Driving past a gym named “Self Made,” I couldn’t help but cringe. Self-made. Independent. Self-reliant. These are marketing terms designed to capture and hold the attention of men still stuck in old-school masculinity.
There’s seductive power behind those words because they’re connected to our identity, our sense of self-worth, and our status. That means they’re playing toward our pride. And that is very effective marketing bait for the uninitiated.
I’m sharing this with you because pride is one of our most impulses. It’s limiting because it stands in the way of our most powerful virtue, which is humility.
Humility is the ultimate source of power. It recognizes the gap between where you are and where you need to be, and then uses a pragmatic, reality-based process to identify what’s needed to bridge that gap.
And that always means seeking help.
It is only when you’re operating within reality that the possibility of identifying and acquiring the help required to succeed can exist. Pride isn’t real the way confidence is. It’s projection. A heavy mist we surround ourselves with to hide our weaknesses, avoid doing the hard things, and shield our limitations from others as well as from ourselves.
So if you’re stuck in one, some, or all areas of your life, it’s likely that your own pride is what stands in the way. If your professional, financial, and personal purposes aren’t being fulfilled at the level they need to be, be a man and acknowledge that the way forward is through the resources and knowledge that you yourself do not possess.
Push your pride aside. Identify what next step is blocking you. Find someone who has traveled through it. Build your solution from their experience AND with their help.
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