EGO

EGO - Everyone's Got One!

Rather than trying to shame your ego, instead nurture it to help it become healthier and more resilient. If your concept of ego is that it refers only to someone’s sense of self importance, that would lead to arrogance, strife, and dissatisfaction.

Our ego is something more fundamental - it can be healthy when we know how to work with it, not against it.

Our ego is our essential sense of Self. A healthy ego has a comfortable sense of who it actually is. It has a better sense of interacting effectively with the world around it. A healthy ego understands its place, maintains clear boundaries of identity, and is resilient in maintaining the integrity of those boundaries against influences that may break them down.

Envision each healthy ego like a single cell. This is an example of a microcosmic reflection where we see the same patterns reflected in the Universe, from solar systems all the way down to atoms - we see the same pattern both in whole organisms and individual cells where the pattern is reflective.

An unhealthy ego can look like everything is about themselves. They don’t recognize their role and place, and impose into the space of others in detrimental ways. As a cell, we could think of this as resembling a cancer cell. It consumes resources and grows excessively, disrupting the functions of cells surrounding it. That is far from ‘healthy.’

On the other side of the spectrum, a cell which does not maintain its cellular walls and does not use the resources it requires, quickly becomes weak and sick. By doing this the surrounding cells weaken their overall wellbeing; it becomes more prone to injury and dis-ease, which also increases the risk to the cells around it. One way this could show up is a weakened self identity.

A healthy cell is one that takes care of itself, but is in harmony with the surrounding cells. It plays its part without encroaching on others, or allowing itself to become unnecessarily weakened. By doing this it helps the whole organism to be healthy and resilient.

‘Nurture your ego as you would a young child.’ This kind of healthy ego is what we seek when we nurture it. It finds contentment and harmony within itself and its relationships with the environment.

One approach to developing this kind of healthy ego is by caring for yourself as you would a small child.

An unhealthy ego is a response to insecurities. If self-identity is threatened one way it responds by trying to suppress a sense of identity with an excessive sense of self importance. Another way this can show up is by becoming aggressive and retaliating on others around it as a way to generate a heightened sense of security.

An ego that has not been nurtured and strengthened may break down and invade, not realizing that it has the ability to maintain its own healthy boundaries.

Nurturing our ego takes practice, it requires a fine balance of protection, care and guidance - just like nurturing a child. Finding balance is just as important - gently protective to provide shelter and an environment to develop health, strength and resilience while allowing it to be exposed to conflicts and challenges…that way it can learn to maintain its integrity while creating harmony.

A healthy ego can look like:

• Confident in its place in the world
• Secure with identity
• Handles conflict without excessive aggression while maintaining boundaries
• Keeps things in perspective while not obsessing or catastrophizing
• Processing disappointments and failures without chronically losing self esteem.
• Respectful and harmoniously interact with others

• Capable of receiving and processing feedback

When’s the last time you checked in with your ego?

You might be happy you did.

Xoxo,

Liza