Is Feeling Pride Narcissist Act?

We all have pride about ourselves and feel good about what we have
achieved and somehow directly or indirectly keep talking about it. We
should be comfortable owning and enjoying our achievements, big or small
as it nourishes our mental health and self-esteem.

However, one of the sins I can say, pride is in many ways the most
disreputable. In excess, it overshadows and engulfs the virtues of
philosophy – self-reflection, critical thinking, consideration for the
broader community, and the sense of one’s boundedness and weakness. And
yet there are also good reasons to feel more pride – it’s positively
correlated with life satisfaction and happiness, and negatively
correlated with depression and anxiety.

There is a distinction between Self-Esteem and Pride, later is feeling
better about yourself, where Pride can be thought of more narrowly, as
the joy one feels due to a personal or collective achievement. You can
be proud of yourself or your team for winning a game or accomplishing
the project and, if you identify with a team or a country that you
aren’t a part of per se, you can feel vivid pride through that team’s or
country’s achievements. Self-esteem, on the other hand, represents the
general assessment of oneself that what you have achieved individually
which you feel proud of.

But yes, pride and self-esteem are closely related. Some of us live and
die with each accomplishment and failure, causing striking fluctuations
in self-esteem. Let’s consider bipolar disorder, previously known as
manic-depressive disorder, in which periods of chronic low mood are
interspersed with phases of intense energy. Patients with this diagnosis
present with a particularly unstable sense of self. For them, a
monotonous win can prompt feelings of being amazing, while an ordinary
loss can provoke a devastating sense of being terrible, triggering a
manic or depressive episode, respectively, in fraction of seconds
sunshine and then black thundery clouds.

Most individuals cultivate a sense of self-regard by tallying up their
proverbial wins and losses. For example, I take pride in summiting the
highest peak; then, if I keep summiting, I will likely come to infer
that I’m a good mountaineer, thus fueling my self-esteem. In essence,
one can’t experience a high degree of self-esteem without first
experiencing momentary pride.

When considering pride, some people conclude that it is narcissistic.
Fearing hubris and an overestimation of their abilities, they simply
abstain from it. To feel proud is to be self-important or worse, they
fear. Especially in most religions, pride implies a sinful character. If
you scroll through any of your social media feeds, you’ll likely
discover a tone of self-promotion, and you too might consider it
narcissistic. Excessive pride can be labelled narcissistic; but the
variety of pride in which one also considers her limitations is anything
but pathological. The fear of pride snowballing into narcissism becomes
less frightening when pride is conceived of as manageable.

The US psychologists Jessica Tracy, Richard Robins and their colleagues
further distinguish between ‘authentic pride’, which is grounded in
specific things you’ve achieved through effort, and ‘hubristic pride’,
which relates to a more general grandiose self-assessment. Similar to
the individual with bipolar disorder, whose self-estimation turns with
each attempt and result, Tracy and Robins argue that hubristic pride is
a form of over-generalization, wherein narrow pride leaps to a grandiose
plateau. Instead of perceiving himself as a good basketball player, he
might conceive of himself as the greatest of all. Often when people
think of pride as unhelpful, it is this hubristic variety that they have
in mind.

Pride is important to mental wellbeing, – specifically the authentic
variety – is not only good but also necessary? What if, without it, we
cease to care about ourselves? Pride is the joy of knowing that you have
accomplished something you consider significant, usually because it’s
also significant to the broader community, but not necessarily. Pride
can be found in the student who improved her grade in maths class, the
mother who calms her colicky child, or the football player whose team
wins the Soccer match. Pride is in the ordinary and the extraordinary.
Most importantly, pride helps form the foundation of mental health.
People tend to imagine a life with too much pride but fail to consider a
life without it.

Finally, I will close by saying, allowing yourself to feel pride boosts
self-esteem, motivation, and hopefulness. All three are crucial to one’s
will to live, providing, in part, the ‘whys’ that help us carry the
burdens of our suffering. When we feel proud of an achievement, we
subsequently form a desire to recapture it. Additionally, pride can help
us create personal ladders of success, so when you achieve anything of
significance, such as trekking small mountain, you can now consider
trying a more challenging endeavor, such as summit high peaks. Finally,
a sense of pride provides us with self-efficacy, or the sense of our own
abilities. It is only by recognizing that your prior achievements matter
that you can feel able to tackle future problems. The real pride, the
real present, is your health and your longevity.

If you believe in yourself and have dedication and pride – and never
quit, you’ll be a winner. The price of victory is high but so are the
rewards. – Bear Bryant