful of obvious ways to screw up as a broadcaster, but as a major, and really a lifestyle, that’s rooted in creativity, you have to have conviction in yourself. If someone tells me I’m doing something wrong, my pride takes over. Sure, I’ll respect the person’s critique, but I believe in myself enough to know when to stick to my guns, and when to try another approach.
On a more personal level. Pride allows you to cope with difficulties more easily. In my experience, during the times that I respected myself the least, negative thoughts swirled around my head and seemed to compound themselves. Your brain starts seeing things in a very Murphy’s Law-esque defeatist perspective. Everything that can go wrong seems to do so. But when you have pride, it seems like nothing can stop you. “I failed my test… well there goes the rest of my life,” turns into “I failed my test… that’s fine, I’ll try harder and do much better on the next one.”
There was a book written in 2006 by a women named Rhonda Byrne called The Secret. The book talks about the fact that you can achieve anything you want in life if you just WANT IT enough. While I don’t agree entirely, I think that there is something to be said for the benefits that are reaped by having a positive attitude, and more specifically, a positive sense of worth. You may not be able to necessarily achieve all the wildest goals you set for yourself, but a man with a lot of pride can appreciate the good things in life more while not sweating the small stuff as much.