Grow Your Ego

Very often, what makes us act foolishly is our ego. When our egos get inflated, we buy our own press and disregard the facts, or get enamored with our own ideas and stop listening to others. Ego, in the form of vanity, can make us trust a clever sales pitch more than our own reason.

In the tale of The Emperor's New Clothes, the Emperor is vanity personified. He was so exceedingly fond of beautiful new clothes that he spent all his money on being properly dressed, a clear sign of an ego out of control. What are your vanities? What makes you feel attractive, smart or important? It is being on the “A” team, being consulted by someone important, making a lot of money, looking young?

A huge gap exists between a "big" ego and a "strong" ego!

Without much concrete substance, the grandiosity or bravado inherent in big egos might be compared to a balloon--filled to capacity (and with hot air, at that!) and ready to burst (i.e., suddenly and completely deflate) at the slightest prick - Seltzer

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Those with big egos lack inner stability and are more easily upset; tend to be rigid, reactive, dogmatic, and egocentric; simulate self-confidence (rather than truly possess it); display arrogance and a narcissistic sense of entitlement; show deficits in personal integrity; and, perhaps more telling than anything else, demonstrate--when feeling threatened--a surprising weakness, even fragility. Additionally, people with big egos are governed by their neediness.

On the contrary, people with strong egos don't always have to be right, and can readily admit when they're wrong. Great leaders know how to keep their egos in check and avoid such silliness. They have a few trusted advisers, encourage dissent, and listen. Each of us needs a few people who will level with us, whether they are friends, family, or colleagues, or a coach. We do not always need to take their advice, but we do need to pay attention.

photo: "Big Head", Paris (2000)

People with strong egos can be viewed generally as self-confident; secure and emotionally stable; flexible, adaptive, and able to cope well with everyday stresses and frustrations; mature, independent, and resourceful; and authentic.

• People with strong egos genuinely believe in themselves. Therefore they don't require anything like the acknowledgment or recognition that those with big egos must depend upon.
• Far more likely to be givers than takers, and to support others rather than demand support from them, they reveal an openness and trust barely perceptible in those with big egos.
• People with strong egos demonstrate not only the flexibility to appreciate and validate viewpoints other than their own, but to accommodate and integrate them as well. They're able to do so because others' viewpoints aren't personally threatening to them.
• And beyond not feeling invalidated by people who don't share their ideas, they may even solicit divergent points of view in order to become better informed about something.
• Secure in the legitimacy of their own thoughts and feelings, they're not driven from deep within to avoid, resist or deny another's.

It's as though people with strong egos live their lives in expansive mode, whereas people with big egos--feeling so obliged to erect protective safeguards for themselves--are doomed to go through life controlled by all sorts of self-imposed constrictions and constraints. In the end, a strong ego is indistinguishable from a healthy one.

Follow-up Action: Learning how to feel good about ourselves as we are, and beginning to better appreciate our strengths (as well as make peace with our weaknesses), is the ideal way of "growing" our ego to precisely the right size and strength.

Source: http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolution-the-self/200809/our-egos-do-they-need-strengthening-or-shrinking