Consists:—1. In cultivating Self-Esteem,—in exalting your own opinion of yourself. Being Proud.
2. Going into company;—associating with miscellaneous people.
1. Who ever knew a really proud person to be bashful and diffident? What is pride? Is it not self-esteem; self-appreciation and valuation; self-respect and reliance; nobleness, independence and dignity?
A proud-spirited person excites in us something of that feeling of respect and admiration we have for a spirited, mettlesome horse.
But to possess true spirit and personal pride, we must possess points of real or imagined merit; of education, accomplishments, personal beauty, or mental, or physical superiority. How can a person of scanty information—ignorant of the world and its doings, carry a proud bearing with a high and noble spirit?
“How proud and stuck up them Brown girls are since they got home from Boston,” whispers Mrs. Smith to a neighbor, as the “Brown girls” sail into church, dressed in city style, and with something of “city airs.” They have brought home with them the same warm, generous hearts—but they are proud. Have they not some reason for being so? For two years they have been in Madame C.’s fashionable city boarding-school, and in this time they have learned several things outside their school books. Their rustic ways quickly disappeared, and they soon acquired quiet dignity of manners, and that perfect self-control we all admire. It was taught them also that the face is not the proper place for exhibiting our emotions and feelings, so often to our disadvantage; and also that the “sweet, low voice” that men love so well, is much more effective than the loud, harsh tones of so many rustic maidens.
They were also trained to receive introductions from gentlemen without simpering and blushing, and also that it was possible for a gentleman to call upon them several times, and even invite them to a concert, and still have no intentions of “proposing.”
And so the Brown girls go home with their varied accomplishments, and are “proud.” But it is a personal pride to be approved of, and which all who are bashful and backward should strive to acquire.
Are you ambitious? Do you aspire to better things? If you consider yourself a nobody, do you care to be somebody? Do you care to be considered an intelligent, interesting capable person? Then analyze yourself; take yourself to pieces, and see what there is really of you. We take it for granted, of course, that you are a person of ordinary common sense. Has your school education been neglected? then you must rectify this by a selected course of reading; for the first and most important step towards removing a feeling of bashfulness and inferiority, is to become well informed on general topics. We maintain that it is absurd for any intelligent person to feel awkward and bashful who is well-informed and neatly dressed.