The Ego and The Challenge of Change

Ego is a term that an analytic philosopher, Christian von Hildebrand, coined to describe the central aspect of human personality. It is defined as “the self-aware and self-esteeming individual.”

This article will explore why the ego has such a strong pull on us — why it’s so difficult to change or even accept changes in our life. We’ll go into detail about how we maintain our ego and how we can weaken it to effect changes in our lives.

The Challenge of Change

Changing a specific aspect of our life is often a daunting challenge. We feel emotions such as sadness or anger that might even lead to depression. These feel like they will never end, and we’ll be stuck with them forever. Often people don’t know how to handle these emotions, so they resort to what feels familiar — their ego. Yet, the ego only makes things worse because it helps perpetuate the negative feelings. Your ego wants you to think that there’s something wrong with you or that you’re not good enough. It might have you believe that there’s no hope for you — that your situation is impossible to change.

Using our ego in this way won’t help us to improve our life. Instead, we need to look at ourselves in the same way we look at anyone else. We need to ask ourselves: is my discontent with my situation based on fact? If so, what are the facts? By doing this, we begin to understand how our ego is affecting us, and we can begin to change our thoughts helpfully and productively.

The Ego

Ego consists of two components: self-awareness and self-esteem. Self-awareness is the ability to perceive ourselves accurately. It requires us to look at our desires, aptitudes, talents, and deficiencies with honesty. Self-esteem is our opinion about ourselves, and it also has two factors. First, it encompasses particular attitudes we have about ourselves, such as pride or confidence in specific abilities. Second, it encompasses opinions about us as a whole, such as believing that we’re good or bad.

The Ego in Action

We can see how the ego has affected our life when an interviewee says something like, “That’s crazy! I’m never going to do that.” After all, this statement implies that what he just said is impossible — even though he has no way of knowing this. The ego automatically blocks such messages and protects our beliefs by vetoing them. This is because self-esteem is about thinking we’re good or bad, and the ego protects our self-esteem.

When we perceive a particular situation as impossible, we create “garbage episodes,” that is, situations in which the ego gives us no option for success and therefore no choice but to fail. By creating these situations, you focus on what you can’t do rather than what you can do.

Making The Ego Work For Us

The ego can be a brilliant tool if we use it properly. If we harness its power to our benefit, we can have great control in the direction of our life. We need to know and understand the ego and what it’s trying to do to do this. Once we understand this, we can use it as a tool to change certain aspects of our life — not forever but for as long as is needed.

The ego also poses a challenge because it’s not always clear what we need to change. Sometimes it just seems impossible. But this isn’t true because there is always a solution, even for the most complex situations. If you know how you can help yourself achieve your goals, you’ll be able to steadily move forward in your life with confidence.

Conclusion

In conclusion, ego is vital, and we need to know how it affects us and use it to our benefit. By learning how the ego affects us, we can harness its power to help us achieve our goals. We can use the tools that help us fight our ego, like self-awareness and self-esteem, and make our desires, aptitudes, talents, and deficiencies clear to ourselves to change helpfully and productively.