Pride

Pride, what does it mean to you? It should mean that you take pride in yourself, what you do, and how you do it. It means that you have pride in how you live your life. You do the “right thing”, each and every time you relate to anyone, at work or otherwise.

It has been said that pride is the downfall of a person, that pride will prevent someone from doing what they should because that action might be demeaning or embarrassing. Who says? We should all do what is right, no matter the consequences to us. Pride should not prevent us from making things “right” for our clients, prospects, friends, family, or anyone else.

One definition of pride is “pleasure or satisfaction taken in something done by or belonging to oneself or believed to reflect credit upon oneself”. We can easily take this definition and use it to reflect the satisfaction of doing the “right thing” for those that we meet each day. Therefore pride would not prevent, but would encourage, us to be better people. Just concentrate on the “giving” and not on the credit for the act of giving.

If you need to ask what pride has to do with Gratitude Marketing, you have not been listening for the past many years. We just said that pride would result in you doing what you should for others. Practicing Gratitude Marketing means that we treat everyone as we would want to be treated. Therefore, pride and Gratitude Marketing go hand in hand for better relations with others.

One should be very careful not to allow pride to prevent us from completing the 5^th law of success as detailed by Bob Burg and John David Mann in “The Go-Giver”. The 5^th and final law is: Give, get, repeat. In other words, give to others, get from others, and then repeat the process.

None of us should let our pride get in the way of enjoying the gifts of others. For every giver who gives to us without asking anything in return, there must be a taker, or receiver, to complete the process. If there is no one to receive a compliment, the giver is without anyone whose day will be better, and the giver is left with a vacant spot in their life.

If we let our pride get in the way of accepting something that is given to us by someone else, we have violated the 5^th law of success, and we have prevented someone else from being able to give to us. We have just broken the equation of giving. For every giver there must be a taker, or receiver, and we can be that person.

Therefore, we find that pride can be the trait that encourages us to “do the right thing”. That means everyone that we meet, with whom we do business, or with whom we interrelate in any manner. Also we know that pride will allow, not prevent, us from enabling the 5^th law of success: give, get, repeat, by not preventing us from accepting the giving efforts of others.

Don’t let your pride get in your way; let your pride enable you to be a giver, and a receiver, enabling the betterment of others as well as the well-being of yourself. Look at each opportunity as it arises and see if you can practice Gratitude Marketing every day. Remember that everything that we do will return to us in some way, some day; that’s karma.

Have a comment or question? Please leave them here, or email me at Jim@SOC4Now.com, or call me at 360-314-8691. I always appreciate your input and will attempt to answer you in an appropriate, grateful manner.