In this episode, we discuss how being too prideful can hold us back from accomplishing great things, and it’s humility that will get us to new heights.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
At the end of today’s podcast episode, I’m going to give you a prompt question to reflect on in your journal. The idea is to take one to five minutes to reflect on today’s lesson and write a minimum of one paragraph on how you can apply the lesson in your life. You can use an actual journal, a word document like on Google Drive, or your note-taking app like Evernote. The idea is that you’re actually thinking about how to process the information to help you improve your life.
In today’s episode, we are going to talk about how pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real. I was in the Marines for seven years and we are a breed of folks that take a lot of pride in the fact that we joined the Marines. It has the toughest boot camp of all the branches, we’re the smallest branch, we tend to have to do more with less, but the Marines are typically the first to fight, the tip of the spear as we like to say.
Even though I’m a Marine, I will give someone the benefit of the doubt and the ability to prove themselves before I dismiss them. An A player is 36 times more valuable than a B player. One person can really do the work of ten people and if that person was in the Air Force, I would gladly accept them on my team.
When it comes to the Air Force and the Marines, and for the Army and Navy as well, we like to rag on the Air Force by calling them Chair Force because they tend to not go into the field and train. They’re in an office capacity. I was in an office capacity myself, being a Supply Administrator so I don’t have too much leeway. But if I came across someone from the Army, Navy, or Air Force, and they were an A player, I would gladly accept them.
It would be foolish of me to dismiss their skill just because they wore a different uniform. So I need to have the humility to accept them into my circle, or otherwise, I might find them a formidable opponent. And instead of trying to destroy each other, we can work together to create something amazing.
It’s good to be confident and take pride in your work because they typically mean that you’re going to create amazing things, but you can take it too far and then your pride can become a liability. That why we need to have the humility to know when we need help and who we should have as an ally.
Plus if someone from the other branches wanted some help, I would help them out because they are not my enemy, and hopefully, if I needed help, they would offer the same thing instead of discriminate against me. That would just make me feel awful and I don’t want to do the same thing against someone else.
I just finished a book about Air Force Colonel John Boyd and he helped revolutionized the Marines Land Fighting abilities by adopting the OODA Loop and allowing small units to make decisions based on the current information instead of waiting on orders from above. John Boyd’s theories about warfare allowed the Marines to take over Grenada with ease and helped the US win Desert Storm quickly as well. If the Marines never would have had the humility to allow John Boyd to speak with them, then the Marines would still be stuck in 1970 thinking and that’s not good. Too much pride makes you live in the past while humility gives you the ability to grow. And in life, you want to keep growing if you want to be successful.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, pride makes us artificial and humility makes us really like as Thomas Merton said. Once again I don’t know who this is but I like the quote. And over the past couple of months, we have had a lot of protest over social injustices and inequalities with the black lives matter movement. I would chalk a lot of this tension to people being too prideful and not having enough humility. Just one of the many issues that we need to solve in order to make the world a better place. But I would say it’s good to be prideful but makes sure it’s rational. Pride can give you the motivation to keep going and to give your full effort, but if you only rely on pride, it’s won’t take you as far as you could go with humility. Like always, there is a balance, so know when to be prideful and when to show humility. The right balance can help you reach new heights in life and live a pretty good one as well.
So in your journal, ask yourself, are you having too much pride where it’s clouding your judgment? What are some of the benefits that the other person or thing can provide? Are you sharing your real feelings about the situation? How can you show humility in the situation? Can you show gratitude or vulnerability to make yourself more real in the situation? Do you know have enough pride in certain parts of your life? Just take a look at your life and see where you need to show more pride and where you need to show more humility. And then just keep experimenting with your day so you find the right balance. Probably going to take a while and you will make a mistake but at least you’re growing in the right direction.
Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my audiobook “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and you can download it right there.
I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
I’m also trying to do a feedback Friday episode, so if you have a question that you would like to have my answer on the air, just e-mail me at [email protected]
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
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