Leadership usually focuses on leading others. But great leaders know leadership starts with themselves. If you want to lead yourself, you have to know who you really are. And to know who you really are, you need to cuddle up to and get to know...your Ego.
Your Ego is Running the Show
Your ego is the part of the mind that is responsible for reality testing and a sense of personal identity. Or put another way, you and your ego have defined your personal identity, and your Ego’s job is to protect that identity at all costs. In order to do that, your ego interprets “reality” to best align with your fictitious identity. I say fictitious because it’s made up by you, your experiences, your demographics, psychographics, social-economic status, level of education, color of your skin, athletic abilities (or not), your attractiveness, etc. We--you--give meaning to all of these things to create our identity. And once that identity is locked and loaded, your Ego’s job is to protect it at all costs. And it begins interpreting “reality” to align with your belief about yourself.
The Ego’s Original Job
The Ego is all about survival. In primitive times, the Ego wasn’t concerned with your self image. It was concerned with survival. Think sabertooth tigers -- its job was for reality testing. Is that a tiger over there? Is it hunting me? What do I need to do to survive?! The game has changed but the Ego has not. We are no longer (for the most part) concerned getting killed when we step out our front door--except for our identity. We are so deeply rooted in who we think we are that the Ego is vigilantly scanning the horizon for our modern sabertooth tigers. Anything that contradicts a belief in ourselves is a threat.
Understanding Your Identity
You are not who you think you are. I bet you’d say you’re not a liar. And I’d be willing to bet you’ve already lied today or yesterday by the latest. You may think I’m splitting hairs, but if someone asked you how you were doing and you said pavlovicly, “Good!” when in fact you were having a horrible day, that’s not the truth, right? Yesterday, I spoke to my team about some team members who decided to leave and I said to the team as their mighty leader that I was very sad to see them go. Now, I think of myself as a very honest person. But I was not sad to see them go. It was a half-truth. I was sad to see one person go and I was pretty darn happy to see the other person go. I’m a liar.
Reshaping Your Identity
The Ego goes nuts with this type of information. Your ego may be going nuts right now. Just pause and listen to the racket. It may be telling you to click off this post, stop reading, this guy is nuts! Sure it is, I just said to your Ego--”Hey buddy, I know your game. You aren’t who you say are. Actually, I’ll call you out. I bet you think you’re honest, but I know you’re not. What are you going to do with that?” Go crazy, that’s what. Your ego’s job is to survive, so it’s going to do one of two things unconsciously: Fight or Flight. Consciously though, you can tell your Ego to chill for a bit while you consider this idea: I’m a liar. Or, perhaps more aptly put: I don’t always tell the truth. And then you choose to rewire your identity based on your reality, not your ego’s “reality.”
The Inmate is Running the Asylum
Once you figure out your Ego is running the asylum, you can begin to get present with who your Ego thinks you are. Your Ego is dogmatic. Life is not. The amount of cognitive dissonance your ego causes in life is staggering. For instance, if you believe you don’t lie, but in fact you are guilty of making white lies all day, your Ego doesn’t know what to do with that. “Hold it!” it says. “We aren’t a liar! So, what we’re saying must then be true, and all of these people are crazy! We can’t trust anyone! Everyone is out to get us! Other people are dishonest!” The Ego is like a computer that has been programmed,“You don’t lie,” so when you do lie, it has to jump through a bunch of hoops to reconcile reality with its reality: That you don’t lie.
Right, it’s crazy. The inmate is running the asylum.
Lead You
Unconsciously, the Ego leads you. It leads me. We’ve created our identity--right or wrong--and at this point we’re not judging the identity we have created. To effectively lead ourselves, we simply want to know the identity that we created. What is my identity? Who do I say I am and who does my Ego believe I am?
In other words, we’re waking up to who we really are. Let me say that again: you’re waking up to who you really are. Even with that statement, your ego just went on alert. It is saying: “There’s a threat here. I’m totally comfortable with who I am! Why are we questioning who I am? You don’t need to go there. I’ve got this. You keep living your life, and I’ll make sure you perceive reality as you need to. We’re good. Keep moving please!”
If you want to lead yourself, you have to know who you really are. If you want to lead yourself, you will need to tell your Ego that you’re planning to drive, and it’s going to need to take a back seat. Now, we’ll find that’s easier said than done and it will take a good amount of practice, but that is what will be required.