The Horizontal Damage of Pride (Day 23 of Unstuck)

I’ve been looking over some old notes from Ken Blanchard’s work on servant leadership. If you have never read the book he co-authored with Phil Hodges, it should go immediately to the top of your reading bucket list. Lead Like Jesus is a classic.

Here are some of the salient points related to pride:

• It resists feedback from others
• It refuses to receive help or wisdom from anyone thought to have an inferior position or status
• It puts more emphasis on image than substance and deceives you into thinking that getting unstuck is for other people, not you
• It excuses oneself from the rules by which others should play, i.e., it asserts that “my situation is different”
• It looks in the mirror in times of success but out the window when the time comes to affix blame
• It makes you more interested in talking, not listening, even though God gave you one mouth and two ears and expects you to live accordingly
• It fails to see life and all of its dimensions–mind, body, and spirit–as a stewardship to be exercised
• It asserts one’s ability to control outcomes and fails to acknowledge the limitations placed on every human life
• It makes you short-sighted and willing to settle for short-term results at the expense of lasting change
• It tricks you into being too busy fixing other people to see your own messed-up life

Let’s just set aside for a moment the spiritual dimension and how pride is an affront to a sovereign God. Just think of it in horizontal terms, not vertically. Pride divides. It separates you from other people. It keeps you from asking for help. And in the process, it diminishes your relational intimacy with others. It puts you on an island, even though we learned in junior high literature from John Dunne that none of us are designed to function that way.

Pride maroons you on a desert island. If that isn’t a picture of being stuck, I don’t know what is.

And pride will keep you stuck. It will cut you off from the feedback that you need from others to address your blindspots. It will repel others and make them less inclined to reach out to you with encouragement and aid.

Here’s my suggestion to you, friend. Examine each of the ten bullet points above and look at your life in light of each one. Make an application of each of those truths to yourself. And then find a way to put it into practice this week.