Ego: in this article we see everything we need to know to get to know our inner self better.
One can know the cosmos, but not one's ego; one's self is more distant than any other star.
Gilbert Keith ChestertonIn this article we see cos'è l'ego, its meaning and how it can be useful to improve our life.
We will discover it above all under the simplest and most immediate aspect so that this article can have a practical and definite usefulness.
In fact, we will leave out the most abstract, smoky discussions dedicated to the official nomenclature of psychoanalysis in order to be as useful and effective as possible.
Let's start by giving a definition of ego.
Cos'è l'i?
In different parts of the world the ego and its various declinations have been talked about, but without reaching one unique definition.
In fact, there are those who attribute a psychological connotation to it, those who are spiritual, astral, esoteric and those who think that the ego does not even exist.
In the present and in the past, many analysts, mystics and philosophers have been concerned with the ego and its influence on us.
The best known theory is certainly that of the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.
According to Freud, the personality of every human being is not unique and compact but divided into 3 different personality instances:
- Them
- The ego
- The Overself
According to some, the ego is a synonym of the ego while according to others it should be a sort of declination of the latter.
The ego actually it is the mental image we have of ourselves, what we think and how we see our body, our character and our being in general.
The ego is therefore that image in our head of ourselves: how we believe we are physically, psychologically, the experience we think we have of reality and our character.
But why is it important to understand and analyze one's ego?
Because the ego messes up our life
Our ego can often represent a real limitation and in many cases it is precisely he who tries to completely block us by leading us towards a series of self-fulfilling prophecies.
Indeed, more the ego detaches itself from reality of ourselves more problems can arise within us.
Surely you have heard the saying goes: having a huge ego or having a gigantic ego.
When we talk about an enlarged ego we are referring to the state in which a person believes that he is a completely different individual from what he really is.
That is, we have one vision of ourselves different from reality.
In this regard, there is an important consideration to be made.
Obviously speaking of absolute reality, of truth and in general of absolutisms of how we are and of who we are, he's not very honest intellectually.
In fact, if two individuals evaluate a person in a different way, it is not certain that one of them asserts the true while the other the false, not even if we evaluate ourselves.
Could be both in error o both in truth, they are simply expressing their point of view, which by definition is subjective.
So in this case when I talk about the difference between the ego and ourselves, I mean the difference between what we perceive to be and what we make others perceive with our behavior, with our actions and with our words.
As we said, having an ego that is not synchronized with the reality of ourselves can complicate our life.
If we have a hypertrophic ego and we believe we are almost infallible, when we fail or do not feel up to the situation, we will perceive a very high feeling of discomfort.
A lack of synchronization between who we are and who we think we are (ego) can therefore lead to several problems:
- Lack of self-esteem
- Excessive expectations of oneself
- Poor confidence in oneself and one's potential
- Unrealistic view of oneself
- Inflated balloon attitude
- Difficulty in establishing sincere relationships
- Excessive susceptibility
- Various limiting beliefs
- Excessive arrogance
- Continuous feelings of guilt
- Narcissism
It therefore becomes vital align our ego who we really are with: let's see how.
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How to live better by knowing the ego within us
# 1 Awareness of who we really are
Understanding who we really are is not easy at all, if we try to compare what others think of us with what we think of ourselves, many times we will see that the two descriptions do not match at all.
Indeed, most of the time others do not have the faintest idea of ​​who we are and often we ourselves have difficulty defining it.
To understand who we really are, it is not enough just to think about what we would have liked to do in life or how we would like to be, because thinking of being another person is easy.
The difficult thing is to act because in all respects it is what we do that defines who we are.
We must therefore evaluate the goals we have achieved so far, our actions and their consequences.
For example, if we believe we are generous and good to others, but on balance we have not carried out actions in this sense, our ego will be swollen believing a generous benefactor, without however having acted and therefore without actually being.
In this case we will perceive a very selfless version of ourselves and if we were to receive criticism in this sense we would be extremely sensitive and we will feel personally touched.
To overcome this obstacle we must make ourselves a real one ego examination: let's see it in the next point.
# 2 How to get out of the ego and how to restructure it
The next step is to get out of the false ego, analyzing the ego itself and the actions we carry out daily.
To restructure the ego it is necessary to carry out a brief self-assessment exercise.
Normally when our ego takes over we have a tendency to see our qualities almost exclusively, leaving out those of others.
It's not a materialist or bad person conscious thing, simply we do not look with our eyes but with those of the ego.
It is like peering into ourselves with a telescope, seeing everything more beautiful and sparkling, while instead we look at others under the microscope, looking for imperfections and inconsistencies.
get out of the ego which makes us see the world in a distorted way, we must try to maintain a critical attitude towards ourselves as well as towards others.
Try to take a pen and paper and write down 10 qualities that you think you have and next note when, in the last 5 days, you have demonstrated with facts that you have these qualities.
For example, if you think you are brave, write when you believe you have been brave but especially when you think you have had a higher courage than other people.
You will probably realize that the qualities of your ego have been used fewer times than you thought and therefore they are not completely real.
Now do the exercise in reverse to create the ego linked to reality: write down 10 qualities that have distinguished you in the last 5 days.
Attention, not those that you think have distinguished you, but those that actually emerged from your actions.
For example, if you have donated 5 euros to a homeless person, write generosity.
This exercise serves to eliminate the qualities of the ego that do not really belong to us and to replace them with ones real virtues derived from actions that we have accomplished.
This way you can rebuild your ego and align it with your real self.
By now you should be clear that each of us is unique and having a bulky ego belittles other people as well as harming ourselves.
Rather than magnifying our ego, it is better to work on one's self-esteem.
In the last step we see what is the only thing that can change the ego making us become the person we dream to be.
# 3 How to create the ego you want
The last step to align the ego with the real version of ourselves or to transform ourselves into our ideal ego is Act.
As I often repeat here on Personal Growth Lovers, action is the only way we can change reality.
I know very well that there are hot-air selling super gurus who assert that it is enough to meditate, think or desire something to get it.
The truth is that lying on the sofa and thinking about who we would like to be or doing bizarre vibrational meditations without ever acting in that direction will never lead us to no result.
If you want to become a better person, you have to act to be better.
I know that changing is difficult, changing a single habit is tiring, relating better to others is stressful and softening one's character is even more complicated.
But the only way that leads to concrete results is to act; we must act to touch our dreams.
If you have just discovered that you have an ego that does not correspond to reality, or you simply want to improve as a person, you need to start taking actions in that direction.
Sometimes it takes very little, trying to bring about epochal changes is there fastest way to fail.
The safest and most sustainable solution is to use the kaizen strategy.
Small daily actions to proceed slowly, calmly and consistently to produce great results.
Final thoughts on the ego
As you will have understood the ego is a part of us, therefore it cannot be dismantled or destroyed as if it were a foreign body, otherwise we will end up eliminating ourselves.
Instead, what we can do is to know the ego and become fully aware of it so as not to let our life be stolen from ourselves and to improve the parts of us that interest us most.
