Your Ego is Not Your Enemy
[Music]
[Music]
most of us humans
are incredibly hard on ourselves we put
this immense pressure on ourselves to
to perform and to get everything right
and to get the job and get the guy or
girl and whatever
it is and we we put all this pressure on
ourselves
and it even like whenever i get ready to
speak or talk i have this
uh this inner critic in my head that
somehow convinces me that if
i don’t get 10 million views on this and
become the next bernay brown
uh or oprah winfrey or whoever that that
uh i’m an
abject failure i just i’ve blown it i’ve
blown my chance
and you ever find that fascinating
and and maybe for you it’s it’s uh it
was making the team
or getting the job or getting into law
school or
or business school and i don’t know what
it what it was for you but you maybe
felt like this abject failure
if you didn’t do it or you you weren’t
you didn’t measure up if you didn’t do
it
do you ever wonder why that is do you
ever wonder why we are so
hard on ourselves uh it’s it’s almost
like we’ve got this
uh this that our brain is trying to
convince us that and give us provide
enough evidence to prove that we don’t
measure up
and but then what you ever think about
that you ever think like what if your
brain actually gets to enough evidence
to say you don’t measure up do you all
of a sudden
just disappear and die of course not of
course not
but yet we let we let our ego just run
our lives sometimes
and you know this ego it’s it’s this
voice in your head that tells you to
play small
it’s this inner critic it’s this uh it’s
this voice that says that you’re not
good enough
that you don’t measure up and insults
you and calls you an imposter or a fraud
or whatever it is
and for me my my ego would tell me that
you’re not going to make it whether it
was baseball or piano lessons or
um
or going into business or becoming a
speaker
my ego would be so full of criticism
and and i didn’t know what to do with it
and it would call me an imposter and a
fraud and it would
uh it would kind of fill me with this
paralyzing fear
and uh perhaps you’ve been there
perhaps you’ve you’ve wrestled with some
of your own dragons as well
and as much as we may not want to talk
about them we’ve all got these dragons
inside of us it may be your ego
it may be your imposter syndrome
maybe for you it’s anxieties or or a
fear of failure
maybe it’s insecurities or lack of
self-confidence
i wonder what your dragons are in this
season of your life
and then you ever notice that that we
have this default way of
thinking about our dragons so my guess
is if i said hey
we’re gonna talk about your dragons
today my guess is you’re not super
thrilled about it
and if you had a choice between that and
front row seats to a bieber concert
uh we’re not talking about your dragons
and
and so we have these dragons and then we
have this default way of relating to
them
and um you ever noticed so if i if i
said hey let’s talk about your imposter
syndrome or your fears or your anxieties
my guess is that
uh if you’re like me at all you get this
pit in your stomach
and it feels like your uh it’s like
these invisible forces are
are holding you under water
and you can’t even breathe and you feel
like you’re powerless against them
and you just don’t know what to do and
you tried you know a number of different
things to try to figure it out but you
can’t seem to figure it out
and you don’t know what to do and so
you keep you keep just just trying to do
whatever you can
and have you ever wondered
uh if we’ve gotten it wrong with how we
relate
to our ego into our dragons have you
ever wondered if this
have you ever wondered if your ego was
actually
your enemy your imposter syndrome
your anxieties your fears are they
actually out to get you
or have we somehow gotten it wrong
and if there’s anything i’ve learned in
the last 10 years as
i’ve really tried to wrestle with this
whole thing is i’ve learned something
that really struck me the other day and
it was this idea that
that uh that the greatest opportunity
for growth that we have in life
lies in areas that we’re currently wrong
about
our greatest opportunities for growth in
life
lie in areas that we are currently wrong
about
that we but we’re almost certain that
we’re right about them
and and so the path forward really
begins with this idea of
of uh of being not only willing to be
wrong
but but actually searching out the areas
that were wrong actually setting up
systems in our life to find out where
are we wrong
and i’m not talking about as a caveat
i’m not talking about where you’re
completely wrong or right
i’m talking about where are the areas in
your life where you’re one percent wrong
with something
that matters deeply to you and that
might be relationships
that might be in business that might be
some sort of certain impact in the world
but where might you be one percent
wrong and one of these uh situations
came up for me about five years ago
and i i was i was uh i was working with
a therapist
and uh if if you’re if you’ve ever been
to a therapist it’s almost like uh
they hand you like a cheesecake factory
menu and you flip through the pages and
figure out what’s my dragon of the day
you know it’s like this you know page
after page after page of like what are
we going to work on today
and i’ve been coming up against a lot of
these obstacles in my life
at the time and the one that the dragon
of the day if you will was was my ego
and my therapist says uh okay i want you
to i want you to spend some time with
your ego
and i said uh what does that mean and uh
and
i’m from california i’ve lived there for
a decade anyway and so you know we’re a
little bit crazy there
and so this she says i want you just go
spend some time with your ego
and and we’re gonna do a visualization i
was like
okay um and so she’s uh you’re gonna
close your eyes and you’re just gonna
you’re gonna go spend some time with
your ego
and so i closed my eyes and uh and i
and i i mean i don’t know what to do so
i just closed my eyes and start dreaming
stuff up
right and uh and so that i imagine that
i’ve got this dragon
and it’s the dragon’s name is ego okay
all right here we go this is my dream so
i figure all right
ego you’re my enemy you call me names
you insult me you beat me up like
i want you out of my life so i was like
great this is my visualization so i buy
him a one-way ticket to
to the caribbean island so he can drink
