Does Pride Consume Your Life?

How many times have I looked at another person and thought to myself, "Man, that guy is so full of himself. I wonder if he sees how prideful he is?".

Now I am wondering how many people have thought that about myself. Yikes.

I feel that pride is something that we all need to work on removing from our lives every day. We need to think less of the "me" and think more of others.

If any of you are looking for a good read this week then I would direct you to this link,
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1989/04/beware-of-pride?lang=eng
This is an adress given by Ezra Taft Benson in 1989 and everything within the talk can be applicable to our lives today.

The antidote to pride is humility and often times I don't feel as though I am being prideful until I take a step back and look at my choices and actions. This week I did some pondering on the kind of pride we use in relationships. I thought of the many ways that I use pride to justify things that keep my marriage from progressing. Here are a few....

• Ignore spouse, or give spouse the "cold shoulder" • Impatient with impatience • Caught up in who' s right and who's wrong • Blaming, defensiveness • Attack, counterattack • Score keeping, with intentions of noting who is winning or losing • Refusal to apologize first • Holding the other hostage by refusing to forgive • Proving superiority by bringing up spouse's faults • Holding grudges • The "silent treatment"• Sharing spouse's weaknesses with others • Intentionally trying to create jealousies in spouse • Get others to create an alliance with you against your spouse • Putting words in spouse's mouth to manipulate • Displaying an attitude of entitlement in the marriage • Stubbornness or unwillingness to change • Selfishness, thinking only of your needs • Unwillingness to learn from spouse • Fault finding • Withholding love and affection

I hope that every one of us can look at this list and see where we have wronged our spouse. I hope that as we read these things we are then able to humble ourselves and realize the things that we are doing that tear down our relationships instead of build them up.

Pick one of these ideas and choose to become better in it. Choose to be a better husband or wife. Choose to be humble and not let pride control our lives.