At a recent meeting we were discussing the theme “How do you overcome your ego?” The ego being our “small self” (negativity), while our “greater self” manifests positive aspects of courage, wisdom, compassion and life-force.
Whenever I attempt to go out of my comfort zone, my ego tries to get in the way. Case in point. On a whim, I decided to do a course which would take me on a completely different career path, to what I am on now. Because this new route was alien to anything I’d done before, I thought I should reach out to people on LinkedIn.
And that’s where it started.
My ego told me that I wasn’t important enough for people to reply back to my message; that I probably wouldn’t pass the course anyway, so why waste people’s time? I started doubting my personal attributes and wondering if I was a good fit for the course.
All of these doubts were complete nonsense. It was just my ego getting in the way. I needed to, as Nike says: “just do it”. Or as a friend in the meeting said: "just do it, now”.
So how did I overcome my ego?
I sat down and chanted until I had enough courage to send the LinkedIn messages, to send the emails and call the numbers. Not only courage, but the life-force to overcome procrastination and indecision. It sounds such a minor thing to fixate over, but negativity manifests differently for each of us.
How do you overcome your ego to make positive steps in your life?