Three Action Thursday

Pull Up Your Pants, Your Ego is Showing

We are our own worst enemy. No one limits our potential more than we do. We would NEVER let someone do to us, what we do to ourselves.

This week on 3AT we are going to go deep, DEEP into your consciousness, and I promise it will NOT hurt one bit. We are going to talk about the ego. It’s going to be a bit abstract, because generally “having an ego” is usually associated with arrogance, a term used to describe someone who thinks they are better than others. That is truly only part of the equation and not really the focus of this piece. The purpose of this piece is to define the ego and to understand how it can be affecting us on an everyday basis.

The ego is the part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and is responsible for our sense of personal identity. However, the ego lies to us: it’s an identity of our own construction, an identity which is blatantly false. The ego says things to us such as:

“I’m good at math.”
“I’ll never do a pullup.”
“I am better than you.”
“I am smart.”
“My big nose make me ugly.”
“That was really dumb of me.”

Ego

When we even slightly agree with this type of self-talk, we are just reinforcing the structure of the ego. Real problems arise when that self-talk is negative, inaccurate, or even overly positive. So what does that self-talk sound like when applied to our Three Action Thursday domains?

“I’m just not a saver.”
“I’ll never be able to retire.”
“I’ll never make enough money.”
“I’m just not a people person.”
“I can’t start a business, I’m too busy.”
“I’m not lonely, I’m just independent.”
“No one gets me.”
“It’s work, I’m not supposed to like it!”

Positive and negative self-talk together make up the ego. The manifestation and balance of both can really change the lens through which we view our lives. For example, arrogance is markedly different from confidence. Confidence doesn’t come from the ego. We can be completely confident in our abilities and skills without letting it “go to our head” and impact our decisions and interactions with others. Another example is humility, which may often be mistaken for shyness or insecurity. If we are operating in true humility, that just means we are fully present and at peace with ourselves and our surroundings, again void of ego. So we can be confident without arrogance and act in humility without insecurity.

As we move through life making thousands of decisions each day, it is important that we take note when we are making those decisions using logic versus when we are letting the ego make the decision.

Three Actions guaranteed to make you a better person than you were the day before:

**Action:

  1. Review your self-talk; make sure you are keeping the ego in check.
  2. Want to hear real world examples of the ego? Read “Ego is the Enemy” by Ryan Holiday
  3. Want to dive deep into the psychology behind the ego? Read Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose”.**

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