EGOs

[Trev Williams]

having been on many sides of this I thought I'd post something about EGOs.. being a musician I am sometimes surrounded by people who think I'm great but don't actually know me.. this can inflate someone's ego. Also through getting ill I find these people will often abandon you because you aren't, for that moment at least, 'sucessfull'. I also link it to low self esteem.. I find people who talk about themselves a lot generally have quite low self esteem, but this can me misconstrued as having a big EGO, or being arrogant.. anyway I wondered what your views were on this..?

[Erica]

When I first read this I had to think about it for a while, because it is something I struggle with myself. I have "learned" about having a healthy ego, but I it is something that takes time to arrive at.

I think that having a healthy ego is more than feeling good about yourself. No one will ever be perfect and if we try to always just feel good about ourselves it will lead to being disappointed.

I feel that having a healthy ego is about accepting yourself for who you are, and knowing yourself. Everyone has strong points and weak points, and if we compare ourselves to others we will always be off balance.

Like I said, I have a hard time with that! I've struggled with feeling inadequate, and that I'm not as good as other people. I realized when I did something well, I felt guilty. I thought I was being arrogant because I was proud of myself. Now I don’t think it is wrong to know I do something well. It is wrong to gloat about it, but it is good to know myself.

Heaving a healthy ego isn’t about always doing something right, it is about getting back up when you do it wrong. When we only look at our strengths, it will put us in a place that we are conceited and arrogant. On the other hand, if we only see how bad we are at something we will never be able to face our fears.

[Trev Williams]

yes i agree Erica, finding a 'healthy EGO' is very important. I think comparisons in general are pretty distructive.. I often compare myself with people who are ambitious, successful in their job, who have a nice family.. but this is often bad mainly because these people havn't been ill and haven't perhaps had as many set backs.. it would often make me feel worthless and unsuccessful doing this so it's a very bad habbit.

also in a crowd i might compare myself with the confident person who is talking, or telling a joke perhaps.. that will make me feel less confident and i might loose any self esteem I had.. however compared to the majority of the group who aren't talking and are perhaps as scared as I am.. I might get the self esteem to actually talk up and make a contribution.

people who talk a lot are often insecure themselfs.. I was talking to a friend the other day who said he often came across as arrogant but really he's very shy and it's the only way he can cope. those who have been bullied often turn into bullies themselves too.. so if you look past the front, it's often a tourtured soul.
Trev

[Erica]

I think the bullies, who have been bullied, idea is so sad. When someone tears you down, you want to tear someone else down. I was bullied for years, and I remember when someone else was getting it, I felt relieved that it wasn't me. I am sad that I didn’t try to help the other person.

It is disappointing to me that one small group (or one person) can rule everyone’s emotions because they are mean. If the group of bullied kids would have stood together they would have more strength knowing they were not alone.

It is an unfortunate truth that often times we choose the life we hate, because it’s the life we know. Not just being bullied, but also with other areas. Ego being a big one!

So stemming from this discussion, I decided to put my words into practice. Around three weeks ago, I decided to choose to think positively of myself, and yesterday I saw growth of that. I did a project and my friend made a constructive criticism about it.

My first reaction was to feel bad that I did something “bad or wrong”, but I chose to think positively. I thanked her for showing me my errors, and then told her why I chose to do the project how I did it.

Instead of responding to me about the project, she responded about my response. She told me that if she had made that same comment a month ago I would have reacted self-consciously and just apologized for messing up. She also said that in my response she noticed change in me.

That was such an encouragement to me! Here I’ve been making an effort to think positively and now I can see that it is working!