Families and Love

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Be Aware of how Damaging Your Ego can be to Yourself and to Your Relationships

 

Be Aware of how Damaging Your Ego can be to Yourself and to Your Relationships

  

 
 

 

 

 
jeffspeaks
 
 

Ego Defined

Be Aware of Your Ego

Ego is our minds way of defining who we are and is seen as a false identity. Ego is defined as the I or self. According to @dictionary.cambridge.com, it is defined as your idea or opinion of yourself. Especially feelings of your own importance and ability. Therefore, be aware of your ego.

I am no expert on the topic of ego. I have gleaned enough information about it to deem it important enough to be a topic in a blog. A blog about love, family, and other relationships. I believe that ego has caused 99.99% of the problems that arise in my own personal being. It spreads out into all of my relationships, and I believe this is true in almost every relationship. Now that I have become aware of how the ego works, I see it operating in everyone. And not only in myself. I also see the damage it causes. And this is the reason why I chose it to be a topic of importance for familiesandlove.

 

 

 

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Why do we Have an Ego?

 

I realize this may be a very simplistic explanation, as I said I am not an expert. However, from my understanding, the ego was a necessary part of our evolution. It was a process of our self-awareness as a way to identify what we were.

We are part of the animal species called humans. And as humans, we live in groups and in societies and it is important to know how we fit in. The ego helped us to define what we were good at. Once, we were aware of this, it gave us a way to contribute to the groups we belonged to. We became part of the group instead of being alone. Therefore, we helped one another to survive and to expand our group.

As time went on and as we progressed as humans our brains became more complex and we evolved. We started moving around more, meeting new groups of people. They had different languages or ways of communicating. Life experiences challenged us to learn more and we had to if we wanted to survive. Therefore, we continued to evolve through experiences and learning. We continued in our evolution of the self. The more we learned the more we were able to contribute to our society. And the more important we became, the more ego grew. We eventually developed self-esteem.

 

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How ego Presents Itself in our Lives

Domestication 1

 

 

Ego is made up of all the beliefs we bought into over the course of our lives. Beliefs about who we are, our abilities, beliefs about our environment, and the world we live in. Most of us never question what we believe, we just assume that what we believe is right. Some of us hold on to the same beliefs all our lives. Our opinions, and our attitudes. We just keep on living as we always have. Believing that how we live is the only way, and the right way. Thus, that others have it all wrong.

These beliefs oftentimes, begin to cause trouble after a while, and it doesn’t take long to show up. The ego begins to develop when we are small children. All we have to do is listen to a two-year-old child trying to express who he is and what he wants. Some of his favorite words are, “no, me, mine, I want”, it is all about the “I”, the ego. He is trying to hold on to who he is. He is expressing his identity. At this stage what he likes, doesn’t like, and identifying what belongs to him. This is when our caregivers start saying no to us, and where domestication begins. As humans, we all need and crave love, and this is where I believe our problems truly begin. We begin to lose our true selves.

 

Domestication 1

 

We are all born and raised by people who have control over us. From the time we are created in our mother’s womb we have no control over what happened to us. We are too little to raise ourselves because we are domesticated by those who are in control of our lives. No matter the situation, we are domesticated in the ways of our caretakers’ beliefs for us.

We are told what to eat when to sleep. when it was time to start walking. Then, when to speak, how to speak, how to behave, what to believe and what not to believe. All the things we need to know in order to survive. We go to school, we make friends, get jobs, and have relationships. And along the way we become domesticated according to our culture, and our society.

 

And we also developed our own beliefs, attitudes, opinions, and so on. Many of us take on the beliefs of others because it is expected of us. We eventually lost touch with who we truly are. Most of us are told who we should be and what we are supposed to do with our lives. I believe most of us are raised under the reward and punishment method.

 

Domestication 2

 

One thing I hate hearing is when a child is told when he is doing something “right”, according to someone’s belief, that he or she is “a good boy/girl”. However, if that person deems that the child is doing something “wrong” they suddenly become “bad”. This amounts to receiving love and/or being punished. This carries on in school, at work, and in relationships. Sometimes with people who judge us, and who don’t know us. Bullies and people who have prejudice opinions of others are a great example of this.   

So, as children, if we do right, according to whoever is involved, we receive a “good boy” compliment. We tuck it into our minds and it latches on to our psych and it remains. So we tell ourselves, “If I want to be loved, this is what I have to do. Therefore, I will do this from now on.” However, when we are told, “You are a bad boy” which is a taking away of love, and a punishment.

 

We learn not to do that anymore, and we tuck that into our psyche as well. We buy into the rules of those who are in charge of us. They control the amount of love we receive. When we are loved we feel happy, but when we are punished {not loved} we are sad. Love and punishment come in thousands of different ways in the run of a day. 

