Do you want to learn how to overcome your ego?
Do you always feel more important or deserving than others?
These are some of the signs of ego.
The ego is an aspect of every human being.
Sadly, while some learn to manage theirs, others don’t.
Even more uncontrolled ego can lead to a heightened sense of self-importance that makes other people detest being around you.
Overall, ego is a powerful negative emotion that can ruin you in so many ways.
Hence the need to learn how to overcome it managing it.
Therefore, helping you become a better person.
First, What Is Ego?
Most people tend to confuse ego with pride which is a heightened emotion triggered by one’s own achievement or success.
Hence the need to consider the meaning of ego.
Ego is basically the feeling of self-importance or superiority.
It can also be defined as an unhealthy belief in our importance and superiority over others.
To further distinguish ego from pride, pride is an emotion, whereas ego is a mindset.
Ego is a negative mindset that makes one believe he/she is better than everyone else.
Ego is sabotaging mindset that makes you feel the need to protect yourself unnecessarily from internal and external forces around you.
In other words, it makes you see yourself as different from other people in a negative way.
Hence, you constantly feel the need to protect yourself from these other people, and this mindset manifests in your action, words, and general behavior.
In the end, it often gives you the wrong self-identity, one that makes you believe that your true identity is what it is when compared to other people.
Therefore, you need to make conscious efforts to overcome your ego before it consumes you.
How To Overcome Your Ego
Before you can work towards overcoming your ego, you need to understand how the ego functions.
There are three different ways the ego shows up and functions in the life of every human.
A) Aspiring
When you set a goal and want to begin to work towards achieving it, the ego comes in.
It keeps you within its confines of wondering what people will think of your goal and how they will see you when you achieve them.
This can make you talk more about your goal in a big way without working towards achieving it.
B) Success
When you eventually achieve the goals, the ego shows up and makes you believe that your future endeavors will succeed.
It makes you feel entitled to success.
You become overconfident in yourself.
This makes you develop the tendency of becoming overconfident in your abilities and take on too many responsibilities.
C) Failure
When you experience failure or setback, the ego shows up to save your face and help you dodge responsibility.
It makes you realize that you should be applauded for attempting.
Likewise, it makes you avoid failure and its consequences instead of learning from it.
To avoid any of these situations, here are some tips on how to overcome ego.
One of the greatest lessons of dealing with ego is the plus, minus, And equal Formula developed by Frank Shamrock mixed martial arts (MMA).
It states that, for you to overcome ego,
- have someone better than you that you can learn from
- have someone lesser than you to teach
- also, have someone of the same level with you whom you can have a challenge with
Although this seems to be referring to the world of combat, it’s a great lesson we can hold close to our hearts as we discuss how to overcome ego.
Therefore, here’s how to overcome ego and be the best person you can be.
Learn From Your Equals
When you set a goal and begin to go work towards achieving it, find an equal.
An equal should be someone you are on the same level with who is also ambitious.
This person may be a competitor that can push you into improving.
They have to challenge your ability and force you to improve constantly.
For instance, if you are working towards becoming a better writer, surround yourself with writers of the same level as you.
Read each other’s work and share great ideas; it will keep you in check and help you grow.
This act alone negates the principles of ego, which makes you see yourself as better than others.
Instead, it helps you see others as people you can learn from.
Thus helping you to overcome your ego.
Be Humble Enough To Learn From People Higher/Better Than You
When you succeed in your goals, you need a dose of humility to keep yourself from becoming overconfident and hitting the hard rock.
You need to be humble enough to recognize and learn from those better than you.
This person may be a mentor who has attained much more success than you.
You need someone whose accomplishment will make your success seem rather small.
This fact will keep you humble and help you focus your attention on improving your success.
Overall, this prevents you from getting caught up in your personal success story and helps you overcome your ego.
Be Confident But Don’t Feel Entitled To Success
Another thing ego does to you is to make you feel as if you are always entitled to success.
When you don’t attain it, you become angry (even when it is your fault).
Confidence helps you believe in yourself and work towards achieving your goals.
It also helps you realize that there is a chance of you succeeding at something when you put in the effort.
However, you’re also humble enough to realize that no one is entitled to success.
Therefore, you work on your goals confidently while hoping to achieve the best results without any sense of self-entitlement.
Having this mindset always will help you crush your ego.
To Overcome Your Ego, Become Self-aware
Self-awareness is the process of focusing your attention on yourself, understanding your thoughts, actions, behavior, and how they align with your principles and standards.
It is an important tool for self-control.
When you become self-aware, it helps you understand when you act out of rationality or ego.
It also checkmates your thought and behavior in any given situation.
Therefore to overcome your ego, channel your attention to yourself and understand how you behave in different situations and why.
