I just watced the movie The Artist and was so happy it won Best Picture even though who gives a crap about The Academy and its lame-ass opinions which I clearly must because I'm bringing it up?
Anyway, as much as I loved it, how painful was it to watch such an awesome guy wallow in his own self-inflicted pathetic-ness?
I wanted to beat him over the head with his little dog friend and scream:
Pull it together already!You're fabulous!You will bring so much joy to so many people!All you have to do is go for it!How can you not see this?!
Which is something we could all stand to hear at some point in our lives.
As this movie so painfully pointed out, there are many reasons we don't let ourselves shine with the blinding brightness we're capable of shining with, and one of the most beastly is pride.
Pride pride pride pride priiiiiiide!
But the scary thing is, just like Jean Dujardin and his ain't-it-grand grin, when we let our big dopey pride cast its massive shadow over our dreams, we get lost in the darkness and forget that there's a world of light just beyond where we stand. If only we'd turn our heads and look at things differently.
And the worst part is, we don't even realize we're doing it.
Here are some signs you may be falling prey to pride; if you hear yourself saying or thinking things like:I'm not going to do this thing that I totally want to do because I don't want to be associated with the other people who are doing it.
If it's not going to be big, beautiful and important, I'm not doing it at all.
I'm not ready yet.
I'll try, but not very hard.
I'm too old/fat/inexperienced to do that.
Pride is in direct conflict with creativity.
And since we are all artists creating our own lives, we're sure to do a crappy job if we let it run the show.