Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog. Today I want everyone reading this article to take a little time to reflect on themselves; do a little introspection and remember all the time we let our ego get the best of us. As christians all over the world are practicing lent for 40 days, I thought that this is the best time to publish. I hope you guys will learn something new and appreciate this article.
A lot of time I see people talk about ego on social media. We often see quotes like “Don’t let ego block your blessings!” , “If you’re not willing to sacrifice ego, be prepared to sacrifice friendships/relationships” ….. We’ve all been a victim of our ego. Personally, I’ve lost some amazing friends because of mine and their ego. I couldn’t let my ego aside to fix things and they couldn’t do the same. I have also witnessed my close friends drown in sadness because of bad decisions they’ve made due to their ego. Sadly we don’t really know how to get rid of it.
Ego, what is it?
Ryan Holiday, in his book Ego is the enemy defines ego like this : “The ego we see most commonly goes by a more casual definition: an unhealthy belief in our own importance. Arrogance. Self-centered ambition”… This is by far the best definition I found for this word. Sometimes we often see ego as our self-esteem, the fact that we believe in ourselves, which is not a bad thing but ego is actually an unhealthy belief in ourselves like Holiday stated. When something is unhealthy, it quickly becomes toxic when you don’t get rid of it. Most of the times we don’t even realize how toxic we can be with our ego until someone points it out.
While writing this article I stumbled across a blog post “10 reasons why too much ego will ruin your life” by Rania Nahim and I’ll use some of those reasons to help you understand why ego is destructive.
Here are the top 5 reasons
1. Ego pushes people away from you. Like I mentioned earlier, sometimes to save a friendship/relationship you have to put ego to the side. Our ego makes us feel like we’re better than the other person and that everyone owes us something. Personally I hate feeling inferior to people. If you’re always talking about how great you are and never acknowledge people around you or their feelings, I’ll pack my bags and leave. “If that other person doesn’t text me, I won’t text them” ; meanwhile that other person is saying the same thing. As days go by none of us text each other and what happens next? We lose the friendship. People will get annoyed super fast if they always have to make the first move because of one’s ego.
2. Ego makes you less compassionate. Egocentric people lack of compassion because they always think that “they” deserve everything. They never try to understand the other person’s perspective and needs. It’s always about “me” and never about “us”. Your ego makes you believe that you owe nobody an explanation for your actions and that alone is destructive and toxic.
3. Ego stops you from growing. Ego makes you think you know best and that makes you stubborn. You won’t accept other people’s advice because you’ll think that you don’t need it. Sometimes we have to let others who have more experience than us talk even if we might not apply their advice right away. Ego and maturity don’t go together.
4. Ego and irrationality are best friends. Because ego is a false and unhealthy confidence and love that we have for ourselves, we end up living irrationally. The decisions we make aren’t the best because all we care about is to prove others wrong and to always win. We don’t think about the consequences of our actions.
5. Ego kills happiness. Lastly, you’ll never be happy if all you care about is what others think about you in order to prove them wrong. Your ego only pushes away people who genuinely care about you and attracts people with bad intentions. Ego is our enemy and an enemy only wants to destroy you; they never wish your happiness. Stop feeding your ego, let it die.
This is all I got for you guys for today. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. From now on let’s try to work on our ego so we can become better versions of ourselves. Until we meet again, stay safe and be blessed… always❤️
Thank you so much for your kind words Shelbee. I’m so happy my article has touched you😊
I just read your article on Moumous’ blog but wanted to pop over and let you know what beautiful words and such an important message! Too much ego can certainly be a negative force. And too little ego can be detrimental to the person who lacks one. Finding a healthy balance is so important but learning when too much is really too much is probably the most valuable lesson of all! Thanks for sharing your wisdom and insight with the world!
Shelbee
http://www.shelbeeontheedge.com
Very good job, very inspiring
An amazing and very instructive article! Providing great pieces of advice, as always. 💫Thank you and keep up the good work!!