How to Control Pride and Overcome Arrogance

Perhaps, one of the hardest things to recognize in ourselves is our pride. Pride can lead us to be only concerned with ourselves, seek recognition to exalt ourselves, and speak constantly without listening. You might as well have seen many arrogant people around you. They are always preoccupied with their ego, and probably, you’re struggling with the same trait.

Many people don’t realize what awaits them if they just let go of this attitude and move forward. Instead of looking at yourself as “wise in your own eyes”, let yourself be humble and willing to learn from other people.

Thus, if you are struggling with pride and arrogance, here are 12 tips that might help you control your own pride and overcome that irksome quality of being arrogant.

1. Identify the cause of your pride.
Pride is an attitude displayed by various characteristics, like independence, arrogance and high-mindedness.  A prideful person is an arrogant person, who feels superior over the other person. There are questions you may ask yourself in order to identify the cause of your pride like “How often do I admit I was wrong?”, ” Why do I want others to see or hear me?”, or “Why do I have to talk about myself and my opinions so much to other people?”.

2. Analyze and compare your pride in reality.
You could just rationalize and justify your prideful thoughts. Sometimes, you just have to shut up, swallow your pride and accept that you are wrong because it’s part of growing up. Try to compare your prideful thoughts to reality, and then balance things.

3. Seek feedback.
Seek feedback from people you trust, to make sure that you are doing right for other people. Accept criticisms and learn from them. It is a common mistake to do everything on your own, you also need to seek feedback and use it to improve yourself. Ask them how’s your attitude towards them, how do they feel about you, or what are the things they don’t like you. Thus, at this point, you’ll know what and how to work on your negative sides.

4. Share credit and build others up.
Recognize the contribution of other people, because once you build others up and share credit, it will cause others to want to work with you again. Lower your pride and seek help from others to get things done.

5. Admit your own mistakes.
This may be tough but if you want to overcome your pride and arrogance, you need to cope with them. By simply admitting your mistakes, it lowers your pride and you take responsibility for your failure. Remember that, you can learn from your mistakes if you are not denying it.

6. Be courteous to others.
One of the unattractive personalities of a person is being arrogant. The best way to deal with it is not to frame yourself in terms of pride and humility. Let go of your arrogance and boastfulness. Learn to respect the opinion of other people and know how to accept criticisms. People would assume you’re arrogant if you are rude to people. Just talk politely and be courteous to people around you because there’s no reason for you to act rude.

7. Forget the “I, me, myself”.
If you really want to overcome arrogance, be modest in your behavior. You will only look dumb if you praise yourself and boast about your achievements in life. Set aside the attitude of focusing on yourself. Don’t be egocentric, instead learn how to think of other people’s feelings towards you. Learn to dump and let go of that attitude.

8. Be optimistic.
Your negative thoughts will lead you to negative behavior. But if you turn all those negative thoughts into positive ones, it will eventually lead you to a positive approach and this will also help you overcome your arrogance and overflowing pride. Optimistic people tend to anticipate the best possible outcome in any situation.

9. Be an active listener.
Instead of just thinking about yourself, try to listen to other people as well. Listening is one of the most important skills you can have. Listen, in order to understand and learn. Your ears were made for a purpose, so you better use them. Moreover, listening is a skill you can all benefit from improving.

10. Convince yourself that it is sin in you.
Many people tend to open doors on sinful acts like too much pride and arrogance, without knowing it can devour them. You will never overcome it until you understand the danger of that sin and begin taking it seriously.  Hence, the absurdity of this sin is grievous. Consider God’s judgment against sin which often came upon his people because of their pride and arrogance.

11. Look at the examples of humble people.
We tend to look for other qualities in friends, however, it is better if you surround yourself with humble people, find people who will influence you with a good attitude rather than the opposite side of it. Staying humble means, nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace you because you know what you are.

12. Flee temptation.
Many people are intimidated by the fact that they are tempted in any situation. There are two things you need to avoid, those people who tempt you and those tempting situations. What you need to do in order to avoid temptations, is to get out from it, don’t just walk away-run, but don’t fight it, flee from it and go after the good stuff in your life instead.

Dealing with arrogant people is indeed tough because they do not budge easily, however, there are still ways to overcome that kind of attitude. No matter how educated, rich or talented you are, how you treat other people is everything that matters.  If you think your pride is bigger than your heart and ego is bigger than your head, better think now on how to manage it or you will be alone for the rest of your life. Remember that it is your pride and arrogance that will turn you into a bad person. However, you just have to deal with it and believe in yourself that you can overcome it all.

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Books recommended for you:

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ALSO READ:

How to be a Humble Person: 20 Ways to Get Rid of Pride

11 Signs You Are Prideful: How to Get Rid of Pride in Your Heart

7 Ways to be Humble in a Relationship

Marydel Mitch Flores

Mitch is a writer and photographer. She also does screenwriting for independent film producers and joins various film competitions. Mitch believes that “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.”