Ego

I was having a casual conversation with a friend about how ego is the underlying problem in almost every aspect of our lives. Our conversation didn't last too long, as the bell interrupted us and the teacher entered the class. We proceeded with our lesson, but the conversation lingered in the back of my mind, and I decided to write down those thoughts. In this article, we’ll discuss the basic definition of ego and ways to reduce it.

Most of the time, our ego makes decisions, and those decisions are biased and lack objectivity. Primarily, in our disagreements and conflicts, the ego seems to take part.

In every individual, there is a coherent organization of mental processes that psychologists call the ego. People with big egos are self-serving and likely to lose touch with their values. There are ways in which we can reduce ego, such as gratitude, accountability, and a reduction of personal privilege. The bigger our ego gets, the more our personal life suffers and we may try to take advantage of people.

Author Ryan Holiday defines ego as a sense of superiority that goes beyond mere confidence, distorting our perception so that we see other people as either subservient or oppositional. He argues that ego leads us to failure because it causes us to overestimate our skills while underestimating threats and challenges. It can also lead to a host of adverse characteristics, mainly depression, and may destroy our values and personalities. I liked when Holiday emphasized that you don’t need to be a full-blown "egomaniac" (a person completely obsessed with themselves) to suffer the effects of ego. Even slightly elevated levels of ego can hold you back from success and create difficulties in your life. Finally, I want to give you a notion of what Holiday outlines three overall ways that ego can lead to failure: before success (by preventing you from achieving it), during success (by sabotaging the success you’ve earned), and after success (by preventing you from bouncing back from failure).

Nowadays people are becoming slaves to their egos. The ego becomes a problem when we can’t see the point beyond our perspective. It is like interpreting things as we see them the way they are. In neuro-linguistic programming, here’s what’s called “ a core value elicitation”. This concept gives us a point that the values that drive people are derived from what they’re looking for in life. With this knowledge, much of our attitude is filled with our interpretation, we don’t bother to ask what is on the other side. Given this understanding, our ego is masking us by dominating our ways of thinking and perceiving. Matter of fact, we can take off this mask and renew our thought patterns. Let us try to present our authentic selves over our egos. After all, we can deduce that we are not the mechanisms of the ego rather we can alter our thinking to serve our best self.

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