 

 

The problem with this, is that the people who are in charge may have been right, or been wrong. But we believed them because we needed to be cared for. We needed protection, love, and happiness, and our source for these things were the people in charge of our lives.  We learn to do as we are told because we do not want to be punished. Because we want want positive reinforcement, love, and happiness. This carries on and our self-esteem develops from the beliefs that others impose on us. Good or bad, we buy into what we experience. Imagine what must happen in families where abuse is all they ever experience.

 

 

We Domesticate Ourselves

 

 

 

There comes a time when we move on and we pick up domesticating ourselves. We discover other things that make us happy or sad, or angry, and so on. So, we build on these things that tend to make us happy. We make friends with others who tend to accept us. Then, we acquire things, we get jobs, we create families, we gather to ourselves what makes us happy. And all that time the ego is developing, full of rights and wrongs, and at times, with total confusion.

 

We also have emotions to deal with. They are good, bad, happy, miserable, confused, everything we accumulated all of our lives. Is it any wonder so many people are in therapy, on medication, struggling with emotions they don’t understand? 

We make decisions on our beliefs, whether they are accurate or not. Our minds developed from childhood to whatever place we are at. And most likely, the decisions we make come from past experiences, and from what others told us. 

Do you ever pay attention to the things you tell yourself all day long? Do you ever hear stuff that sounds a bit like this stuff;

  • “I’m ugly”
  • “You’re so smart”
  • “I’m capable”
  • “I can’t do anything right”
  • “No one will ever love me”
  • “I’m such an idiot”
  • “I wish I looked like her”
  • “I’ll never amount to anything”
According to who? How much of what you hear within your mind is actually the truth? Most of us just believe this stuff without even examining the validity of what we are thinking. Therefore, be aware of your ego.
 
 
 
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Why it is Important to Recognize ego

Knowing When the ego is Acting up

 
I may be making a huge jump here. But let’s say that ego always believes that it is right, and never wrong. Being right makes us feel loved, {good boy}, makes us feel happy. Being wrong {bad girl} makes us feel unloved, makes us sad. We are going to believe that voice in our head that says, “You are right and he is wrong, you know better than anyone else”.
Ego jumping in makes you feel happy, so you are going to stick to your conviction. No matter if you’re right or wrong. Now confusion sets in and that voice begins a new story. It says, “what if I’m wrong, what an idiot I am”.
It will berate you, punish you, and just give you grief like nobody can. We would never allow other people to say the things we say to ourselves, never in a million years. Therefore, we are harder on ourselves than other people ever are, unless we allow others to do this to us. You bought into all this stuff and now it’s attacking you. 
 
Is it any wonder we argue with our loved ones, our friends, teachers, bosses, co-workers, neighbors? And even if we are not doing this physically, we are often doing it in our minds? If I think I am right, and you think you are right, and everybody else thinks they are right, it becomes an ego war. Most of us don’t even bother to examine our beliefs.
 
This is why I believe it’s important to recognize what our ego is telling us. We need to distinguish truth from fiction, which means that we have to examine our beliefs. Could we be wrong, could we be right, we need to understand where our beliefs come from. How else are we to know when to stand down when our ego wants to be in charge. We need to practice looking at our egos by listening to the conversations in our minds. And knowing our feelings helps us to recognize ego involvement.

Knowing When the ego is Acting up

Be Aware of Your ego

 
My absolute knowing that my ego is acting up is when I overreact. I refuse to back down even when I know I’m wrong. When I feel insecure, unloved, and fearful, I push the “I know better” envelope. And only because I believe I will feel better if I win an argument. It may work for a little while, but it rarely lasts. Because ego then rushes in and tells me just how horrible a creature I truly am. It becomes a vicious circle and the only way out is to stop and not give into ego. So, be aware of your ego.
 
We often think of ego as being a show of arrogance in people. Therefore we need to learn to recognize when the ego is in control and to take back our sanity. Be aware of your ego as often as you can. It is the only way to deal with it.
 
 
bestestquote.com

 

 

Is it Possible to Control the Ego?

 
I don’t think that the ego will become obsolete anytime in the near future. But I do believe, (because of personal experience), that we can chip away at it. And we do that by becoming aware of it, and by discovering why we believe the things we do. Therefore, we learn when to back away from conflict.
 
 
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My Point is

 
Our ego is ancient because we needed it to survive. But in order to evolve into more enlightened beings, we need to begin to dissolve ego by chipping away at it. Most of our ego is based on lies others have told us, and the lies we have told ourselves. 
This can be fun as well, once you see the ego in action. You will recognize it in all people and it will give you a glimpse into why others behave the way they do. I wouldn’t recommend you telling other people to diminish their egos. Unless they understand where you are coming from and have their own understanding of how ego behaves, let it go.
 
 
 
 
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What you can Begin to Change

 
We begin by listening to our mental dialogue, just sitting back and hearing the words we speak to ourselves. Examining what is true and what isn’t. Don’t fight or argue with the thoughts, just allow them to pass through you. 
 
This is a huge topic and I only have my own experiences to go by. And of course, the material I have at my disposal. However, you can also educate yourself, and here are a few helpful books I recommend.
 

 

 

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