How is your ego interfering with your life?
What is the conversation going on in your head? When things get tough or overwhelming, and there’s a perceived hurdle in your way, how do you push through? Or do you give in to that voice in your head and turn back or shut down?
The ego mind has a defense mechanism that kicks in when a situation is too hard or painful for us to confront. It’s a survival instinct coming from the fight or flight response in the body. But this voice inside your head has been there since childhood, it’s not a valid recent response, so you could say the ego is a tad redundant. We also call this denial, fear, and self-sabotage.
Denial lives so deep within our psyche, that we believe this is the truth of our reality. We will tell ourselves we are in love and happy in our relationship for example; burying deep feelings of pain, compromising what our heart really wants, and believing the depression we feel is nothing to do with our current circumstances. Or you have a million things to do in your business, and the overwhelm kicks in the ego and before you know it you’re on your phone or watching Netflix… because it was too hard to push through that voice in your head that convinced you that it was better to shut down.
We create masks to hide behind; denying hidden anger, working long hours to avoid going home, blaming others when they speak the truth of what we cannot face. Avoiding and denying your emotions & what your heart really wants, will just create a disconnection and lack of trust of self. It takes a brave person to confront and allow their soul to speak, to go inwards and truly listen to this voice that is dying inside you!
What if you could identify when your ego is telling you “I can't be bothered”, “I can’t do this”, “fuck this”, or “I don’t want to go”, or “I can’t do xxx because I need more…”, or “I don’t have enough money”, or “I’m too tired”, or “I can’t be bothered”, or “I feel like shit” and do something about it?
What if you could sit in the conscious moments of this self sabotage and stop it from happening?
It’s important that you identify this ego and detach from it. The goal is to become aware of the stories you’re telling yourself, and change that story by planting new seeds. If you say something 35 times per day a new neural pathway will form and your story will change into a belief system.
What is the story you’re telling yourself now for 35 times a day?
As I learnt from Kerwin Rae’s teachings, our head drives us significantly, and we have an unconscious rejection to reality. And ego will jump in and defend your belief systems with full valour and an army of defence. For example, an overweight woman might be in the gym every day wanting to lose weight and look good, but when we look into her belief system around thin and fit people, it may be that she actually despises skinny women because she’s jealous and she thinks they look slutty prancing around in their skimpy clothes or active wear. So then the ego gets involved and she self sabotages to correct the behaviour, not able to lose weight. She is creating insecurity, which breeds self sabotage.
The opposite of that is a woman that admires skinny women, and she therefore accepts and embraces the weight loss because of her perception of the outcome. Her ego tells her to keep going because of the rewards and not liking the extra weight. Alternatively, if you despise people on Facebook that have shiny cars and lots of money and go on holidays all the time, you’ll never achieve those things because you perceive those things only happen to “lucky people” or “rich people” or “arseholes”. And the ego will protect you from being any of those things.
Here's what I want you to do...
I want you to name your ego, and pick a name that you don’t like. It’ll be the first name that comes to you. My ego is called Beryl. Now that I have identified her, I catch her trying to interfere with my life constantly, especially with the success of my business. I call her out, sometimes out aloud. When I first did this work, I was at a personal development and business 3 day seminar with Kerwin Rae. It is the biggest thing that I took out of it, and that’s why I’m sharing this with you. Right then and there I sat in my chair and named my ego and shook my head. Goodness me, hadn’t she done a good job of fucking up my life! “I see you there Beryl, and things are going to change. Thank you for protecting my survival, but I’ve got this now.”
Once you have your ego name, I want you to be fully aware of your thoughts and feelings from here on in. It does take practice, but once you see your ego pop in, there’s no turning back. If you don’t believe in, or listen to ego, it can’t hold any power over you. You’ll find it changes its pace, tone, voice…and once you start to detach, it’ll start to morph. This is called the disassembly phase, where ego will start to shake the things where it has the most power over you (relationships, money and health), to get you to buy back in. All you can do is surrender, it’s the only way.
There are 5 steps to taming the ego, and I highly recommend you say these things out aloud in the beginning, no matter how stupid you feel!
1. “I can hear you”
2. “I know what you’re trying to do”
3. “You are not me”
4. “I’m not playing this game anymore”
5. “Thank you”
We all self sabotage. We sabotage success in all areas of our life. I am personally in a massive healing space around this at the moment! I’ve had some big realisations around my health, what and why I’m creating dis-ease in my body, how I’m sabotaging every aspect of my life, all in fear of not being accepted by the herd. I’ve had to stop turning outwardly to find guidance, healing and answers (and realise that I was doing that!), and really dig deep. For the first time in my life, I am treating myself as a client, doing regular healings on myself to shift the stuff that’s holding me back.
Now you’d think with all my skills and education that I’d be doing this on myself for years! Yes occasionally, but not consistently. I meditate every day now, and I’ve shifted my phone addiction to only necessary tasks and during allocated times. I’ve introduced new boundaries that I thought were already strong. I catch my thoughts and quickly whack them with positive suggestions instead. I’m working on raising my vibrational frequency and shifting the wounded and angry energy from my bottom three chakras up through my body. I’m reading lots. I’m doing lots of office work. I’ve changed my diet significantly, which Beryl HATED, and was kicking and screaming all the way to the supermarket to buy the gluten free, sugar free, dairy free, fructose free food. Her voice is VERY loud. She wants to keep me sick. She wants to keep me small. I’ve made so many amazing changes to other people’s lives, it’s time I started using those skills on myself!! (No-brainer right??!) #selfworth
So I now release the need to sabotage any areas of my life, and that little voice in my head, the ego that keeps telling me “I can’t”, can shut up now. I’ve got an empire to build!
So... What stories are you telling yourself?
What are your belief systems?
What thoughts should be thrown out, the redundant messages you're trying to process every day?
What fears do you have which protect your survival?
What new suggestions can you program your brain with?
Who is this ego and what is the constant pattern you're finding yourself in?
Who does your ego work for, because I guarantee, it's not you!
Catherine Lyell
Integrated Men's Health Solutions
www.integratedmenshealth.com.au