Controlling Ego, The False Self
Photo
Gerd Altmann (Pixabay)
Our uniqueness and identity that we generally consider our
"Self” is said to be our “EGO". It is the feeling inside us
that usually makes us feel special from one and all. It also signifies self-image
and self-esteem and belongs to the devil part (imaginary) of our mindset.
All human beings have it although the levels vary from individual to individual.
“A study published few years back in HBR suggests that 2 out of 5 CEOs
fail within their first 18 months of leading an organization”. Many of these failures in leadership positions possibly
may be traced to egoistic mindset apart from other reasons. I opine that egocentric
individuals are usually unaware that they are self-centered. For example, while
I was writing this post few days back, my spouse Rita started laughing and said:-
It is said that some amount of ego is necessary for our evolution, growth and developing a sense of pride. There is a very thin line between ‘pride and ego.’ The former motivates the latter leads to downfall.
Let me share an interesting story on the subject
A famous sculptor lived in a village and
villagers loved his art of sculpturing. The sculptor had great pride in his
art. One day he started feeling that soon he is going to die. He made a plan to
confuse the devil. He was having ten sculptures already made similar to him and
he stood between those statues. When devil came to take him, he was confused
seeing eleven similar idols and failed to identify him among the statues. He
started thinking what to do if the soul of the sculptor could not be taken,
then the rule of creation will be broken and if the statues are broken the art
will be insulted. Suddenly the devil got the idea of testing the biggest evil in human
beings i.e. Ego. Seeing the statues, he said, "How beautiful are the
statues, but there is an error in making the idols. If the person who created
the statue was in front of me, I would tell him the mistake. The ego of the
sculptor woke up and he thought, "I dedicated my whole life to making
statues, what can be wrong in my statues". He said, "What kind of
error"? Immediately the devil caught hold of him and said, "That's
the mistake you made in your ego that lifeless statues do not speak" …
When a child is born,
his emotions of ego are dormant and he is only aware of the person (preferably mother)
who feeds him. The moment mother conveys love, the child feels good and the ego
gets activated. Similarly as we achieve success, amass wealth, have political
power, possess strong personality etc., it raises our ego levels from I, me and
self to greater heights and becomes part of our life style. Ego has a vast manifestation and lies dormant in
our mind. It manifests through traits such as: - Inflexibility, rigidity,
unbothered, uncaring, self-importance, negative attitudes etc. These gradually
become important characteristics of our personality dynamics. In the event of failures
in achieving our pursuit, most of us get frustrated and tend to have mental
breaks. We often become loners because our mindsets take time to get off
showiness and get back to reality of our being. With the advancing age, facing life obstacles
and failures, the ego levels may be forced to come down.
Photo-Mihai Constantin
Steps to Reactivate Yourself
1 Inculcating Humility
By controlling ego, we are able to instill
humility a higher human value which helps our mindset to segregate truth from
falsehood / pseudo self. Humility is nobility and cannot be achieved over night.
One needs to gradually lower ego by accepting mistakes, and gracefully tender
apologies whenever required.
2 Enemies of Relationships
Egoistic
generally have great difficulty in maintaining relationships within families. There are bound to be occasions when family disagreements may obstruct
communications between the members. This only leads to a muddled situation.
While at work they seem to show cooperation because of being discipline bound.
Occasionally they may have problems because their head driven emotions do
not allow them to come down from their imaginary heights easily. Get rid of this false prestige and instead travel an extra distance to
shake hands within families/work and initiate a constructive dialogue. If the
other party continues being adamant, forget and move on in life. At least we
got off our ego hassles and initiated a process of self cleansing of mind and
heart. It really needs courage. Can we build on this courage?
3 Don’t get carried away by Praise
Praise, appreciations and fame surely gives us a boot to do still better. But if it goes to the head, it produces ego and that becomes the reason of our down fall in due course of time. Don’t become over joys on success and depressed on failure/ criticism. Try maintaining balance and understand that neither success nor failures are permanent.
4 Scan Thoughts
If thoughts are optimistic, these assist in checking ego. However, our internal dialogues are generally negative and don’t allow reasoning nor a positive approach. Changing thoughts to positive orientations is really a difficult ball game and needs a hard look in assessing periodical the contents. Chances are that in most cases the thought contents may have distanced us from relationships by building on false ego. Another method is by affirmation. Pick up a thought for example ‘Not to force my views no matter what happens’. Now repeat mentally “I will not force my views. I will listen to other viewpoints.” This is affirmation and needs repetition so long it gets registered in our mindset.
5 Punishing Children
At times children show traits of
obsession. It is high time to ‘nip the evil in the bud’ by first counseling them. If they
don’t listen, don’t buy them toys/games of their choice. If they still persist
give them some softer punishment such as stop talking for some time etc. It is important not to over pamper children
and keep control on our emotions for their betterment.
6 Improve Listening Skills
Most egoistic are poor listeners and
only want to talk. For example, “I had this habit few
years back. I have been trying hard to self-change my poor listening skills and
impatience levels”. I do observe some small positive changes. It is advisable to inculcate being patient even if the speaker may be
talking sometimes irrelevant things. Disagree with the speaker by all means. The
whole conversation needs to be without offense and displaying of ego.
7 Conscious of Body Language
Often we convey our egoistic traits
with the movement of our body parts and facial expressions unconsciously. Be
conscious and remain in control of movements of body parts. The easy way out is
by standing before a mirror and speaking for say 5 minutes and observe your
facial expressions, movement of hands, head etc. Ensure that we are
concentrating on delivery and not be conscious of body parts. If you are
serious enough, I bet you will improve and observe changes within few weeks.
8 Improve Interactions
Individual or group interactions are
forums where we usually throw our egoistic behavior to impress participants. Remember
nobody likes superiority around. Even if we happen to do a role reversal, I bet
we would also get irritated. It is unfortunate that some of us project the same
emotions but do not realize it. I am reminded of a Kashmiri saying which
translates like ‘One does not see and
realize the dirt on his own neck’.
Can we try and look at our habits to carry self- corrections step by step?
Learn to tender apologies for depicting bad behavior. This will surely help us
out of the clutches of ego gradually. Try to be conscious to maintain our
self-confidence and not dominance. For example, if we know we are very good at
something, don’t ever become overconfident or big-headed.
To Tap it:- Learn and accept that mind is mother of ego. Try hard not to be arrogant, sarcastic, and praising self in search for acceptance. Scan thought contents regularly.
Bhushan Kachru
Blogger
DEAR BLOGGER
ReplyDeleteGREAT READ. THROUGHLY ENJOYED READING ABOUT EGO AND HOW TO TRY AND CONTROL IT.
PROF. MANOJ PANT
NOIDA