What is Ego and How to Control it?

What is Ego?

Ego is being shy and not wanting to talk to people. It is a fear of what others might think of you. It’s not allowing yourself to learn and grow for fear of responsibility. It is the lack of trust towards people because your trust has been violated.

Ego is thinking nobody can do better than you, it is the inability to accept that you need help. So, Ego is also known as ‘pride‘ and ‘victim‘.

How to reduce the Ego?

The ego is the part of us which feeds off praise, compliments and success. There are some factors which can reduce the power of the Ego:

1. Don’t try to impress: Don’t speak about your achievements. Don’t drop names of great people you have met. Avoid forcing your accomplishments and success into the conversion. If you have been successful in accumulating wealth, try to keep quiet about it. All these factors may impress your ego, but you can guarantee they’ll have little impact on other people.

2. Be aware of False Modesty: Sometimes when we say that “I’m hopeless”. Actually what we are wanting is for people to respond. “Oh! you’re not, you’re really good”. Humility means that we don’t take excessive pride in our achievements, but it also means that we don’t exaggerate our failings in the hope of gaining sympathy.

3. Be careful of Flattery: We need to be careful about receiving praise, in some ways it can be as difficult as receiving criticism. The problem is that the ego likes receiving praise and so we can easily become addicted to being flattered. Don’t seek out people who are keen to flatter us, as this is only feeding the ego. Also, be wary of flattering other people in the hope that they’ll return the compliment.

4. Don’t use your Religion: It is a mistake to feel that the practice of a religion/spiritual path gives us moral superiority over other people. If we feel any superiority we are the missing point of spirituality.

Spirituality is about a feeling of oneness not of proving that one path is better than others. This can be one of the most insidious types of ego. This is because when we wrap up the ego in a sense of moral superiority, we can easily trick ourselves into thinking we are reducing the ego when we are strengthening it.

5. Be aware of the Extended Ego: Ego isn’t just about feeling we are better than others. Our Ego can also be expressed via national/religious feelings. When we feel pride or superiority in our religion/nation, there is still the same problem of ego but, it is expressed through an extended sense of reality.

6. Don’t Speak badly of others: Quite often, when we speak ill of others there is a suitable attempt to make ourselves look better. We may not explicitly say it, but, when we point to someone’s shortcomings we imply we don’t have these, and therefore we are much better than them. The important thing here is the motive.

7. Your Motivation for doing something: Don’t rely on Your Physical Appearance to impress: If nobody knew that you had done it, would you still do the action with the same intensity? Can you work without expecting rewards and praise? if you can do things selflessly with no desire for people to find out, this is a sign you don’t give importance to the ego.

8. Don’t rely on Your Physical Appearance to impress: If you rely on your physical beauty to impress this is coming from the ego. This is not to say that beauty is a bad thing, far from it real beauty is heightened by modesty and the absence of ego. Avoid paying excessive attention to your physical looks.

Conclusion: To reduce our ego, we have to give great importance to our thoughts and the motivation behind our actions.