Growing up in a nuclear family, I saw one of my parents mostly unhappy, and the other parent always happy and careless. The former mainly had been a giver in life, and the latter primarily a taker.
There were a lot of other factors involved in determining the nature of my parents individually, despite the giver/taker part. But our brains have weird ways of connecting dots to identify patterns and protect their self-made identity.
So the younger Dipanshu made a belief — givers stay mostly unhappy, and takers stay mostly carefree and happy.
Yep, I know what you must be thinking. That’s not true. I know that now, duh!
But growing up, my belief that “being a giver will make you unhappy” created my identity of being a selfish and egoistic adult.
Four years ago, I was undergoing an existential crisis. I was borderline depressed and on the verge of giving up on everything.
A few months later, when I started getting therapy sessions, I realized what an egoistic jerk I had been to people throughout my life. And my identity shift started happening then.
I read a lot about human behavior, spirituality, self-improvement, etc.
In particular, Ryan Holiday’s Ego is the Enemy deeply impacted me. I became self-aware about WTH is ego, and how we can spot it.
According to Ryan Holiday, Ego is an unhealthy belief in our self-importance.
The ego, however, is not who you really are. The ego is your self-image, it is your social mask, it is the role you are playing. Your social mask thrives on approval. It wants control, and it is sustained by power because it lives in fear.
Ram dass
Ego is the delusion that we are too important for the world; we are the center of this universe, and all the universe revolves around us.
Furthermore, the ego is the imaginary identity we have created for ourselves, that’s far from the truth: I am AB, I like XY, and I hate MN.
Since I started getting aware of all the moments when my life is ego-driven, I have been tracking the statements that my ego truly loves.
Here are the 5 dishonest statements our ego truly loves —
Statement 1 — “I know this already.”
Your ego doesn’t want you to feel insecure and unaccepted.
What if you are the only one in your class who doesn’t know 21+21=42?
Your classmates will mock you. They might even consider you not good enough as per their standard.
Plus, if you make a statement like “Dude, I already know this,” you will be showing your intellectual (or otherwise) superiority.
This gives you a delusion of being superior or more intellectual/powerful among your peers.
Drawbacks of this statement
Your growth tanks. You won’t grow with your full potential.
Also, nobody likes a “know-it-all,” so that’s that.
How to tackle it
I became a life coach after learning a lot from Rich Litvin. He’s a life coach for top performers, and in one of his webinars, he said some words that stayed with me for a long time.
When he was about to tell a story in his webinar, he mentioned that he has already told this story multiple times online.
He said, “If you’re listening to this story for the second or third time, listen to it with an intention — how can I look at this story differently, what new lesson can I learn from it today?”
And well, that’s how you tackle your ego’s first favorite sentence, “I know this already.”
Statement 2 — “I am not wrong.”
Your ego is always trying to protect you, even if the danger isn’t real.
Admitting your mistake will make you vulnerable. Your ego will never want you to be vulnerable. Because your ego thinks vulnerability is a weakness and someone might take advantage of your vulnerability, and they might harm you.
Your ego doesn’t want you to feel hurt. So, it will tell you — “You are not wrong,” even if you are wrong.
Drawbacks of this statement
A part of your ego’s job is to keep you away from a hurting reality.
With this particular statement, “I am not wrong,” you will enter a world of more delusions, and you will start getting far away from reality.
How to tackle it
- Step 1: Accept that nobody is 100% wrong in any given situation. There’s a tiny possibility that maybe you could have done something different too.
- Step 2: Ask yourself, “What could have I done differently on my part? What am I missing? If there would be a humble person in this situation, how would they react?”
Statement 3 — “Why would I be sorry?”
This sentence puts you in the misbelief that you are the center of the universe, and the whole world revolves around you.
Moment of honesty: it’s plain arrogancy.
To err is human. To apologize is also humane.
There’s a famous quote I remember —
If there’s a distance of 10 steps between you and someone, always walk 9 steps.
Anonymous
Drawbacks of this statement
Your relationships will start failing. Your friends will start getting away from you. This is a step forward towards narcissism.
How to tackle it
Ask yourself — What can I do to make things better now? If my apology can mend a broken heart, give someone a much-required closure, or save someone’s dignity, can I humble myself and apologize with my full heart?
Also, can you walk 9 steps?
Statement 4 — “They don’t know me.”
At one point, I had almost no friends. Everyone was telling me — Dipanshu, you are an As***le.
And I always acted like — You don’t know me, I don’t care about your opinion.
But the issue was, everybody was telling me the same thing over and over again.
