The Bible speaks often about the “pride of life.” It is having too high a view of yourself, and it gives you a feeling of superiority. The bottom line is, “the pride of life” is simply arrogance.

C.S. Lewis likened pride to a spiritual cancer that eats away at the soul. He describes it as deadly because we are not aware of its presence in our lives. While we can easily recognize pride in others, it is much harder to see it within ourselves.

In today’s world, pride is especially prevalent in the business world. You see it often in high achievers and senior leaders. Let me give you several examples.

Several years ago, the Harvard Business Review published a study examining why business leaders fail. The study revealed four primary factors that contributed to the downfall of those senior leaders:

• They were authoritarian—controlling, demanding, not listening to others.
• They were autonomous—little accountability, aloof, and isolated.
• They committed adultery.
• They became more and more arrogant.

I believe the underlying reason these leaders encountered failure can be summed up by these words from the study: feeling and acting as if they were superior to all others.

Eight years after publishing his best-selling book, Good to Great, Jim Collins wrote another insightful book entitled, How the Mighty Fall. He and his team of researchers were seeking to understand the decline and fall of once-great companies. They developed a model that consists of five stages that proceed in sequence as the companies diminish in strength. It is not surprising that Stage 1 is arrogance.

People come to regard their company’s success as an entitlement, and they lose sight of the true underlying factors that led to the company’s success in the first place. They do not seek to continually improve their organization but take the attitude, “We will continue to keep things just the way they are and will continue to be successful because we are such a great company.”

Another book I have read on the subject is The Enemies of Excellence: 7 Reasons Why We Sabotage Success. And the first reason, as you might guess, is arrogance.

Pride explains so much of what happens in the lives of men. For instance, it accounts for why we compare ourselves with others so often and why we are such conspicuous consumers. Pride keeps men from being transparent with other men and leaves us with shallow relationships. It explains why we are paralyzed by the fear of failure and see it as a psychological death. This explains why C.S. Lewis describes pride as a spiritual cancer that devours our souls.

This is why humility is the root of all virtue. There is true power in living the humble life. This is why I wrote a book titled, The Power of a Humble Life, a book that has resonated with readers over the past seven years. I invite you to purchase a copy to better understand how to combat this “cancer of the soul.”

Richard E Simmons III is the founder and Executive Director of The Center for Executive Leadership and a best-selling author. The Power of a Humble life is available in paperback, hardback and study guide on our website and on Amazon.