Being proud of yourself is taboo. In fact, our fear of pride leads us to the opposite excess: self-criticism. Today, it’s hard for us to give ourselves compliments, to encourage ourselves and to take a proud look at our lives. In fact, we only see our faults, our mistakes, and we completely stifle our zest for life and our motivation. That’s why I’m sharing with you 10 tips for learning to be proud of yourself.

1 – Differentiating between pride and hubris

To be proud of ourselves is to recognize our light and dare to embody it in the world. It’s accepting that we have gifts, talents and passions, and that we can contribute to the world through them. And, it means understanding that embodying our light will require courage, determination, perseverance and patience. That’s why we can be proud of ourselves.

To be proud is simply to focus on our possessions and talk about them, not out of the joy of sharing, but out of the need to show off. To show that we have more than others.

That’s another thing altogether.

In fact, pride is an inward look at ourselves, whereas self-righteousness is an outward look at ourselves. Pride needs others to envy it in order to exist.

In other words, pride has nothing to do with others. It’s a personal matter. And yet, being proud of ourselves will help others, because we’ll be setting an example.

Imagine that a friend of yours spends all his time criticizing himself, even though he’s a courageous person who’s persevered in his life and set up great projects year after year. Wouldn’t you say to this friend: “You can be proud of yourself, of what you’ve done, of what you’ve overcome”?

Of course you can, because you know that the people you love need to look at themselves with pride. So give yourself the same gift. Be proud of yourself!

2 – Be proud of yourself: see how far you’ve come

Now that we’ve realized that being proud of ourselves is not the same as being proud of ourselves, and that we can give ourselves this gift, let’s take a look at how to be proud of ourselves in concrete terms.

Because on a day-to-day basis, we tend to dwell on our faults and mistakes.

That’s why I wholeheartedly invite you to regularly take a moment to reflect on how far you’ve come.

Go back a few years and, little by little, go back in time. See all the actions you’ve taken, all you’ve been through, all you’ve learned.

You’ve grown and evolved. You’re a beautiful person who perseveres and is determined.

That’s what it means to be proud of yourself, to see how far you’ve come and to be aware of all the trials and tribulations you’ve been through, the failures and victories that help you move forward, and the lessons you’ve learned.

3 – Awareness of lessons learned

To feel proud of yourself, there’s an exercise I particularly like: making a list of what you’ve learned.

To do this, we need to take some time for ourselves and go back into our past. Above all, it’s about looking for failures and trials, because it’s in these moments that we learn the most.

Because when we look back on ourselves and our lives with pride, we become fully aware of everything we’ve learned.

Indeed, all too often, we boil ourselves down to our mistakes and failures, without seeing that we’ve grown so much thanks to them, and that we can be proud of ourselves for having been able to get through it all.

Finally, instead of seeing ourselves as weak or victims, we have the choice of seeing ourselves as strong.

That’s why I wholeheartedly invite you to become aware of all the lessons you’ve learned through life’s trials and tribulations, through the failures you’ve encountered along the way.

List at least 10 lessons. Then, when you doubt yourself, go back to this list and become aware of everything you’ve been through that you’ve been able to turn into lessons. You can be proud of yourself.

4 – Be proud of yourself: don’t compare yourself

Being proud of yourself doesn’t mean comparing yourself to others. Yet this is a reflex we have. In fact, we believe that to be proud of ourselves, we have to be or have more than others. But this is not true.

To be proud of yourself is to look at yourself from the inside. It has nothing to do with others. It certainly doesn’t.

In fact, when we compare ourselves, we fall back into self-criticism, because we believe that others are more beautiful, richer, happier than we are.

I deeply believe that looking at ourselves with pride doesn’t require us to compare ourselves to others. We’re all different. Better still, we’re all unique.

And you don’t have to be anything else or have anything more to be fully happy and proud of yourself.

Look back for a moment and see how far you’ve come. Then look ahead and see how far you still have to go. Finally, come back to the present moment and feel proud of yourself. You’re doing the best you can, and that’s the most important thing.

Don’t dwell on false images you have of others and of yourself. Feel Life beating within you. You’ve got your place! You always have and you always will.

5 – Listen to your heart

Being proud of yourself isn’t about copying others or achieving a certain idea that society has of the ideal life.

In fact, to be proud of yourself is to feel completely aligned with yourself. It’s having the sweet certainty that we’re doing exactly what we’re supposed to be doing, that we’re in the right place, the right fit.

No more, no less.

Finally, being proud of yourself is knowing how to listen to your heart. It’s choosing your heart as your guide.

