my stumbling block: Pride

My family and maybe some close friends know this about me. It's kinda been on my mind lately, so I'd thought I would share it.

I get really really stubborn and almost spiteful when people compel me to do stuff. Especially when it is something that I want to do, or feel I should be doing, or feel like I'm already an expert on how to do it. If someone brings it up and tells me to do it before I am able to do it myself, I can't do it any longer. (wow thats a lot of "do it" 's) Even when I know that the person is right, I have to find some other method or completely different way to do the same thing. Mostly I guess it's people telling me what to do, or how I should do things, when I feel pretty strongly about how to do it myself. For example, when I was a miamaid, all the young women went to stay at a ward member's cabin in Tahoe so that we could go sledding and tubing. For breakfast, I was given the task of cooking the bacon. I've always prided myself that my mom taught me how to cook. There was a lot of bacon to cook and we were at a high altitude. I knew that because of these factors, cooking the bacon in a griddle would take FOREVER! So I started to prepare to zap them in the microwave. Along came sister B. ( no clue how to spell her name) with "you need to cook it on the stove blah blah blah blah blah". I got very angry. I'm sure I told her my reasons for cooking it in the microwave. But she insisted, at which point, I became very angry. Since it was the Young Women's leader, I couldn't really argue with her. So I very spitefully cooked it her way, the whole time complaining to my friend how it was taking an hour to cook the bacon her way when I could have done it in a couple of minutes. This same type of story happened again as we were moving into our house. After describing how I wanted to arrange things in my kitchen, I was told by someone a "better" way to arrange the kitchen from a "home Ec.expert point of view". Instead of considering this point of view and kindly discussing it, I got so angry I broke down with tears and had to walk away really quick so that this person couldn't have another one-up on me by seeing me cry.
It's so bad, that it even happens with friendly advice.... Whats worse, is it happens with friendly advice that I've asked for. This is where I used to get frustrated with my parents when they would help me on my homework when I was younger. I would ask a simple question like, "how do you do this math problem" or if it was my mom "how should I finger this on the piano?" (now this part is just how I felt, not necessarily how the situation actually was) I would get sooo angry when they would give me the answer I wanted, and then explain it. I didn't ask for the explanation! I used to say a lot of "i'm not stupid Mom!".
I'd like to say that I've over come this, and maybe to some extent I have. But in a lot of ways I haven't. Mostly, this behavior is manifested toward my parents. But in reality, I think it's toward anyone I feel vulnerable to or who has some sort of imagined "power" over me. Good thing power is divided pretty equally between Russ and I in our marriage. And to all my friends, this really isn't something you should worry about since I don't feel i'm not in the middle of a power struggle with any of you. Part of overcoming you bad habits and problems is accepting that there is a problem in the first place. So by putting this out there for everyone, this is me accepting that this is something I need to work on, because you really can't scream "i'm not stupid" at everyone.