Edging Greatness Out
by BOWAworld
Ego. That’s a big word that gets thrown around a lot, often with negative connotations. What exactly is Ego though? According to Freud, it is one of the three aspects of the human psyche: the id, superego, and ego. If you look up this idea, there are a lot of papers and articles with large, confusing words in them. Here’s one of the simplest, yet still accurate, explanations, we’ve ever run across at BOWAworld (thank you ardwizz at Yahoo answers):
Id = Your base animal instincts. The desire to have all your needs (food, sex, power) filled. Personal survival. The cartoon devil sitting on the left shoulder.
Super Ego = Reason, compassion, and conscience. The desire to do the “right thing.” Species survival. The cartoon angel sitting on the right shoulder.
Ego = The personality in the middle that decides which voice to listen to.
So Ego is the referee between our base instincts and our moral ideal. Ego is also our personality and how we see ourselves. However, because Ego is doing this balancing act between the proverbial cartoon devil and cartoon angel on our shoulder, it can sometimes get out of balance. Too much Ego results in being perceived as full of yourself or conceited, while too little Ego results in being perceived as having low self-esteem. Neither extreme is pleasant. Either way, you end up Edging Your Greatness out of your life.
As with everything we teach, balance is key when it comes to Ego. The easiest way to stay balanced is to “Check Yourself” regularly. Question your motives, listen to your inner critic and figure out whether the voice is leaning towards the negative or positive and correct it back to a more neutral opinion. Ego is not something that any of us can keep fully balanced all the time, but if you stay on top of it, you can keep it from spinning out of control, in either direction.
SEP