Sometimes my ego bloats and I do not like it. Those are the times I wonder if my blog will be read around the world, I want doors to open if people would hear my name…. I am ashamed of these thoughts, they make me inhuman. I am lucky that my karma immediately gets into action, in those moments of utter delusion I will get doors slammed in my face, proposals will be plummeted, I will get yelled at so loud everyone hears it... Those things bring me back to the essence: ego must be kept to its necessary proportions: very, very tiny.
Ever since I was a child I had fits, fits in which I suddenly thought I was the center of the world (no, the universe!), the power player of the team … Alexandra the Great. I try to avoid stepping into this trap of make believe by keeping the focus outside myself and on the real issues, but sometimes I fail blatantly. Ego stops my learning process. I am a wimp for letting ego get to me.
Situations that can launch my ego are: getting up on a stage, making a presentation or doing something in front of an audience. This in itself is ok. BUT… when people afterwards come to wish me well, my ego will be sitting on my left shoulder ready to grow bigger than the biggest, ugliest toad ever as soon as I let my guard down. Do I like this: NOT AT ALL. I hate it. My ego throws me off balance, makes me blind for potential chances and the thing I dislike the most is that it strips me from my humanity. Ego stops growth. Self-esteem can be ok, but that is were it stops; anything more will just clog up my soul and temper with my own mental growth.
So from time to time I crush my ego, just to keep me on my toes, to keep me within my human boundaries. At those moments I wonder about blogging… is it my ego that pushes me to blog or is it really my mind that wants to open, share, exchange, reflect, learn? Up until now I believe it is a mixture of the will to reflect and exchange ideas. Openness is essential for a good knowledge exchange. Blogging makes me think more indepth about the things I write down, about things I need in my job. So I am thankful to many. I am humbled by the knowledge of others that are willing to share their knowledge with me, to discuss content.
As long as my ego is kept on a small leash, I will keep learning. Learning is good. Being just me is excellent; moments of enlightenment come in small drops, I hope they will grow bigger.
Hi, its good that you are being so honest about it. I sometimes wonder because at times don't fully engage brain before commenting on others blogs (and sometimes my own - Microsoft Sense Checker where are you :-)
ReplyDeleteI just blog at the moment, to get it out of my head and 'down on paper' so that I can clear space for new and hopefully exciting thoughts and try not to think about that side of it too much.
It will be interesting to see if I feel the same way in about a year's time when I will have either ditched or continued to fill out a year's worth of thoughts on the blog.
My non-blogging counterparts often imply (or say outright) that blogging isa very egotistical pursuit.
ReplyDeleteMy response? Just try it!
Just try posting a comment on someone's blog, only to get shot down in flames by greater minds. Or worse - just try assembling your most erudite thoughts only for it to go completely unremarked. Spend a short while reading the posts of others in your field for a healthy dose of perspective of your own ignorance.
As part of the research for my dissertation, I installed some metrics on my blog. Talk about a reality check. I have never even come close to registering 100 readers in one day.
If anything, blogging reminds me just how much of a nobody I really am!
I fully agree with the risk you take with putting your thoughts out there.
ReplyDeleteA 'sense checker' would be great indeed! For real life also.
And putting metrics on a blog surely helps to stay with both feet on the ground.
You have to have an ego - that is, to believe in yourself - in order to believe that you have any thoughts worth sharing.
ReplyDeleteI believe that this is a minimum requirement for all people, that everybody has something worth sharing, and that it is sad that some people do not feel that their contributions are valuable or worthwhile.
Where ego becomes an inhibiting factor is not so much in the output as in the input. It is when you close your ears and your eyes when you begin to believe that other people have nothing to say worth reading or listening to, that your ego needs to be reduced in size.
Interestingly, the very act of reading and listening will reduce one's ego in and of itself, as it becomes very obvious as soon as you begin to read and listen to other people just how much of your own knowledge has been replicated by others, and how much they know that you don't know.
This, of course, is a good thing, for it means there is never a shortage of things to learn and things to do, that there is always a new idea or a new awakening just around the corner.
hi Stephen
ReplyDeleteYou are so right, reading and listening always brings one back to earth... or lifts because of the engaging knowledge others know.