Protecting Your Ego Contributes to the Problem
Only YOU can prevent the spread of forest fires... I mean, the spread of our egos taking over.
Two installments ago, we talked about why it matters to know our value. Last time, we started to unpack how, if we don’t recognize our value, our ego can start to take over and trick us into thinking we’ll be happier if we protect our ego instead of diving into new experiences. Check it out before reading on because, this week, we’ll unpack how our ego impacts others.
As I debriefed my week of sales training with my trainee peers with my mentor, I started to spill out how I felt like I wasn’t succeeding in my job as much as my peers because of all the great things they shared during the training. Before I could keep going, Mindy stopped me.
“Miriam, you realize most people are only sharing the highlights of their jobs, right? They also have struggles, but until someone is open about their weaknesses, too it’s hard for the group to want to do that. No one wants to be the first to admit they don’t have it all figured out.”
Mindy called me out. I realized then and there I had been protecting my ego from a lot more than damage from being last place in a silly Go-Kart race. No, I was hiding most of my mistakes and insecurities about my job itself, because here I was in this room full of seemingly-perfect-at-their-job peers and my silly little ego BELIEVED that I was the only one who felt lost sometimes. And you want to know the real problem with that? It’s not even about me and my ego. The real problem is that by listening to my ego, I’m contributing to the very problem that makes me want to protect my ego in the first place: by failing to be transparent about my own challenges at work, I’m propping up the notion that we all need to pretend we’re good at our jobs all the time and never have struggles and always learn at the pace we think we will. All 28 of us trainees were doing the same thing, at one point or another: we let our egos convince us it wasn’t worth the risk.
Here we were, believing the lie that since we are supposedly “adults” with real jobs we should know what’s going on all the time. But here’s the tea, my friends: I’m beginning to learn there is no such thing as having it all figured out, no matter how old we get.
Think about it: when you were (or are now) in high school, you probably looked up to college kids as the ones who had it all together and were grown-ups and weren’t insecure anymore. And then you got to college, and if you’re anything like me, you looked around for the grown-ups and realized they’re not in college, either. And then you started to think as soon as you had your first real, full-time, big-kid job, you’d feel secure in yourself and you’d be an adult and you’d not be insecure again. But the crazy thing is, that doesn’t happen either. I’ve started to learn from enough adults (the real ones, not the ones like me who still feel too young so we keep looking around for the real ones) to realize this cycle actually never ends: we will always be tempted to look at the next phase of life and believe our ego struggle will end there, and we will always find out each phase brings struggles with our ego along with it.
Friends, the good news is this: we’re never alone in our fight with our ego. Even if we feel alone, trust me, we’re not. The not so good news? We’re never finished with the fight. It’s not a battle you can win once and for all, but a battle you’ll fight. Every. Single. Day. for the rest of your life. Doesn’t sound so fun, does it? I hear you. Some days I give up, and the ego wins, and I stay inside my little box of things I know how to do and hang out with people I already know, and I end the day feeling pretty mediocre about myself. When I’m with my peers from my job, I don’t always have the courage to kill my ego enough to admit my mistakes. When I’m at the gym and see other people crushing it, I hardly ever make the decision to make friends with them instead of letting my ego get all defensive inside, which leads me very quickly to jealousy. It happens, and it’s okay. But, let me remind you of this truth: when we listen to our ego, we don’t actually feel better about ourselves, and we contribute to the problem everyone else is facing, too. Our ego tricks us into thinking we’ll feel better if we protect it, but we won’t. In fact, by protecting our ego, we’re holding ourselves back from achieving our dreams for what our lives could look like. A few weeks ago, I had an experience that proved this truth to me.
Check back in two weeks for the final portion of this story! Subscribe here to receive the email straight to your inbox.
Journal Prompt of the Week
When has your ego contributed to the problem? When have you felt intimidated by someone else only to realize they were probably protecting their ego, just like you?