None of us want to be guilty of pride; puffing ourselves up and acting better than other people is just yucky.

But could we be guilty of the other side of pride? The one where we think self-criticism is humility but it's still just a focus on ourselves?

Satan wants to trip up God's daughters and distract us from our great purpose, and one of the ways I see him do this over and over again is by confusing humility for self-hatred.

Join me in this week's episode where we get clear on what true humility looks like, how to escape from this self-loathing trap and how to feel more of God's love for ourselves.

My interview on this topic with Jordana Thiessen on LDS & Loving Life.

Read Confronting the Myth of Self-Esteem, the book that opened my eyes to this concept.

Ready for one-on-one guidance? Schedule a free coaching call with me so we can make progress on your dreams.

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You're listening to episode 29 of Burning

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Brightly, the double sided coin of pride.

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This is burning brightly, a podcast

for Christian moms who are feeling

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called to build a business and

share their light with the world.

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I'm Bonnie Wiscombe, a life

coach, mom, and entrepreneur.

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And I'm honored to be your guide.

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As you face this business building

adventure full of highs, lows,

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and everything in between.

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This is where we help each

other find the courage to shine.

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Microphone (ATR2100x-USB Microphone)-1:

Hello my friends.

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Welcome back.

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Today we're going to talk

a little bit about pride.

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Not a conversation everybody

loves having, right?

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No one wants to be considered

prideful, and I think that it is

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something many women of faith are so.

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Um, and then we're going to break

that down a little bit today.

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As we know, through biblical study and,

learning more about God's people, we

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know that pride is one of the greatest

sins that we are warned against.

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In Proverbs, we learn that

pride goeth before destruction.

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Malachi says that the proud and wicked

shall be as stubble, and in second

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Timothy, we learn that men shall be

lovers of their own selves, proud and

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unholy, envious, all kinds of bad stuff.

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We don't want to be right.

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So we know that pride is

something to be avoided.

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But because it sounds so awful, I

think that we Christian women stay

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so far away from it that we actually.

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And I want to look at the other side of

the typical coin of pride that we think

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of we think of pride as this vaunting

of oneself, of being better than others.

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I'm thinking you're so amazing, but

I want to ask this question of you.

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Is the opposite of pride humility?

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What is on the other side of pride?

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Is there something else that

we should also be avoiding?

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And, spoiler alert, I think there is.

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We're going to talk about that today.

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So I'm going to first share a little

bit of my own history with pride.

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When I was a young adult, I

struggled a lot with feeling

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that I wasn't good enough.

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And as I talk to more and more

women of faith, I find that

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this is incredibly common.

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In fact, I don't know that

I've ever coached a woman.

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Who did not struggle in some

way with self criticism.

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I personally didn't think

I had enough motivation.

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I didn't think I was self disciplined

enough and I constantly fell

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well below these extremely high

expectations that I had for myself.

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It was a miserable place to be.

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I'm going to tell you that right now.

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Totally and completely miserable.

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It played me through high school.

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It played me through college.

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And then when I was 21, I.

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I left the country to serve

as a missionary for my church.

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So we serve full time, a year and a

half, all day, every day, we're teaching

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about Jesus and we are studying gospel

and trying to improve ourselves.

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Now this need to self flagellate

got worse, way worse for me.

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I finally brought this problem to my

mission leader and asked him what I

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should do because , I felt helpless.

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It was a daily occurrence that I

felt depressed, miserable, anxious.

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It was not pleasant.

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And I knew deep down that

something was not right.

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I knew this feeling wasn't coming from

God, but I didn't know how to fix it.

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When I explained this problem to him,

he actually shared a book with me.

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It is called Confronting the Myth of

Self Esteem, and I'll include the link in

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the show notes because I think it is an

incredibly well written book that helps

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put this into perspective a little bit.

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If you feel like you struggle with this,

I highly recommend reading the book.

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But in essence, once I read this book,

I have to say that no exaggeration,

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it completely changed my life.

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I essentially did a 180.

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What it told me is that what I was

experiencing was not humility and

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my brain was telling me it was.

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It was saying if pride is making

myself wonderful and amazing, just

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the way I am, then the opposite of

pride, humility is tearing myself down.

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Now.

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We're probably all mature enough now

to understand that that's not the case.

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But in my young brain, that

was the best I could do.

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It was just to focus on my faults

and constantly criticize myself

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so that I wouldn't be tempted

to think that I was prideful.

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Essentially what this book explains

is that what I was experiencing

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was another form of pride.

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Um, so the definition of pride from the

dictionary says that it is a high or

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inordinate opinion of one's own dignity,

importance, merit, or superiority.

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So a high or inordinate

opinion of oneself.

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What I was experiencing was self

criticism, self disparagement, belittling

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myself, and I assumed that that meant

I was extra modest or extra humble.

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But what this book taught me was that

it was essentially a low or inordinately

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negative opinion of my own dignity,

importance, merit, or superiority.

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So instead of it being humility,

it was pride, but a self

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deprecating form of pride.

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Does that make sense?

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It was the exact same thing, only

instead of thinking I was so wonderful,

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I was thinking I was so terrible.

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What I finally understood was

that God doesn't want us to stop

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thinking that we're so wonderful

or that we're so terrible.

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He just wants us to stop thinking

about ourselves all the time.

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So whether we're thinking we're so

wonderful or thinking we're so terrible,

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we are still focusing on ourself.

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It's still all about us.

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So I think that if one side of.

