A person’s pride in themselves can be irrational and deceiving

It is one symptom of narcissism and can exist as a narcissist trait alone, that a person’s pride in themselves is completely or partially irrational. What is easy for a person is often overlooked by them when what they feel they had to stretch for is a source of pride.

While that’s understandable and quite harmless in itself, it can be a bit misleading when someone is beaming pride in their excellence and skill level for running a local cleaning business next to another, who thinks they’re merely dabbing with something simple while they work in astrophysics nationwide, when they expected to do that internationally by now.

People’s expectations of themselves may skew their view of how well they’re doing in life and how much pride is appropriate. This then leads to others thinking that one person is “successful” and “impressive,” while the other is “boring,” “disappointing,” or “mundane.” It is possible to light up someone by reminding them what they do is actually pretty cool and impressive. (Use genuine admiration only, even if it’s pretty low-key “that’s pretty cool” rather than “omg that is so Hollywood!”)

Helping people form a realistic idea of who they are is a gift—sometimes even by reminding them that you know what… There are people who started with less and did more than you did; when someone’s self-pride is going a little… over-the-top, it’s going to make them look bad when people find out what they actually do and where the pride is coming from.

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