It will help you to control your emotions and attitude better and help you overcome your ego.
Acknowledge Your Mistakes; It Will Help To Deflate Your Ego
The ego is an aspect that will always protect your image when it perceives anything negative.
That is why when you do something wrong, you feel an instant urge to fight against accepting your mistake.
Even when you are corrected, you find a way to shift the blame.
The ego sees correction as a red flag as opposed to approvals.
The ego puts you in a constant position of unnecessary self-defense against your mistakes instead of acknowledging them.
When you take up self-defense, you become hostile towards the situation, leading to more damage.
Hence, to overcome your ego, you have to learn to acknowledge your fault and mistakes.
Do not play the victim or try to shift the blame to another person.
That is the only way you can make amends and prevent the situation from escalating.
To Overcome Ego, Ask For Help When You Need One
One other thing the ego does is inflate your sense of importance, ability, and capability.
It makes you feel self-sufficient and overconfident in what you can do.
When there is a need for you to ask for a little help, the ego makes you realize that asking for help will make you look vulnerable and incapable.
This may eventually lead to failure in your task.
However, when you ask for help, it helps to prevent unnecessary mistakes and increases your experience.
Hence, to overcome the ego, you have to cultivate the habit of asking for help when you need it.
It is not a sign of weakness or incapability; it signifies that you are willing to learn and grow.
Fight The Urge To Always Seek For Approvals/Validation
Ego feeds on approvals, and approvals come from the external environment.
Approvals, on the other hand, come from our thoughts of feeling incomplete.
Incompleteness can manifest in various forms such as;
- Feeling that you are not good enough
- Being afraid of failing
- Fear of judgment
- Fear of being considered not important or not needed.
All these emotions create a vacuum in your mind, one that needs to be filled.
When this happens, you begin to seek ways to fill this vacuum and feel complete.
Thereby giving rise to ego.
Likewise, to feel complete, you begin to seek outside approvals and confirmations.
Therefore, the major way of overcoming your ego the feelings of seeking validation or approval.
Instead, feel whole about yourself.
Consequently, helping you overcome your ego.
Avoid Comparisons; It Strengthens Your Ego
Most times, our insufficiency stems from comparison.
Comparison as a thing comes from feeling inferior to others.
You believe nothing about you is good enough.
Hence, you feel the need to defend yourself and prove that you’re better than others.
Therefore you begin to behave in ways that portray this mindset to prove to yourself that you’re indeed better than them.
To overcome your ego, step away from comparison.
Learn to acknowledge your little efforts and appreciate yourself for your success regardless of how little they might seem.
Build Humility
As said earlier, ego is a negative mindset.
Therefore, when trying to overcome ego, you need to replace it with a more positive mindset, humility.
Humility is a mindset that would help you overcome your ego and make you a better person.
Humility helps you feel and behave in positive ways that portray self-respect and respect for others.
This way, you consider yourself and other people important regardless of their status or accomplishments.
Now you know to overcome ego, here are some reasons why you strive to overcome your ego.
Why Should You Overcome Your Ego?
The ego has a lot of bad influences on the life of humans.
Most of these influences prevent you from moving forward in life.
When you overcome your ego, you reap the following benefits:
It Creates Room For Improvement
When you are egotistical, you don’t allow people to point out your faults to you.
Also, you don’t even allow yourself to acknowledge where you need to work on.
But when you deflate your ego, you begin to see where you are faulty and begin to work towards improving them.
Also, overcoming your ego allows you to see the corrections that come with judgments.
It allows you to sift through them and separate the correction from the judgment.
This helps you to grow in all aspects of your life.
Final Words On How To Overcome Your Ego
Ego is an unhealthy state of mind that makes you feel important above others.
It turns concerns into obsession and confidence into arrogance.
Also, it has a way of sabotaging your long-term goals and rendering you stagnant and unproductive.
Hence, the reason you have to work towards overcoming it.
To overcome your ego, be willing to learn from others regardless of your status or achievements.
This checkmates your excess and roots out ego when it begins to grow within you.
More so, when working towards overcoming your ego, be confident in the skill you are learning and the goals you set.
However, be humble enough to remember that you are not entitled to success even if you have put in the required work.
Therefore, when you fail, learn from it and continue to try.
Moreover, when you make a mistake, acknowledged it, take up the responsibility of working towards making amends.
Never shift blame to another person or even become defensive by making excuses about your mistakes.
Likewise, always remember that ego is a thing of the mind and can easily be conquered or deflated by allowing yourself to be self-aware.
When you become self-aware, you can identify when your ego is getting the best of you and better manage it.
Consequently, helping you overcome your ego.
Click on Buy Now For A PDF Version of This Blog Post
 |
