How Your Ego Is Holding You Back From Achieving Your Best

What is the Ego?

Your Ego is a part of you, but at the same time it can be separate to you. It is usually on auto-pilot and ticking away as part of your sub-conscious. The sub-conscious is part of your mind that isn’t in current focal awareness. For example, when you’re driving a car, those gear changes and tiny movements of the steering wheel while you’re thinking about something else….that’s your sub-conscious driving the car.

The ego is never satisfied. It’s always seeking more. It is defined as a person’s sense of self-esteem or self-importance. More material items, more money, better possessions and experiences. As a result, the ego borders on greed especially with its glass half-full attitude. In fact, any negative experiences you go through in life are a contradiction to the ego’s beliefs. For example, if you hurt yourself that’s your ego saying ‘i shouldn’t be in pain’, if you lose money that’s your ego saying ‘i shouldn’t be suffering losses’. When your business suffers your ego says ‘this was not supposed to happen’ – and it becomes easy to revert to your default setting. This is how your ego holds you back from achieving your best.

Ego driven?

The majority of humans have their ego running their life and are essentially passengers. It may well be that in some areas of our life we are the passenger, and in other areas we are the drivers. The key is to be the driver in all areas of our life – but you have to look within yourself to achieve change . However, once people decide that change is needed, they don’t follow through. Why? Because the ego is lazy, and it knows that we can survive life in a default setting so why bother changing?

If our goal was to lose weight – you may intend to achieve change by exercising regularly. But no transformation is easy, so at any sign of hardship the ego will question the transformation and urge you to give it up. It uses avoidance tactics and makes excuses! Similarly for mediating. You will set aside 10 minutes every morning upon waking to meditate. However, you find yourself hitting the snooze button on day 1, day 2…and so on. Why? Because your ego is seeking the easy option.

Follow through

Your desire needs to be stronger than your ego and this takes discipline. Essentially, you need to ask yourself “am i serious and committed to this change?”. Your word needs to be absolute as you don’t want your ego to hold you back.

When you don’t follow through on a practice, you are telling your ego that you’re not committed and are feeding more power to the ego. This applies to pretty much any aspect of your life that you feel isn’t amazing, i.e. relationships, money, health etc.

The key to committing to real change is to remain disciplined and focused on the task/activity/project at hand. In addition, being vulnerable is so important for growth, as it means you are opening yourself up for new insights, constructive feedback, tools and knowledge that you may have not have previously welcomed into your life.

Click below a really useful guide for ways to overcome your ego and ensuring its not holding you back;

As I go through my own journey creating an online business and honing my digital marketing skills, I am aware of my ego taking control and making me procrastinate and lose focus. Luckily the online community I have joined are amazing in making sure I stay on track and am clear on my goals and vision. In fact, there are accountability mentors that ensure you stay on track – ensuring you’re ego doesn’t take over.

If you are interested in learning the same marketing, technical and mindset skills, click here and start your journey to taking control and freedom.

Best