What even is pride?

We talk about pride a lot in the Church, but I feel like we don't define it very well very often. When we speak of pride, we're not talking about being proud of your kid when they perform well at a soccer match, nor are we talking about individuals being proud of themselves for completing a hard task. When I Googled the definition of pride, several options were offered. I think the one that best fits for how we speak of pride in the church is "the quality of having an excessively high opinion of oneself or one's importance."

We exhibit pride when we knowingly break God's commandments. In effect, we are saying that we know what will make us happy than the Creator. This, of course, is wrong and should be corrected. In the lesson, we learned about "pride games" that partners play with each other. Pride games are simply mind games individuals play to try to assert undue superiority and are detrimental to the quality of that relationship.

Often in relationships, we find ourselves playing “pride games.” We do this for a variety of reasons, including feeling that we are right and trying to get our partner to realize that “fact” while employing a form of contempt to demonstrate your superiority. Similar to the former explanation is score keeping – where individuals keep track of perceived rights and wrongs in an effort to put themselves on a higher plain.

I have only discussed two that stood out to me, but there are dozens of pride games that can be played, but the goal with these is the same. Many of these games are played without the player realizing they are doing it. As with everything, the hardest battle is realizing that you are doing it. Once you have that down, you can start correcting the problem.