Say you want something from another person. You reach out, have a good conversation, sense interest, hear “Let’s do something together.” Then: radio silence. You follow up. Nothing. You wait. Too long. Nothing happens.
Now you’re wondering if you should reach out again. Maybe with some flimsy excuse. You don’t. Because you want to be polite. Not bothersome, not pushy. But really, you’re just too proud.
Pride might be the opposite of getting things done. It slows you to a dead stop. You wait motionless for a response. Meanwhile, you tell yourself stories that get darker each day.
First you’re annoyed at the non-responder. Then you see a pattern. Almost everyone stops replying. You take it personally. Did I do something wrong, why can’t I connect? You’ll never find out. Because you’re too proud to reach out again.
You want to learn from the silence and promise yourself next time you’ll think carefully about who you approach and how. Maybe you were too direct and scared them off? Maybe your contact simply had no time because something was more important than you.
More important than you? That can’t be right. Their loss if they think that. Wait—there it is again, the pride that paralyses you.
What does proud feeling actually get you? Does it move you forward somehow? Or does it just drag you down?
When you don’t just ignore pride but completely let it go, you see clearly again. You can stick with your pattern and trust no one from now on. Or you stop the self-pity and try once more. Just once. And then again.
You don’t let pride in and eventually even the people who want to do something with you will find you. When they do, respond immediately and don’t leave anyone hanging.
The German original lives at reinergaertner.de, my blog since before most of the internet existed (1997). Translation: AI. Quality control: me, squinting. Apologies in advance.