Good afternoon people! How are you all today? It’s very rainy and wet today in Shanghai so here I am with a new blog! A couple of blogs ago I wrote about ways in which we can keep our egos in check – the specific blog is called Mind Your Ego.
However that got me thinking about the positives of ego and how we can use ours for our benefit. As mentioned in Mind Your Ego, ego is the I or self that distinguishes somebody from everybody else. It’s what makes us unique and this is the first way in which we can use our ego to our benefit.
Love yourself
We are different to everybody else we have ever met. There will be more similarities and more differences with different people, but ultimately we are unique. There is absolutely nobody who has had the exact same life as us. How nice is that – the fact that we are incomparable. You have your own path as I have my own path and everybody else has their own path. By accepting this fact we start the process of learning to love ourselves and building a better relationship with ourselves. By realising that our life path is unique to us, we begin to appreciate ourselves more and limit the comparisons we make with others.
Knowing that nobody else is living the exact same life as I am is very empowering. It makes me feel good about my journey and also unique. It makes me respect myself a lot for taking the decisions that I believe are best for me, irrespective of other people’s views on how I should live my life. For example continuing to remain in China – it’s been 3 years – has not been a decision welcomed with open arms from some of my family. Simply because their understanding of life is different to mine and that’s fine, because this is where my ego can help me.
Let it motivate you
My ego will tell me ‘Tony you’re living your life exactly how you want to, good man. Keep going and don’t worry about how others think you should live’. How empowering is that? That inner-self of mine is grateful and respectful of my decisions to live my life the way I wish to live it. We all have different voices in our heads and many times these voices are at conflict with each other. What I’ve found that works is to listen to the voice in your head that matches your feeling in your heart.
A one-player competition
Another way in which our ego can be extremely beneficial to us is by pushing us to achieve more and become more. We have all experienced the feelings of dissatisfaction and disappointment – knowing that we could have done more. The ego detests these feelings because it wants us to be the best: the most wealthiest, known, and desired. Resultantly our ego will urge us to act and become more: signalling change!
How many people have you seen attempt to take a free-kick like Cristiano Ronaldo, shoot a 3-pointer like Michael Jordan, box like Muhammad Ali, or speak with the conviction of Tony Robbins? So many! Our ego uses the success of others as fuel to become better ourselves. The key here though is to make sure we don’t compare ourselves to the people we look up to, but instead to the person we were yesterday – a one player competition. Only then can we appreciate ourselves more by seeing the strides we are making in our lives. It may not be recognisable immediately but overtime we will see how far we have truly come, thanks to our ego!
Thank you for reading.
With gratitude,
Tony.
