This has become a transcription of Andy Stanley’s thoughts on “Killing It!”

Being in the Festive Season now, at Year End, and thinking about the year that has gone. Thinking about how to be better next year, how to not repeat mistakes and how to inspire and uplift next year, more than I break down. I came across the following set of thoughts on personal improvement and I wanted to share them:

What keeps me From… and Causes me to…

What keeps me from celebrating someone else’s success…

What keeps me from initiating an apology whether I am 5% wrong or 95% wrong…

What keeps me arguing a point no matter what…

What keeps me from admitting I lost…

What keeps me from admitting that I have weakness…

What keeps me from admitting I need help…

What keeps me from admitting that I don’t know what I am doing, even though everyone else knows that I don’t know what I am doing…

What keeps me from being honest with myself and others…

What keeps me from learning new things, or keeps me learning many things, because I want everyone around me to think that I know everything…

What causes me to feel good when others fail…

What causes me to power up when I should be opening up…

What causes me to cheat before giving up or losing…

What causes me to exaggerate the story…

What causes me to lie about my past, lie about a failed marriage, lie about the fact that I didn’t qualify without fail, lie in telling the story…

What causes me to have to have the final word…

What causes me to buy things to impress people who aren’t even paying attention to me…

… PRIDE …

Not the inspired by my children and good and honest things pride, but the “yucky” pride. The pride that is connected to the C.S. Lewis quote: “Unchasity, anger, greed, drunkenness… are mere fleabites in comparison… Pride leads to every other vice.”

This is the pride that we all have inside ourselves. We have all been the victim of it, in family and relationships. It is something we see so easily in others but battle to see in the mirror. Pride is ugly and insidious. For a contented and peaceful life, insidious pride, should be killed.

Stanley lists the following points:

Pride diminishes you. It makes us think we are bigger and better than we are, “it puffs us up”, but in reality: pride makes you smaller and diminishes our capacity to admit to things and apologise when necessary. “I know I should apologise…” but there’s an internal battle, and if you don’t apologise, then pride has won. It’s difficult to say what we need to say, and pride makes us smaller when we let difficulty win us over, instead of what saying what we should.

Pride diminishes our capacity to say what needs to be said. A compliment, without a jibe, without a nasty comment, without personal bitterness tagged on the end of it, is the result of pride. In the state of succumbing to pride, you can’t say what you need to or hear what you need to, or give what you need to give. If you give pride the remote control of your life: then when those moments come where you know inside yourself that you “need to” – you won’t, you don’t, you can’t… pride is really that strong in you, you genuinely can’t; and it can only go downhill from there.

Pride essentially diminishes our capacity to love.

Pride diminishes our capacity to receive love as well.

When you are full of you, there is no room for anyone else, and you don’t even know it when you are practising it. People walk on eggshells around you. People don’t know how to respond to you. People around you feel pressed up against a wall around you at work, or as friends, or in your family, because the slightest word from them and there will be conflict. Not necessarily in audio, but in passive-aggressive behaviour, in silence, or even in aggressive behaviour. Pride deprioritises everyone else in the room, there’s no room for anyone else but you.

Along with crowding people out, Pride also has the ability to crowd God (a higher power / a set of values higher than yourself to aspire to) out of your life too. Thus, in some cases: it is your pride, and not your intellect, that is keeping you from God. It is not how smart you are that is keeping you from faith, but your pride. One thought to gauge by: If the issue is intellect or pride? With your two or three valid arguments against God / a higher power; you take God / the higher power out of the equation: If you stiff arm the people in your life with your intellect, then it’s a pride thing.

In pride, prideful people seek what is best for themselves. In all of the proud man’s thoughts, there is no room for anyone else at all. The proud man is the centre of his universe.  Thus, pride is a prison that shuts others out. It’s a prison to your emotions – it doesn’t “feel” good to apologise, so pride gets you reasons not to; it doesn’t “feel” good to let the other person “win”, so pride gets you reasons not to “give in”.

Is your goal to have no-one love you at all? Sadly, that’s what bowing to pride creates…

If you aren’t sure if you have pride blocking your progression, ask those close to you: “In what ways do you think pride manifests itself in me?”

Or take this New Year to ask yourself: What does pride masquerade as in me? Confidence - masking arrogance? Intellect – masking feelings of inferiority? Fashion – masking insecurity? Sarcasm? Commitment to excellence? What is the reason behind why you practise what you practise? If it is healthy, great. If it honestly, is not, then it’s time to break up with pride and move on to better, healthier things. Why would you want to follow on with the something that has the potential to kill everything of true value to life and living?

To be able to enter Christmas in the truth of the Season, and the radical awesomeness of love, of a better approach to work, to your colleagues, and to your family and friends (how many are left?), take the steps that will help you say what needs to be said, hear what you need to hear, give what you need to give and be all you can be – do all you can to be the ultimate you…

http://killinitseries.org/

http://northpoint.org/messages/killin-it/

Pride says: “Wait” … Love says: “Initiate”