Day 126: Ego is the Enemy

As aforementioned my recent introspection, i went to look for a book that can help me to diagnose my increasing self doubt, and here is the one i found and bought it over kindle without hesitation.

Ryan Holiday , a young columnist yet a former marketing director of fashion giant- American Apparel, here talks about his bitter feelings about ego through three typical stages of life :

Aspiration, Success and Failure.

We’re aspiring to something—trying to make a dent in the universe.

We have achieved success—perhaps a little, perhaps a lot.

Or we have failed—recently or continually.

While, Ego is the enemy of every single step along the way.

The core messages that the author wants to deliver are aligned with those stages:

Humble in our aspirations

Gracious in our success

Resilient in our failures

I link myself more to the first part" aspirations" more than the other two, as i regard myself neither in "success" nor "failure" stage of my life as yet. I am an ordinary person that living an ordinary life, with some sort of hard managed ego, but not egomaniac per se, wish to gain some insights from other people's great idea about the way managing ego. 

what is ego?

You may intuitively think about the "three selves" invented by Freud: id, ego and superego. The casual way to put up is: an unhealthy belief in our own importance,Arrogance.,Self-centered ambition.

yep, i was in a  situation that i criticise someone's talk in public even though these people are quite influential, although the negative talk is withhold in my mind, my mixed feeling about the thought that either myself is too conceited or kinda arrogant and evil. The fact is that i generally dont trust some public figures in large or small scales,  i suspect the bluffness and feel uncomfortable about their powerful persuasion . I personally wont blindly support or advocate them like their followers do. Moreover, I am extremely confused when surrounding with the herd that always seem to be cheerful to those figures. 

In a way that this might be a good thing, that i do have own stand and critical thinking, or else, it could be strong ego that makes myself blind. I could not tell. thats why i need a book like this solve my puzzle.

what  is the difference in between ego and confidence?

classic:

When we remove ego, we’re left with what is real. What replaces ego is humility, yes—but rock-hard humility and confidence. Whereas ego is artificial, this type of confidence can hold weight. Ego is stolen. Confidence is earned. Ego is self-anointed, its swagger is artifice. One is girding yourself, the other gaslighting. It’s the difference between potent and poisonous.

i dont think myself distinguish confidence and ego that well. This is no clear demarcation on myself at what point of time, i am confident or ego-driven, hardly tell. My self diagnose on this matter is that whenever i have some negative comments in my mind, this could be ego driven most likely. But again , i m not so sure until i read above. Clearly i m lack of humility in some cases, this is gona to be hard to beat myself upon it.

Get out of your own head

The novelist Anne Lamott describes that ego story well.

Out of the right speaker in your inner ear will come the endless stream of self-aggrandizement, the recitation of one’s specialness, of how much more open and gifted and brilliant and knowing and misunderstood and humble one is. Out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self-loathing, the lists of all the things one doesn’t do well, of all the mistakes one has made today and over an entire lifetime, the doubt, the assertion that everything that one touches turns to shit, that one doesn’t do relationships well, that one is in every way a fraud, incapable of selfless love, that one had no talent or insight, and on and on and on.

Aha! well...those talks ,,so typical! that's me! I can barely hold my opinion and self talk in my mind about some looked smart but vast empty speeches. I often refer this kind of talk as " deep yet superficial". I think i might be the gaslighting to myself in the mind. STOP!

Kill Pride

Pride takes a minor accomplishment and makes it feel like a major one. It smiles at our cleverness and genius, as though what we’ve exhibited was merely a hint of what ought to come.

the most astonishing point to me is this one:

Privately thinking you’re better than others is still pride. It’s still dangerous. “That on which you so pride yourself will be your ruin,” Montaigne had inscribed on the beam of his ceiling. It’s a quote from the playwright Menander, and it ends with “you who think yourself to be someone.”

some religions think the pride is the sin because it is a lie. well this might be to an extreme. However my take on pride is something we withhold ourself to be self significant. yes,  this gives us a delusion that we are better than what we really are, and ultimately leads us to the arrogance and away from humility. i camouflage myself sometimes as i think hide my pride well, but privately thinking about it is still thinking, one can not cheat oneself. I m splintered.

How should one fight the ego?

By really knowing yourself. We tend to be against the harsh comments or negative feedbacks received， but appreciate those people and things make us feel good. Thats ego. We have to constantly look inward to guard against the wild self-confidence and self-obsession.

"The first product of self -knowledge is humility"

It is not easy to dissect myself, however the more i look inside, the more puzzled i am. I realised this could be the main shortcoming that reside in my personality which  i have ignored for quite a long time, in fact could be my whole life.

I am glad that i take the first step to scrutinise myself, however this is just a beginning.