http://lds.org/general-conference/2010/10/pride-and-the-priesthood?lang=eng
It is probably obvious that the goal of the lesson was to not be prideful and I realized that not being prideful is a pretty good idea because it actually makes you happier. Doing that, however, is pretty challenging and I thought I would illustrate why with this little diagram:
The problem is that balancing ourselves on that point of humility is almost impossible. On one side of the hill, we have the envy. This is where short people like me live. On the other side we have the "I'm better than you" type of pride. That is where the tall people live. It is really difficult because there are constantly things pushing us from one side to the other. That is unless we are really pitiful or really awesome and then we just camp out on one side.
Now, don't fear because I thought of a solution to the problem. Well, OK, the person who gave the talk actually thought of the solution but I thought of an analogy that helped me understand the solution. Think of balancing a stick on your finger. Have you ever tried that? If you have, you might know that if you look down and concentrate on where your finger is, you can't balance the stick. However, if you simply focus on the top of the stick, you'll find that you are much better able to balance the stick. I compare this to concentrating too much on ourselves. If we TRY to be humble by focusing on ourselves, then we can almost never do it. However, if we focus outside ourselves (specifically, if we focus on helping other people) then actual humility is within our grasp. This is like looking at the top of the stick (the furthest point away from ourselves) instead of our finger. Anyway, that is it. Now, if I can just start doing better at doing good stuff for other people...
