Instead Of Fighting Your Ego, Make A Deal With It

Let’s start with the fact that your Ego is highly overprotective – destined to keep you safe, dull, and cautious. Its sense of control is contagious. It will do anything to sabotage your happiness, good mood, and kill your positive vibes every time you give in.

It’s by nature louder and has a persuasive tone. Because it will call upon an egocentric part of you, it will never benefit your relationships, as it will make a vivid separation between you and others. Within seconds, it will provide you with many bulletproof reasons, arguments, and examples of how others mistreat you or are against you. Therefore, you absolutely must be ultra-selfish to survive in this world.

Ego’s job is to try to save you from potential failures and situations where you might or might not get hurt. It swears by it and is on 24-hour duty out there, flashing monster-sized signs that read: THIS IS DANGEROUS, STOP, DON’T GO THERE, and YOU WILL FAIL. Any time you’re presented with an opportunity to grow, expand, or take a risk, it will talk you out of it. It will convince you how scary, risky, and uncertain the move is.

So, if you have big dreams and goals to achieve, it will be like hitting your head against the wall trying to get your Ego as excited about your idea as you are. It will not understand it because it does not have a capacity for understanding. And frankly speaking, that’s not its job.

It is its job, however, to focus on your weaknesses rather than your strengths. It will warn you to stay out of unknown terrain because you might be ridiculed, embarrassed, and disappointed. And when and if you fall, it will whisper: “You fool, I told you so!”In other words, it will keep you safe but unlikely fulfilled. Because the universal truth states that if you protect yourself from failure, you will never reach your goals.

In my personal life, I knew I was giving away too much power to my Ego, and it was about time to make some changes. Since Ego is incapable of teaching me the things I came to learn, I need to take the opposite path despite the warning fears my Ego is trying to thrust upon me. So, I invited my Ego to speak up, possibly share a bottle of red.

We met in a fancy place of its choice because I know how much it loves to be in control of everything. We both dressed up for the occasion and prepared our speeches.

Mine went like this:

Dear Ego, I am very thankful to have you in my life because I know how much you care about me. Sometimes too much. Too intense, too extreme.

At such times, I am suffocating in your care, unable to move forward. I think it’s essential to clear the air between us so we both can exist side-by-side without interfering. How incredibly liberating this would feel. Because I know that you aren’t walking out on me ever, and I am not letting you go, because, well, I need you, and I am also a human.

But I am going to say this: I don’t always need your well-wished opinions since those opinions block the light for me to see what’s best for me. When and if I am upset you don’t talk me out of it, you seem to make it more serious by setting up the binocular telescope and showing me everything in the worst possible light – how others hurt me, how sorry I should feel for myself, how no one cares, how I am always alone and lonely.

I can’t let you continue to decide what I am going to eat because I need to watch my diet, or what kind of unkind thing I should say to someone who hurt me, or what sort of behavior I should demonstrate to teach the bad guys a lesson.

I can’t always roll up my sleeves and get my karate moves going to protect you, my dearest Ego. Because I no longer want to feel lonely. I no longer want to fight and see the worst in people, because I am just continuing to hurt myself this way – to keep anger, resentment, sabotaging my relationships, feeling defensive. I want to be gentle, compassionate, and open-minded, the person I already am.

I know I won’t change in an instant, and at times, you’ll still be the one I’ll be listening to. It’s been a hell of a ride, but this is where I get off.

From this point onwards, I have got to move on.

I have got to see the beauty in me and those around me. Not everyone is out there to hunt me down. Not everyone is out there to hurt me. Some are here to love me and teach me how to love. I’ve got to train my heart muscle. Because I now know that the more it gets used, hurt, and recovered, the more capable it becomes of loving.

The Ego sat there, nodding its head, and listening patiently.

“All right, I’ll back off a little. But I’ll never leave you, because there is nothing else I know how to do.”

We cheered our glasses, finished our last sips, and then parted ways.

And just like that, I went back to my soul.

So if I was to make a bold declaration of who I am, here to stay, and how to live more soulfully, I had to do the following: I had to slow down rather than doing what I knew best—blazing through, all armed up, ready to pick up my swords. I was yet to shift from heavy to light, but I also knew that I am an endless work in process, and so are you.

I can no longer go on toughening up my exterior, thickening up my skin without giving a fuck. Thinking that’s one of those things required for living.

I’m not here to fight, collect achievement medals, or get praised by strangers. I’m not here to attach my self-worth to external rewards or entertain alluring distractions. I’m here to feel it all, never numbing, never chasing, but allowing the light and love planted deeply within me to shine through every step of the way.

So yes, you shouldn’t give a fuck too much, but you sure do always have to give a fuck for yourself –your feelings, intuition, and inner knowing, which is your Northern Star.

I haven’t yet come across a woman who doesn’t give a fuck. No one is that confident, she’s just buried her power. Unquestionably, it’s suffocating her.