Mastering Your Ego is a Superpower

“He has a big ego.” Maybe you’ve heard that phrase when a person was perceived as being too proud, easy to offend, or attention-seeking.

The ego wants more—a lot more. That’s not a problem in itself. Even the universe seems to want more, since it’s expanding nonstop at an unimaginable speed. So why does the ego have such a bad reputation? It’s not because it wants more, but because it is obstinate as to what, when, where and how. For example, say there’s a painter with a big ego. He wants to become great and famous, and he needs for it to happen in no longer than six months. He is also sure that his rise to fame can only take place by being discovered by an influential art agent in New York. Or so goes the fantasy.

But three years have passed, and our painter remains unknown. His big ego will make him experience a range of strong negative emotions, such as disappointment, anger, and even depression. The ego causes trouble because it makes us identify strongly with the things we want to be, do, or have. The ego can be present in all areas of our lives, but it is usually more active at work, in family life, and in intimate relationships. If a friend makes a judgmental remark about your clothes, and you feel offended—that’s the ego. If your partner got you the wrong Christmas present and you get irritated by it—that’s the ego. If someone at work got special recognition, but you feel they don’t deserve it—that is the ego. It may seem counterintuitive, but the ego can also generate emotions that are considered positive. As Eckhart Tolle explains, “Whenever you feel superior or inferior—that’s the ego.”

So, the ego also becomes active when we feel superior about having a better house than our friends or being smarter than others. It is almost impossible to escape the ego for most of us, because it shows up repeatedly in our everyday lives. That’s ok, because most of us are not Zen masters or enlightened beings; but we can for sure learn to manage our egos to have more peace and clarity in our lives.

Feelings and emotions are signs

I remember very well one particular day when I was a ten-year-old girl. I was walking down my street when I thought to myself, “Why do people have feelings? Life would be much easier without them.” I guess I was mostly thinking about the negative feelings I had experienced, and I couldn’t find any use for them. So, my young mind came to the conclusion that feelings were an accident, and we were just stuck with them. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I was able to find a more satisfying answer to the question I’d asked myself twenty years earlier. I discovered that feelings are not arbitrary. They are the salt and pepper of our experience as human beings. But more importantly, they are our compass for life and accurate indicators of our level of consciousness. I came to understand that emotions, whether positive or negative, reflect the ego.

Examples of negative emotions of the ego

Imagine your partner left you. It’s painful, and you experience feelings such as deep sadness, disappointment, guilt, and ?anger. ?That’s the ego telling you, “You are not good enough, so they left you,” or “You will never find real love,” or “It’s your fault. You made so many mistakes.”

Your friend gets a promotion. She’s now earning twice as much as you, and she’s not shy to show how happy she is about it. Although she’s your friend, you are envious of her success, and you don’t really feel happy for her although you try to appear so. In that case the ego could be telling you, “She’s better than you,” or “You’ll always be mediocre,” or even “She’s the reason why you are stuck.”

You make a mistake at work and your boss gets angry at you, which makes you feel inadequate, incapable, and guilty. That’s because the ego is telling you “What’s wrong with you? You should have known better!” or “How could you be so stupid?” or “There you are messing up other people’s day again.”

Examples of “positive” emotions of the ego

On the other hand, the ego also manifests as an exaggerated positive emotion, like in the following examples.

You buy an expensive new car and can’t wait to show it to your friends, especially since they all have just average cars. That is the ego flattering you and making you feel superior through a material object. It may be whispering to you, “You’ll impress them, and they’ll look up to you.”

You get a text message from your crush, who you thought would never take interest in you. You reaction is to get hyper-excited. Your heart starts beating faster, and you jump around for joy. Your ego has put the other person above you on a pedestal and now it’s telling you “Such an amazing person is interested in you, so you must be very special.”

You enter a competition in your field of expertise and end up winning first place. You feel like you are above all the other competitors. This is the ego telling you that your worth depends on outperforming others and since this time you did, you are superior.

If you have ever had the feeling of superiority, you may agree that it is actually a pleasant one. You feel important and powerful. Why would we then want to avoid it? First of all, being superior to others is an illusion of the mind. Also, superiority takes turns with inferiority. So, if we like the feeling of superiority, we’d better be prepared to meet inferiority sooner or later.

What is there to do with the ego?

The aim is not to eliminate the ego. In fact, trying to eliminate the ego is pretty egoic itself, because it implies the supposition that “I’ll be happy when I have no ego.” Instead, we can start becoming aware of our situational feelings of grandiosity and insignificance. In those moments, we have highly valuable opportunities to manage the ego by observing what is going on within us. This practice will change your life dramatically. As Sadhguru said, “Because my chest didn't swell up when someone praised me, when someone abuses me, I don't shrivel up.”

Master the ego!

Luckily, there are ways to become more conscious about our emotions, so our inner well-being depends only on ourselves even during the hardest of times. The following two examples illustrate how we can practice, so the ego will erode little by little.

1) Accept rejection

When you want something and fail to acquire it, it helps to consider this failure as a sign of redirection. I’m not saying you should quit your goals. But some things are just not meant to be for us, for a good reason. Everyone has experienced rejection, whether in personal relationships or in their professional lives. I can tell you from personal experience that every time I was rejected, life offered me another path that turned out to be right for me. It has brought me to where I am now, and it has given me the exact challenges I needed.

It's natural to have feelings of inadequacy or disappointment when we are rejected, but we can deal with those feelings through awareness and acceptance. It can also be helpful to meditate on the following phrases or on similar phrases that feel right to you.

“There’s a good reason why what I thought I needed did not come to me.” “There is another exciting path for me to take.” “What is good for me will choose me too.”

2) Have compassion but not idiot compassion

You see it all the time. Couples argue at restaurants or customers scream at hotel staff. People write hateful comments on the internet. Drivers curse one another because someone cut them off in traffic. How do you feel when someone directs their bad mood toward you? Chances are you feel aversion toward the aggressor as well. It’s normal, of course, but it’s not smart. Why? Because anger is poison administered on the person who experiences it. It is largely a health issue.

We need to be careful of how we handle aggressive people. Certainly, we are vulnerable, but if we see those people for what they are, keeping our emotions under control is much easier. Here’s where compassion comes into play. If you are verbally attacked, take a moment to check what’s going on. Is the other person a real threat or are they simply acting like a little child having a tantrum? All aggression is born from a wound, whether it’s old or recent. The exhibited hate is nothing but a fa?ade covering the hurt and afraid child. Understanding this is compassion, and compassion is one of the major antidotes to the ego. That doesn’t mean you should just feel sorry for them and let them continue the abuse. That would be idiot compassion, as Pema Ch?dr?n calls it. So what should we do when someone confronts us with aggression? Since it’s impossible to talk reasonably to someone when anger is involved, call them out calmly and firmly. Tell them that you are willing to talk to them only if they are respectful towards you. Some people will realize their mistake and change their tone, but if they don’t, you don’t have any obligation to deal with them in that moment. In this case, remove yourself from the situation.

Conclusion

The ego is a very tricky part of us that gives us the illusion of being superior or inferior to others. Both points of view are flawed, and a lot of our suffering is derived from identifying with either position. Observing our emotions when the ego is activated will help us gain more and more control over it. Take advantage of your daily challenges and situations. Become aware of the emotions you experience without denying them, but ask yourself what kind of person you want to be. After practicing this for some time, you will realize that you are no longer arbitrarily affected by external circumstances. You will become better at working with your emotions. And mastering their emotions is a superpower that only very few people have.