When ego gets in the way
I remember vividly how the term “ego strength” struck me the first time I heard about it. It drove my attention as a seed nested in my mind and heart, growing along my decisions, actions, aspirations, successes and failures. It has always been with me coping with my reality.
Ego — sense of self — emerges from the inner development of that sense of self in our constant coping and learning with our environment, family, school, social life, work, career, experiences through life and certainly our coping with our self. A person’s sense of self, nourished with useful or harmful frames, may trigger a whole menu of emotions and behaviors impacting our lives and the life of others.
Strength can be seen from two different sides: our ability to resist and endure “external forces” — attacks, hostilities, scarcity, setbacks, vicissitudes. And on the other side, our ability to use our strength to face, respond, counteract, confront a given situation. Thus, ego-strength develops from resisting storms and bad times to responding to our own decisions over given situations.
Ego-Strength can be defined as “strength of our mind to face reality as is”; the ability to “face facts without falling apart, feeling angry, upset, frustrated, depressed or whining”. A person’s ego-strength can be stable or unstable.
Unstable ego-strength: seeing things as difficult and problematic, and even chaotic, may drive us to feel worried, insecure, distressed, intolerant.
Stable ego-strength: welcoming, accepting, embracing life and reality as is, adopting a problem-solving mode, without whining and complaining, knowing that problems and setbacks will be present in the way, being sure and resolved to face them, building and constructing from and over reality as is.
When ego gets in the way:
∙ Aspirations and wants: When aspirations and wants are built on ego and not grounded, well connected congruently with reality.
∙ Plans: Plans, talks, and chatter fulfill the ego with success stories told to one-self and others. Chatter will never replace actions and work.
∙ Targets: Feeding our pride, ambition and greed with visualizations of fame and hype will lead us to nothing but disappointment. Having a meaningful destiny, with a strong sense of purpose, clear goals well supported by actions and work will be a much better path.
∙ Passion: Feeling passion for something will push us to initiate a new project. Many executives seek premature success opening a whole bunch of initiatives and projects making a lot of noise feeding their egos. When problems arise and the demands of work begin, passion is blown away. Putting in place the last stone requires work, discipline and deliberate practice. Ego must be left aside.
∙ Recognition: Searching likes, recognition and other’s validations can make us miserable. Making things happen to get the wanted results, learning in the way will put us back in track happier and filled with energy.
∙ Personal importance: Focusing in feeding our own pride and personal importance can eat us alive, instead of serving, giving and working towards our goals with patience, focused, with service and results orientation.
∙ Gain Perspective: Making things our way, demanding control and paranoia versus doing things the best way possible will demand listening to gain perspectives, putting our own way, control and paranoia aside.
∙ Humility: Ego can grow so much, that can lead us to think the world deserves us. My guess is that the world won’t even bother listening to what we have so say. Humility (humus = soil, ground) and sobriety are much better advisers.
∙ Failure and setbacks: Ego can put us in a fight/flight mode when facing failure and setbacks, not learning and accepting our mistakes and flaws. Adopting a learning mode, by far constitutes a more useful and constructive strategy.
∙ Facing problems: An unstable ego-strength will lead us to waste our time, yelling, whining, complaining, gossiping. When facing problems from a strong ego-strength will take a problem-solving attitude, calmness, objectivity, searching for solutions without wasting time and energy.
∙ Effort: from procrastination, delaying and avoidance to a strong stand willing to “suffer” minor setbacks and challenges to accomplish greater tasks and goals.
∙ Patience: from despair and losing our temper, not willing to respect natural processes and other’s time to learning to live in other’s time conveniently taking the necessary time to get things done collaboratively.
∙ Time: from spending “your time”, waiting, letting time pass, to invest your time, capitalizing and using every minute for the sake of our goals.
∙ Win-lose: Ego allows us to act from scarcity, fearing loss, leaks, and wastage, transforming our lives into a permanent threat. Moving towards acting from abundance, generosity, giving and sharing will make our lives joyful and at ease. Giving without expecting nothing in return will pay off at the moment and later on.
∙ Decisions: Ego might not allow us to decide in order to avoid personal scratches, feedback or criticism, not letting others see our vulnerability. Or else, we can be opened to life, fearless, optimistic, vulnerable, welcoming failure, flaws, risks.
- Relationships: ego and arrogance can be mean, harsh and may transform us into real bastards, overvaluing our own capacities. Underneath might lay insecurity and fear to show our real selves. How we “see” people determines the way we relate to them. I will borrow Pope’s Benedict XVI words: “The look I direct to others, determines our humanity”.
Ego can get in the way when a person’s sense of self is not well developed or stable. An ego that is unstable can undermine just about everything important in human experience. Developing and stabilizing your inner sense of self is critical for effectively handling life.
Luis Eugenio Castañeda
CEO & Founder
Selfbridge Human Solutions
