What to do when an overloud ego gets you down

In 2019, I'm blogging about 12 of the best lessons I've learned, many of them the hard way. This is the eighth of the series.

At a recent event with a group of professional women, I was asked if I sometimes have a self-doubting voice in my head.

"We were talking amongst ourselves, and we seem to all have one," said a dear colleague of mine.

"Just one?" I asked. "I've got a lot more than that."

Ah, the voice(s) in our heads, telling ourselves we're too much, not enough or altogether unqualified. They're enough to give you imposter syndrome, which is that inner refrain of, "someone has made a big mistake thinking I'm qualified for this." Women are especially susceptible to these crises of confidence. We question whether we belong or whether we're ready for promotion -- and before we know it, our vulnerable ego can narrow our sense of possibility.

There's another kind of voice in the head that's the manifestation of a vulnerable ego, only it can have an opposite tone. It might artificially inflate the ego. In a recent HBR article, "Ego Is the Enemy of Good Leadership," Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter describe the warped perspective that comes with a feeling of success. We gain power, become thirsty for its perks, and crave a continual stream of positive attention.

"When we’re a victim of our own need to be seen as great, we end up being led into making decisions that may be detrimental to ourselves, our people, and our organization," they write. "An inflated ego also corrupts our behavior. When we believe we’re the sole architects of our success, we tend to be ruder, more selfish, and more likely to interrupt others... [A]n inflated ego narrows our vision."

In other words, it listens for what we want to hear and seeks what we want to see.

So there are voices in our heads that inflate our ego, and there are those that puncture it. Some voices speak because we need to feel great - and others to ensure we don't feel great at all. These voices of self-congratulation vs. self-doubt sound like opposites, but they are just two reflections in the same distorted mirror of our own making. Whether our internal voices are babbling about our deficits or our merits, it's still babble.

The writer Iris Murdoch has said, "The self, the place where we live, is a place of illusion. Goodness is connected with the attempt to see the unself... Virtue is the attempt to piece the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is." (More on "un-selfing," via Maria Popova, is worth reading.) As also laid out by Chris Niebauer in his book, "No Self, No Problem," selfhood is just a thought - and the source of much of our suffering.

Whether our internal, ego-driven dialogue convinces us of our superiority or inferiority, it is a construct that is trying to make sense of reality while having the opposite effect, rendering us removed from reality. When we become too connected to our inner imposter or egotist narrative, we in turn are disconnected from the world around us. We lose perspective because we're lost in ourselves.

The musician Glenn Kurtz, has written of his practice, "Each morning when I sit down, I'm bewildered by a cacophony of voices, encouraging and dismissive, joyous and harsh, each one a little tyrant."

These tyrants isolate us. They get in the way of understanding ourselves in our full, imperfect glory, which is essential to demonstrating our essential humanity and deeply connecting with other people. The tyrants are forever judging, which leaves little room for curiosity about ourselves and others. We can't learn when we're distracted with endless, inner assessment.

Living a life of judgment over curiosity might preserve the ego - or defend its oppressive role in our inner lives - but in the process, we lose touch and get stuck. If we have imposter syndrome, our tyrannical egos try to keep us safe by never stepping out into new, untested territory where we might fail. We have no chance for growth. If we have an inflated ego - which is another way our insecurities might manifest - we fight anything that suggests we're imperfect. Again, there is no chance for growth. In both cases, our egos are rigid and brittle mental prisons, simultaneously self-limiting and easily broken.

So how do we choose another way? In my experience, the inner voices that lead us astray are seldom fully silenced. It's not a matter of shutting them up as much as an exercise in putting them in their places. We have to make them an input on the state of our psyche rather than a reliable source on the state of our world.

Here are some things we can do.

• If our inner voices are berating us, we can acknowledge their presence, somewhat ironically thank them for their input, and then account for all the other parts of us: the pieces that survived failure, the bits that persevered, and the aspects that kept on giving to the world. We're more than what we tell ourselves.
• If our inner voices are inflating us, we should remind ourselves they're an auditory mirage, not reality. We can take a deep breath, take a walk, or otherwise stay in the moments beyond ourselves.
• We can listen instead to the voices of others to avoid becoming lost in ourselves. A diverse and inclusive environment keeps us grounded, humble and inspired. We can ask for advice, feedback, and alternative perspectives on everything around us. This prevents us from floating away in a bubble of ego, convinced of our superiority, or, in insecure moments, from losing touch with our true contributions.
• We can focus on gratitude for what we have, which helps us become more compassionate to others and ourselves -- and more outwardly focused.
• We can focus not on who we are but what we want to do in the world, for others. This is our sense of purpose, which is far greater than ourselves. There's no better remedy for finding the un-self.

Murdoch, after proclaiming the importance of piercing the veil of the ego and joining the "world as it really is," goes on to note this endeavor will always be a work in progress. She writes, "It is an empirical fact of human nature that this attempt cannot be entirely successful." Nonetheless, the attempt to resist our inner voices' worst messages is the work of a good life - and good leadership. And so we keep trying. We hear them, and then we remind ourselves we are more than that with faith and humility.

The voices are just thoughts, and our thoughts are not us. The voices may persist, but so can we, growing even as they babble on. And on.