Lucia Knight
A Joy At Work Experiment: The Misunderstood Nature of Pride
Pride isn’t about arrogance—it’s about dignity and the small moments that remind us we’re doing something that matters. In this episode, I share a simple experiment to help you recognize, relive, and intentionally create more moments of pride in your work.
Pride gets a bad reputation. It’s often linked to arrogance or self-importance, but at the other end of the spectrum, pride is about dignity—the quiet, internal acknowledgment of a job well done. What if we paid more attention to that?
This week’s Joy at Work Experiment is about noticing and embracing the tiny moments of pride in your work—the small choices, actions, or words that reflect the person you truly want to be. Whether it’s handling a tough meeting with grace, helping a colleague, or simply resisting workplace gossip, these micro-moments of dignity are worth recognizing and repeating.
The Joy At Work Experiment: Find Moments of Dignity
1️⃣ Reflect on your most recent workday—the good, the bad, and the awkward.
2️⃣ Identify one tiny moment where you felt a flicker of pride or dignity.
3️⃣ Replay that moment in your mind. Let it sink in, breathe it in.
4️⃣ Ask yourself: How can I create more of these moments?
Moments of genuine pride lower our stress, straighten our spines, and help us show up better for the people around us—at work and at home. And because they’re so small, we can intentionally create more of them every day.
Next Steps:
If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment. It's a 30-minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you down. I call it Derailed and it's a fabulous place to begin a joy-at-work redesign.
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The Misunderstood Nature of Pride - A Joy At Work Experiment
Lucia Knight: You're busy, yeah? There's never enough time to focus on your future work happiness, but if you don't focus on it, things just stay the same, don't they? In these short episodes, I want to give you some tiny ideas, some mini experiments to try out this week to either dial down a pain point for you at work or dial up your potential for joy at work.
Let's dive in.
Lucia Knight: Pride has a bad reputation. Most religions around the world frown upon the idea of pride. As someone who spent 14 years of my youth attending Catholic schools, the words, pride comes before a fall, are somehow uncomfortably tattooed beneath my skin, even though I can't specifically remember any priest, nun, or parent saying it.
Psychologists see pride as a social emotion. At one end of the pride scale, it's expressed as arrogance. This is the end of the scale that all teachers, priests, and Dominican nuns of my youth demonised. And I'd agree. Arrogance is a behaviour I'd like to see scorched from the earth.
But at the other end of the pride scale is genuine inner pride.
Which is a wonderful signal of a sense of inner human dignity. Dignity. Dignity. Say that word aloud. Dignity. I feel my shoulders lowering and my spine straightening as I say it. Give it a go. Dignity.
Now that's not a concept we think about much in our mid life work, is it?
But what if we did? What if we felt inner pride about our accomplishments at work today? What if that genuine pride let us feel a momentary sense of personal dignity about the problems we solved today at work? What if we experienced a genuine jolt of pride in the way we tackled that tricky meeting today?
What if we walked home from the office, or down the stairs in my case, with a sprinkling of dignity about the way we cracked through the big important tasks first at work today, rather than procrastinating? What if we felt a teeny weeny jolt of joyful pride at the way we invited a colleague who was having a difficult time for a stroll around the block at lunchtime?
What if we felt a minuscule second of dignity in how we stopped ourselves saying something gossipy and instead said something empathetic? What if we felt pride In the way we supported an imperfect, experimental idea from a less experienced colleague today, rather than point out all the reasons why we believe it won't work.
What if we demonstrated kindness in a way that fits with how we want to live our lives? What if we tried something new to get new results and it worked or didn't work? Either way. We get to feel a tiny moment of pride for experimenting. If we had a day like that, what difference would it make to how we show up for our loved ones after work?
Your joy at work experiment this week is to think about your most recent work day, and to pick one teeny tiny little thing, whether it was brilliant, blah, or a bloody awkward moment that gave you a tiny moment of genuine pride.
The smaller the better. Scan your day for a minuscule moment where you felt a breath of dignity, a pinprick of pride from an achievement, no matter how small, from something you did. Said, didn't do, or didn't say, that pleased you, that fits with the kind of person you are, and the kind of person you want to be.
Replay that moment, like a movie in your head, in slow motion. It's probably just a few seconds. For a few moments, but But even milliseconds of genuine pride, many moments of personal dignity are worth breathing in. They're little gems of joy that straighten our spines, that lower our shoulders. They're moments that we get to control, to repeat and to relive. And because they're so small, we get to build them into today and tomorrow. They can happen by accident or by design. We get to choose.
If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment. It's a 30 minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you down. I call it Derailed. It's a fabulous place to begin a joy at work redesign.
