The one thing that’s limiting our success
Ego… We all have it. We all are guilty of keeping it. When Ego is present, our success is at risk. When Ego is high, our learning is low. When left unchecked, our Failure is certain!
Here are some real life scenarios…
When we argue with our spouse for whatever the reasons – it may be as simple as cooking, what goes through our mind? Do we question which of the following is more important to us?
a) Winning the argument
or
b) Protecting your marriage?
If the former is more important, we have an unhealthy obsession with ourselves being right rather than addressing a matter objectively. That’s Ego talking. It puts our relationship at risk.
When someone gives us feedback about something we’ve recently done or about a decision or action we took, especially if we know the feedback is true, but it is not very pleasant… How do we normally react? Wouldn’t you agree that the first thing that comes to our mind is to defend and justify why we did what we did that resulted in the feedback we received?
At that moment… Do we take responsibility for the matter and ask ourselves – which one is more important? Being right or being open minded to ask ourselves… Is there anything I could do better? – If the former is more important, then our fear of losing face or failing has become an obsession. That’s us using our Ego to save face. It stops us from becoming a better human being.
Remember the time when we achieve a significant milestone in our lives… Did we talk down to others or ignored sound advice from others because we think we are at the top of the world and no one could touch us? Our confidence has turned into Arrogance. That’s Ego manifesting in our head. If left unchecked… our downfall is certain and swift.
So, how do we silence our ego?
I recently learned about a book, EGO IS THE ENEMY by Ryan Holiday and he teaches us the 3 ways to silence our ego.
Before we dive into the 3 steps, we must understand what Ego is. Ryan defines it as a “Unhealthy belief in our own importance”.
It turns our Concerns into an Obsession, and Confidence into Arrogance. It blinds us from achieving our long term goals and distracts us from seeing and embracing the truth.
So, here are the 3 ways to silence our ego: We use the Approach of Plus, Minus and Equal Method.
Consider the quote by a successful MMA UFC champion, Frank Shamrock:
“They need to have someone better they can learn from, someone lesser they can teach and someone equal they can challenge themselves against.”
Let’s start with an Equal: When we are aspiring to do something great, we need someone who is our peer or competitor, friend or someone whom we consider our equal in a particular field to constantly push us and challenge our abilities to keep us on our toes so that we constantly become better. In doing so, we’d have no time to entertain our negative egotistical thoughts.
For example, in the life insurance agency, find someone whom we consider equal in our abilities and challenge each other to become better. The equal will keep us busy outdoing each other.
To keep our Ego in check whenever we achieve some success, we need a Plus to defeat it. Find someone whom we look up to, i.e. a mentor, or someone who has achieved immense success that reminds us we have so much more to do. That keeps us humble.
Lastly, to keep our Ego from causing us to avoid responsibilities for our failures, we need a Minus – that is to teach someone “lesser” than us about our lessons from our failures. This would force us to reflect upon our failures objectively so that we discover important lessons that would help ourselves and others in the future. That way, we’d spend less time complaining and more time to explore ways to improve ourselves.
In conclusion, Ego is our ultimate enemy. It’s the thing that takes down empires, governments, relationships and destroys families. It’s worse than Covid. Nevertheless, the remedy is simple. Lay the Ego to rest.
In the book; EGO IS THE ENEMY, the Author, Ryan Holiday gave us the 3 simple ways to do it and I encourage all of us to practice it as part of our life.
As always, happy learning and I’ll see you at the top!
