The good and bad side of pride

Days ago, we were surprised by a viral video where altercation between a barangay official with her companion, and hotel personnel took place.And netizens are quick to make to their own assessments and even judgments. In the video, one claims being insulted for being misidentified as a whore and be subjected to existing protocols while the other party asserted to have just followed established routines.

Looking at the deeper understanding of it, it involves a sense of pride over imposing a number of rules. Let’s take a look at pride.

Pride, an inwardly directed emotion, carries two adversative meanings. With a negative connotation, pride refers to a stupidly and irrationally corrupt sense of one’s personal value, status or accomplishments. On the positive side, it refers to a humble and content sense of attachment toward one’s own or another’s choices and actions, or toward a whole group of people, and is a product of praise, independent self-reflection, and a fulfilled feeling of belonging. Essential for helping us become our best, brightest selves, pride makes us careful about how others see us and how we see ourselves as we strive for excellence.

But while pride can inspire feats of genius, it can also compel acts of apparent madness and spectacular self-destructiveness, causing some people to seek status not through hard work but through intimidation, deception, and self-aggrandizement.

Furthermore, pride can also be regarded in this similar front. A positive one is: “A feeling that you respect yourself and deserve to be respected by others.” This seems like a healthy aspect of pride. But then there’s: “A feeling that you are more important or better than other people”. This appears to be a common, not-so-healthy conceit.

Lastly, pride can also be viewed on how we regard ourselves or simply a more genuine and stable self-worth that is based upon validating, affirming, and valuing ourselves as we are. Self-worth is a function of living with dignity, which exists apart from any accomplishments. Achievements are ephemeral and can become a trap. If too much of our attention goes toward accomplishing bigger and better things in order to feel good, then we become addicted to external sources of gratification.

Dignity, on the other hand, can live inside us regardless of our successes and failures. We don’t have to prove anything to anybody, or even to ourselves. If an enterprise fails, this doesn’t mean that we’re a failure. If an attempt to communicate our feelings to our partner falls flat, we might feel sad, but we can feel good knowing we did our best.

We feel pride in both its good and bad varieties, and how we can make this double-edged emotion serve us—rather than the other way around.

Every organization sets out rules and regulations for guests and visitors to follow. And for a hotel, rules and regulations are important as this would guide them to behave as a result. Specifically some codes of conduct, for example, are as follows: Guests shall behave appropriately and with discretion at all times. They should be respectful of the hotel staff and other guests. Only registered guests are permitted in the hotel, other than for brief visits in common areas. And so when one cannot follow rules out of pride or regard of being exceedingly indispensable then chaos arises.

The secret to success therefore is avoiding the bad kind of pride while nurturing the good kind. With the right doses and contexts, pride has been proven to boost creativity, motivate altruism, and confer power and prestige on those who display it.

‘We feel pride in both its good and bad varieties, and how we can make this double-edged emotion serve us—

rather than the other way around.’