5 Tips to Embrace the Joy of Being Yourself and Overcoming Your Ego

How often do you wake up, look at yourself in the mirror, and the first thing you notice are the swiftly increasing wrinkles right in the middle of your forehead ? Or maybe the dark circles under the eyes catch your still sleepy and scattered attention ? Whether it’s a dissatisfying physical appearance, unfinished project or a night out that didn’t end as well is it presumably could, the silent voice in your head begins it’s manifesto.  

“Look at you. Your body is still the same after you started attending the gym last week.” 

“And that article you were writing yesterday so eagerly ? It’s full of imperfections…”  

“There we go again, constant procrastination while there are so many other things to be done. Unacceptable.” 

Ego is conceit in its inflated form. This is not about an established self-respect. It is what makes you feel superior and other’s inferior. But, this false sense of feeling superior makes you miserable in the long run. You always feel anxious and start attaching results to your ego. In fact, do it right now. Stop reading this story for a minute and contemplate on the source of any of your apprehension. 

1. Control Does not Exist

Your ego wants to turn you into a control freak. Control freaks are looking for pets, not friends. They want to tame people by keeping them on a short leash. After all, it is best to keep an eye on what everyone is doing. Egos want to surround themselves with people who will obey, sit at their feet, and love them thoroughly. Fortunately, people are neither labradors nor pit bulls. If you want to stop treating people like pets, learn to be a giver. Provide them with an unconditional value. Also, learn how to appreciate people’s shortcomings and mistakes. You need to learn how to use experiences as life lessons that will enable you to become a better person.

2. You can start mastering the process of ego annihilation by accepting the fact that ego is a part of yourself.

In fact, it’s all about cherishing your ego. However, you have got to put it in it’s place. When you seek to suppress the ego, you suppress the most natural parts of who you are. Your creativity vanishes, alignment with your inner values is nowhere to be found, and you just can’t relax and live in the moment. If you’re having problems with suppression, just remove the E and let it GO. Go wild and learn how to live in the moment. You need to understand chaos theory and that creation stems from disorder.

3. Abandon your Habits

Think about it this way. If you were absolutely happy and fulfilled with every action in your life without looking back and regretting anything, would you keep your habits ? Bet you would.

Are you feeling like that at this point of your life ?

Is it a definitive yes ?

Congratulations then, there is no point to read this and look for the answers that you already know. 

But if it is an insecure no, willing to come out of your mouth, then why the hell do you keep on repeating the same mistakes over and over again ? 

We are all part of a system, a system where our beliefs foster pressure inside of us. But more specifically, we are part of a reward/punishment system, or as I like to call it, the win-or-lose mindset. Since we were little babies, we have been always punished when we make mistakes. This continued into school, high school, university, work and probably even death. Heaven or hell, reward or punishment? This system is just a way of feeding our ego and completely destroying our ability to genuinely understand and value ourselves. Our ego will make us feel superior if we win and we will always expect a reward from our successes. If we lose and fail, our ego will crush us down and make us feel like an ant in Manhattan. Forget this system and start building up self-awareness in every situation, we are not circus animals who need a reward to feel valuable and a punishment to learn. We are independent beings, fully conscious and aware of our own thoughts. We learn through experience. The only real reward we should look for is the knowledge, and power of love towards ourselves and people around us. 

4. Focus on the process

Life is a process, not an achievement list. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Life is a journey, not a destination.” When we start acknowledging life and its true essence we will realize that what really matters is what we experience during life and not its outcomes. In the process of life we find all the beautiful and memorable experiences. We find all the laughter, tears, kisses and troubles. We find our real passions, interests, and worries. In the process of life we find all that really makes life meaningful and magical. Reality of being present with in this amazing world is better than any reward. Our ego will automatically make us absorb an attitude where all we want is to arrive somewhere and achieve something. Our ego does not care about the process as long as it achieves and feels superior. If we follow our ego, we will never enjoy the present moment and all the adventures we can be part of. If we don’t arrive somewhere or reach something, our ego will make us feel useless, miserable and purposeless. Overcome your ego so you can enjoy the now, focus on the process.

5. Acknowledge that Ego wants to be Your Friend 

"If ego is the voice that tells us we’re better than we really are, we can say ego inhibits true success by preventing a direct and honest connection to the world around us.”- Ryan Holiday What drives you to take on a challenge? Most of us, most of the time, are excited to explore, learn, and sense. As we seek a source of motivation in life we will encounter an antagonistic fight between our higher self and our ego. The ego will create an illusion of being motivated by what we achieve and conquer, whereas our higher self wants us to learn, experience, and simply stay excited in the moment. The big difference between learning-based motivation and accomplishment-based motivation is that failing to accomplish leads to a crisis of self-worth. A learning-based motivation is the best way to create a harmony within yourself, while accomplishment-based motivation creates an endless cycle of misery. 

One last thing to say, is that living a life of joy is a choice. 

It's not an outcome of our thoughts or actions, and it’s completely up to you whether to be happy or not :)

Hope you enjoyed reading through this short piece and your life got at least a tad better, and remember, it's all about what makes you really happy...