If identifying pride is tough, avoiding it is even harder—but not impossible. Here are some steps that might help.
Ask God to make you unimpressed by your successes, accomplishments, and position.
Express to God a willingness to remain in humble, invisible positions of service.
Take up residence in a Biblical worldview.
Keep godly company.
Get in over your head in ministry ventures. Let God stretch you.
Spend time in the mountains or at the ocean.
Give away a lot of money.
Confess your pride to a trustworthy friend.
Pray John Wesley's prayer every morning: "Let me be nothing and Christ be all in all."
Persist in seeking God. Ask Him daily for His strength, wisdom, provision, direction, peace, and rest.
Don't do anything to make yourself appear better than you are, and don't let people get away with building you up inappropriately.
Memorize Is. 66:2, Jn. 3:30, Jas. 4:6, and Rev. 3:17-18.
Read 2 Chronicles yearly.
Give it all back to Him every day—your success, wealth, home, family, ministry—everything.
Receive compliments, but then pass them on to the Lord.
Worship daily. As Phillips Brooks said, "The true way to be humble is not to stoop until you are smaller than yourself, but to stand at your real height against some higher nature that will show you what the real smallness of your greatness is."
Ask God daily to humble you. Give Him invitation and room to break you daily, even hourly, so that He need not break you in greater, more painful ways.
(David W. Henderson, "Here Comes the Pride, Discipleship Journal, Issue 105, 1998, p. 43)
"God opposes the proud but favors the humble. So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you" (James 4:6-7).