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the pride coin is self aggrandizement,

I'm so wonderful, then the

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flip side is self criticism.

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I'm so terrible.

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It's still focused on ourself.

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It's only through true humility

that we take the focus off of us

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and back onto God where it belongs.

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Isn't that revolutionary?

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So I just want to open your mind

up a little bit to this concept.

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If you struggle with that self

criticism, ask yourself, is

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my focus adequately on God?

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And I think you'll probably

find that the answer is no.

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The reason being is that God's spirit

does not talk to us in a critical way.

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He doesn't tear us down

or make us feel awful.

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He sometimes pricks our spirit with

a little bit of guilt or a little

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bit of feeling like we are not in

keeping with God's commandments.

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But when there is a little tiny mean

girl in the back of your head, you can

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guarantee that is not coming from God.

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God speaks through peace and through love.

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And I know that when I am feeling the need

to change through peace and love, it feels

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very different than how I tell myself I

need to change, which is through Criticism

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and horrible, mean thoughts to myself.

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So one of the past prophets of

our church, his name is Gordon

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Hinckley, told a similar story about

his own service as a missionary.

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So as you can see, common theme, when

you dedicate your whole day to God,

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very often some tricky things come up.

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You start to realize just

how weak you are, right?

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How many things you're struggling with.

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And he too struggled with.

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, being lonely and feeling inadequate.

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And he wrote a letter home to his dad and

told him just how miserable he was and

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how he was thinking about coming home.

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He said, I'm not doing any good here.

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I just don't think it's worth my while.

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And his dad simply wrote back these

words, forget yourself and get to

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work, which I just love so much.

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And that was essentially the message

that I took away from that book.

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In my young 21 years, I understood

that God was simply whispering to me.

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You don't need to focus on yourself.

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It's not up to you to perfect yourself.

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I can do that.

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You just have to keep focusing on

me and I will help you get there.

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The simple fact is we will

not be perfect in this life.

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We will not be anywhere near it.

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But

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by focusing on what God wants

us to do and forgetting ourself,

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we can get a lot closer.

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And in reality, Satan wants us off this

path of shining our light to the world,

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he wants nothing more than the faithful

women of the world to focus on all their

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problems and criticize themselves nonstop.

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He tips all of us, I think,

with some definition of pride.

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So some he will tempt with the

traditional definition, right?

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That of vaunting yourself above others.

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But for most of us, women of

faith, that is not a temptation.

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Instead, he tempts us with a different

focus of pride, and that is still

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a selfish focus, but it's just how

terrible and unworthy we are, which

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feels a lot more like humility,

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it feels like, well, if I'm constantly

telling myself how terrible I am, I

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will eventually get better, right?

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No, unfortunately that's not how it works.

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You may have learned the lesson that I

have learned over the past 20 years or

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so that when I make myself feel terrible,

I actually don't want to be better.

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I just want to kind of wallow in misery.

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When I tell myself that it doesn't

matter how good or bad I am right now,

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I have to just keep moving forward and

I keep my focus on God, then guess what?

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I'm able to do so.

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If we truly understand God and

how merciful his love is, then

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we know that those feelings

that come to us are not of him.

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They don't come from God.

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'cause that's not how he operates.

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He operates only out of love.

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So let's take this into

our business for a minute.

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When we work on our businesses, there

will likely be many times when we feel

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badly about ourselves and our performance,

we will teach someone something and.

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Um, then think, Oh, I did that wrong.

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Or we will post something and

someone will say they hate it.

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Or any number of things that we put

out into the world, we might not

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like, we might think that they're

not perfect or that we messed up

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or we did something really wrong.

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We'll think we're not talented

enough or not smart enough or not

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experienced enough, or we don't have

enough education and we'll see others

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who are doing it better than we can.

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And we'll be tempted to just spiral

into despair and think about how.

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Bad, we're messing everything up.

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So when that happens, just remember these

words, forget yourself and get to work.

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If we truly believe that God is calling us

to this work, then it doesn't matter how

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imperfect we are because God has always

used imperfect people to do his work.

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That is one of the great truths of

this world is that he doesn't need

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perfect people to do his perfect work.

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He just needs those of us who are willing.

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The fact of the matter is the world

needs what we have to give it and

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God needs us to be his servant.

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There just isn't enough time to

wallow in self pity or self criticism.

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So put those aside and

let's just keep working.

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Now if this is something you struggle

with, this may be a very new concept

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to you and I hope that me calling it

another facet of pride It does not make

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you feel bad about yourself or make

you want to beat yourself up anymore.

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But that realization helped me

immensely to understand that

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I actually wasn't working for

the Lord when I was doing that.

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I was just focused on myself.

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So if this is something that

you still struggle with, please

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bring it to a coaching call.

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I always offer everyone One free

30 minute call so we can work

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through what you're struggling on.

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And if you're interested in

working further with me, we

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can talk about that as well.

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But I would love to help anyone who

struggles excessively with this because

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being able to see it from the other

side, being able to let go of that

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self criticism and to really lean

into serving God the way he wants

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us to is a complete game changer.

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And a final side note, I actually

was recently interviewed by Jordana

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Thiessen on her podcast, LDS and

Loving Life, about this concept as

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well, and we dive really deep into

it, have a really great conversation.

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So I will link to her podcast

in the show notes as well, so

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you can go listen to that one.

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It's a great companion episode to this.

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So take care of yourselves, my friends.

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Please remember, God loves you,

I love you, you can do this

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work, and I'm here to help you.

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I'll talk to you next week.