After some time, I gave it a thought. Well, if everybody is telling me the same things, maybe I have a blind spot, and perhaps I am ignoring something.
You are quite an average person. Whatever you are feeling, 90% others must be feeling the same too.
You start becoming judgmental to try proving to yourself why does nobody understand you, or how you are so extraordinary that others don’t have the intellect to understand you.
Drawbacks of this statement
You won’t show acceptance, and you won’t receive acceptance. Your friends will cut you off.
You will stop sharing your feelings with your friends, ultimately leading to solitude, feeling lonely and empty, and falling in the pit of depression.
How to tackle it
Ask 10–15 people who are closest to you “what’s wrong with me?” and accept their honest opinions. Notice all the emerging patterns in their views of you.
Maybe you are not expressing yourself correctly, and maybe there’s some other reason for everything. But this one activity will help you look at your behavior objectively.
Statement 5 — “This is who I am”
Growth is uncomfortable. Change is uneasy.
Your ego wants you to stay in your comfort zone around things and patterns that are familiar to you.
So, it will create a strong opinion about self-acceptance. This is pure denial. You need a balance between self-acceptance and self-improvement.
That’s precisely what’s going wrong with the body image movement across the globe.
Yes, I understand that even if I am overweight, I should accept myself and my body. But then again, if I don’t exercise or do anything to lose my weight and get fit when I have the option to do something about it, I am risking a lot of medical issues of cholesterol and heart diseases.
That being said, if you are having a medical condition like PCOD or something, and you literally can’t reduce your weight, well, that’s an exception.
But otherwise, using the statement “I am this way only” is what your ego would love you to do. And yes, it comes with a series of pitfalls on its own.
Drawbacks of this statement
You will start blaming situations and external factors for whatever’s wrong in your life. Your growth will tank.
You might start getting into patterns where you will feel helpless and insecure in the end because you deny growing out of your misery.
How to tackle it
To get into the growth zone, you have to define the kind of future you would like to have. From there, you would work backward to what type of person do you need to be to design your dream future.
Get clear on your core values and your life purpose. These things will help you move across this obstacle.
3 Important Points to Consider Before Working on Your Ego
Point 1: Practice compassion
Your ego wants to protect you. Don’t hate it. Befriend your ego. Show compassion to yourself.
Ego judges and punishes. Love forgives and heals.
Anonymous
Don’t hate yourself for living an ego-driven life in your past. It’s biological.
And the good news is, you are self-aware about it now, and this is your moment of transformation.
As the famous saying goes — “Life is a balance between self-improvement and self-acceptance.
Point 2: Take one step at a time
If you attack all your flaws right away, you will fall into depression; the world will feel hopeless to you.
Take one step at a time. Learn to accept your flaws and embrace your imperfection. That’s the game of tackling ego — admitting that you’re not perfect, and it’s okay.
Life isn’t linear; it’s also not cyclic. Life is somewhat spiral. After every turn, no matter if we are moving upwards or downwards, we will undergo a similar zone of frequencies.
In simple words, this means we will observe patterns of our greatness and despair both. And the only way to make those patterns irrelevant is to move forward, one step at a time.
Start by asking yourself — “What the smallest possible action I can take about this?”
Point 3: Get support / Work with a coach
I wish I had resources to afford a coach when I started working on my ego. I wasn’t even aware of the whole life coaching world.
But you have the opportunity. Hire a coach. Be professionally and personally committed to work on your growth and move past your self-limitations.
A coach’s job is literally to challenge you, support you, and help you recognize your blind spots.
Getting help from a life coach will keep you accountable, and you will start witnessing exponential growth in your goals and life.
Conclusion
Ego is a tricky business — there I said it.
It wants to protect us, even if that means covering us up with an imaginary bubble. And that’s okay.
When you become self-aware of your decisions, and when you start recognizing your patterns and the driving force for your actions, you start tackling your ego. That’s exactly how it works.
Here Are the 5 Statements Your Ego Loves
- “I know this already.”
- “I am not wrong.”
- “Why would I be sorry?”
- “They don’t know me.”
- “This is who I am.”
3 Important Points to Consider Before Working on Your Ego
- Practice Compassion. Don’t judge yourself for letting ego drive your life so far. Be kind to yourself.
- Take one step at a time. Pointing out all of your flaws at once is a definitive way of falling into depression. Learn to live with imperfections. Start by asking yourself — “What the smallest possible action I can take about this?”
- Get support / Hire a coach. Be professionally and personally committed to work on your growth and move past your self-limitations.
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