Your ego is the voice in your head that tells us we aren’t good enough, smart enough or pretty enough. If we allow ourselves to listen to it, it can seriously affect the way we live and love. Despite how often or how loud the voice in your head may be, you are the one in control. The ego doesn’t control you, unless you let it. You might spiral down a rabbit hole so deep, you don’t know how to crawl yourself back out.
Here are five ways to tell your ego, you are the one running the show:
1. Say thank you.
By thanking the voice in your head, you aren’t fuelling its fire. The more loving kindness you give to the ego, the more it begins to dissolve. You can thank the ego and let it know, you are taking it from here. The more you try to fight the ego by telling it to ‘shut up’ or ‘piss off,’ the louder the voice becomes.
2. Tell the voice in your head you are good enough.
The ego can lead you to believe that you aren’t capable of doing the things you want to do. You might compare yourself to other people, which never ends well. All human beings have a need for significance, but it has to come from the inside out. You can’t solely rely on other people to make you feel good about yourself. Tell the ego that you matter and believe it, because you do.
3. Let the ego know, you’ve already done this.
Reminding the voice in your head of the things you’ve already achieved, overcame or accomplished allows you to shift your attention to the positive outcomes you’ve already experienced. The ego can’t doubt you if it knows you’ve already prevailed in the face of adversity.
4. Make sure the voice in your head understands you are comfortable with the uncomfortable.
The ego wants to keep you safe. It leads you to believe your ‘comfort zone’ is where you want to be, when you really just want to break free from the feelings of mundanity. Once you let the voice inside your head know you embrace uncertainty, it has no choice but to step down.
5. Understand the importance of feedback, so your ego does too.
Failure and feedback are one-in-the-same. When you don’t achieve the outcome you hoped for, you gain feedback based on your experience. You can learn from this, and change how you approach future opportunities or challenges. Challenges evoke growth and change. Let the ego know you need to fail in order to grow and succeed. Some of the greatest achievers of our time had to fail hundreds of times. Here are some inspirational words about failure from basketball legend, Michael Jordan:
“I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.
Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.
I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.
Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.
I can accept failure, but I can’t accept not trying.
Just play. Have fun. Enjoy the game.
You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.If you accept the expectations of others, especially negative ones, then you never will change the outcome.
I play to win, whether during practice or a real game. And I will not let anything get in the way of me and my competitive enthusiasm to win.
My attitude is that if you push me towards something that you think is a weakness, then I will turn that perceived weakness into a strength.”
The more you compare yourself to others, think about what you don’t have, fear failure or wish you were someone else, the bigger and louder your ego becomes. You are not the voice in your head. In the words of Eckhart Tolle, author of A New Earth and The Power of Now:
“Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not ‘yours,’ not personal.
They are conditions of the human mind.
They come and go.
Nothing that comes and goes is you.”
Featured photo credit: nellie mckay:identity theft via flickr.com