It’s not easy to follow our heart, because society doesn’t encourage us to do so. That’s why, as soon as we realize that every day we choose to follow our joy rather than society’s injunctions, we can be proud of ourselves.

In other words, we don’t need to achieve certain things to be proud of ourselves. We simply have to listen to our hearts.

Are you doing what you’re doing because it makes you happy? Then you can be proud of yourself.

6 – Giving yourself permission

To be proud of yourself is to give yourself permission to live the life you feel passionate about. Yes, there’s nothing more beautiful or powerful on Earth than to feel that we’re living our life according to our heart, following our joy.

This will require courage, determination, perseverance and patience.

I believe that’s what we’re here for, to follow our joy. We’re not here, as society would have us believe, to have the best-paid job possible, to have the biggest house possible and to be stressed out.

Living is not about chasing something, it’s not about being stressed and under pressure.

As soon as we allow ourselves to let go of all that stress, then we can follow our joy. And that’s when we can look back on ourselves with pride.

7 – Be proud of yourself: take action

Being proud of yourself means taking action. Indeed, there’s nothing worse than having dreams, listening to our hearts, knowing what would make us happy, but not taking action.

In fact, to be proud of yourself is to feel you’re building something, moving forward, growing and evolving.

And that’s why our dreams need to get out of our hearts and heads and into our lives, through small steps, small actions.

Indeed, we don’t need to take big leaps, small steps are enough.

I deeply believe that to be proud of ourselves, it’s essential to know that we’re on the way to our dreams, and that our daily priority is to take small steps to bring them to life.

8 – Living for yourself

To be proud of yourself is to understand that you’re not here to constantly think about others and try to please them, but to think about yourself.

Yet this makes us uncomfortable, because just as we’re afraid of pride, we’re afraid of selfishness.

Yet a dose of selfishness is vital in this life. Indeed, we are here to find and embody our light in this life, and that’s why we need to think about ourselves.

What makes me vibrate with joy? What do I want to do? Why and how do I want to contribute to the world?

To be proud of yourself is to understand that everything starts with you, everything starts with your joy. It’s by doing things because they make us happy that we help others the most. Not the other way around.

Start with your joy! It’s your best guide to living a life in which you’re proud of yourself.

9 – Learn, grow and reinvent yourself

Being proud of ourselves means realizing that we’ll never stop learning, growing and reinventing ourselves. Indeed, we’re not here to be as we’ve always been and to do as we’ve always done.

We change ourselves every day!

That’s why, at times in our lives, we need external changes in our lives, because we’re no longer the same person inside. We need something else, our joy needs something else to blossom fully.

That’s why being proud of yourself means allowing yourself to make changes in your life. It means following our evolution, giving ourselves the right to do so. In fact, it means no longer clinging to labels and boxes.

Here again, we need courage, determination, perseverance and patience. You’ve got so much in spades. So be proud of yourself and make the changes you need to achieve your full potential.

10 – Be proud of yourself: don’t adapt to what you don’t like

To conclude this article, I’d like to share with you a belief that has always driven me, ever since I was a little. When I was 14, my mother and my main teacher wanted to put me on a path I didn’t like at all. And, at that time, I said my first: “No, thank you!”

I already knew that I didn’t want to adapt to something I didn’t like.

Yet that’s what we’re asked to do every day. We’re led to believe that life isn’t easy, that it’s full of obligations and sacrifices.

But you too feel the need to say “No, thank you. I don’t like this anymore”.

That’s why I’d like to tell you that you don’t have to do what you don’t like. You can find solutions. You can have a new project and start taking a small action to move forward.

Not everything will change overnight, but remember: you’re here to do what you like, not to get used to what you don’t like.

“The first step doesn’t get you where you want to be, but it does get you out of where you are.”

So take charge of your happiness. Take the plunge! Take a step, just one step, followed by another, again and again.

No matter how long it takes, you’ll already be proud of yourself for getting moving, for taking action, for daring to say “No, thank you. I choose to do what I like”.

Find out more:

I invite you to read these 2 complementary articles:

Discover How to live your life better: 3 steps to healing your wounds
Discover The 3 golden rules to boost your self-confidence and achieve your goals

I recommend this inspiring book:

The Color Purple: A Novel by Alice Walker

This Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece chronicles the life of Celie, an African-American woman of the early 20th century. It’s a compelling exploration of conquering adversity, forging one’s own voice and embracing self-esteem.
I read this book in less than a day. I couldn’t put it down. I’m delighted to display this book on my office wall.

Thank you very much for reading this article.

If you liked it, let me know in the comments.

Take care of yourself