Like many of you, I have a bit of an ego. Not too big mind you, but certainly big enough to get in my way. Unfortunately, it took me a long time to realise how much of a hindrance an ego can be. Hopefully, I’ll explain to you how my ego has affected me during my personal growth, which can maybe (if you haven’t already sorted yourself out) help you identify your own ego and find a way of suppressing it as much as you can.

Simply put, the ego is one’s sense of self-importance or self-esteem. Now I am not saying that it is a bad thing to have a good level of self-esteem, but sometimes you can begin to feel a little too self-important and arrogant without realising it.

This feeling of self-importance can manifest in different ways. For some, it can come through as hyper-confident, and maybe naive. These people think they can do everything and if they screw up it must be something or somebody else’s fault. For others, a big ego brings shit self-esteem. In this case, they might find that they second guess themselves, and blame someone else for their own shortcomings. They might also think that things can’t get better and that the world is against them (it might be true, who knows). Essentially they are too stubborn to see that they can improve.

Personally, I think everyone has a bit of both and encounters them in different aspects of their lives. The latter is more interesting to me and more relatable. I’ve had moments of self-doubt where I simply can’t visualise myself improving, or being great at anything for the matter. However, time has always passed and while I may not be great at anything, I have definitely improved.  I was wrong to assume and I was wrong to be stubborn. If you had told me three years ago I would have the roster of friends that I do, I wouldn’t have believed you.  It was foolish of me to think that my life wouldn’t improve (not that it wasn’t already good), and honestly, it’s a self-sabotaging way to live. I’m glad I was wrong about so many things in my life because in most cases I’ve overestimated the bad. Just because I had formed the image of failure or embarrassment in my mind it didn’t mean that would come true.

Thinking of the times I’ve made an assumption about the future reminds of something I read in a comic book (Doomsday clock #8) recently where a character, who is temporally omniscient ( Dr. Manhattan) cannot see his own future past a certain event and assumes the worst outcomes (I’m assuming ignorantly, as the story hasn’t concluded). The issue ends with a quote by the architect/author/many things, R. Buckminster Fuller about the scenario: “Seeing is believing is a blind spot in man’s vision”.