margaritas and surf and most of all get
the hell out of my life
and so i’m like this is great i love
these visualizations so i i have this
whole thing i’m almost not even in
control this is just kind of happening
and so i drive ego to the airport and i
park because i’m a nice person i walk
them all the way to the gate and in my
dream
uh tsa doesn’t exist anymore uh and and
so we get all the way to the gate i buy
him a chocolate milkshake because he
loves chocolate milkshakes apparently
and we get all the way to the gate and
we’re sitting there
and uh and soon enough they start
calling for to board that plane
and so ego gets up and uh
apparently nobody thinks it’s weird
there’s like a dragon you know about to
get on the plane and so
he’s he’s walking his way up to the
front of the the line
and as he gets up to the front of the
line he kind of looks back at me he’s
got this like puzzled look on his face
i do not have a puzzle look on my face i
can’t wait to be home free of this thing
that that has been my enemy my whole
life
and so i he gets up to the front he’s
about to scan his boarding pass
and i’m like yeah here we go this is
great i like home free
and he looks back at me with again a
puzzled look and i look back at him i’m
like yeah see you later pal
and have a nice flight and uh he
looks down and goes what about this and
i go what about what
and in in the film it’s like a film you
could like zoom out
and you see that there’s a chain
connected from my leg to
my dragon ego’s leg and i go
oh my what is this and uh and so then
the camera zooms in and it’s got a tag
on it like a mattress tag that if you
take off you’ll go to jail forever
and it says installed by david gerber
cannot be removed under any
circumstances indestructible
and i think indestructible what and
i look back at ego now it’s starting to
get awkward
and uh and i look at him and i have this
moment
and i am just pissed and i’m having
all these emotions flood into me it’s
like i was so close
i’m so close
so ego kind of wanders around a little
bit but he can only go 20 feet because
there’s a chain attached to his leg
and then eventually kind of walks over
and sits next to me
and uh and i go okay well
here we go now we’re gonna do with this
and so we start talking and i just my
first thing was just like man
why are you so means me why are you my
enemy why do you always beat me up
and uh why you always calling me names
and he and he he kind of pauses he goes
wait what he goes
he says you thought i was your your
enemy and i said yeah like wha
why what else would i make of this whole
thing the way you call me names the way
you
uh you know pick on me and tell me i
don’t measure up like what else am i
supposed to make of that
and he goes man you’ve gotten me all
wrong
and i go what and
what he what he begins to do and i’ll
synopsize the story that the
conversation i had with this imaginary
dragon in my head
that changed my life as he basically
said he talked about this difference
between
a sparring partner and a boxing opponent
and
if you were to watch like a sparring
match happening 30 40 feet off you might
think that the sparring partner is
trying to defeat the boxing
or the boxer but the sparring partner is
not trying to defeat the boxers the
sparring partner is trying to
uh is working to train the boxer to be
better for the the boxing match
and so what he was describing is he said
i am not your boxing opponent
i am your sparring partner
and it was in that moment that i
realized
that my ego is not my enemy
my only enemy is when i choose
to see my ego as my enemy
my ego is not my enemy my only enemy is
when i choose
to see my ego as my enemy and then it
reminded me of
of this the philosopher named joseph
campbell who
influenced star wars uh the story of
star wars as well as a number of other
hollywood movies and movies throughout
the world and he said
he said what if what is the point of
life is not to slay our dragons
but rather to dance with them what is
the point of life is not to
slay our dragons but to dance with them
and that that idea blew my mind is like
and i can see my ego as my
enemy and as my boxing opponent is
like drag like a dragon i’ve got a slay
or i can see my ego as my best friend
in my advocate and i can i can choose to
dance with these dragons
that are that have been tormenting my
life
and and so you
you may be sitting there going okay
great my ego is my friend and i can
dance with my dragon so
so now what what do i do with this and i
i’ve been
swinging at this thing for like a decade
through books and mentors and retreats
and therapists and coaches and
and there’s four main things i’ve come
up with and there’s probably tons more
out there and books and that kind of
thing
but there’s four main things that have
come up for me that have been really
powerful one is
is you’ve got to figure out what your
why is it the best way to understand it
is your brain is
heavily addicted to being right and so
if you’re going to prove your brain
wrong
even one percent you’ve got to know why
you’re going to do that
and so that may be relationships with
your with your family your friends that
may be an impact you want in the world
to create in the world might be
something that breaks your heart that
you want to have an impact in
uh and so you’ve got to figure out what
is your like why
why are you going to do this why are you
going to like basically wrestle with
your brain a bit or teach your brain to
dance and stop tormenting you
so that’s number one figure out your why
number two is
uh as you like i don’t think you can do
this outside of mindfulness and
meditation
there’s a there’s a phenomenal book
written called 10 happier
and it’s it’s it talks about how you can
actually train your mind
so that you have a better like a better
like control over it
and it’s similar to working out with
your body your your body can get in
shape and so can your mind and so can
your brain
and the only way i’ve found to really do
that is through mindfulness and
meditation practices
because you’ve got to have you’ve got to
spend time training it so that when it
comes time you can choose to have your
ego be
your your friend versus your enemy
that’s number two uh number three is
you’ve got to be looking for
areas in your life where you’re at least
one percent wrong and you can do that
through mindfulness practices
you can do that through feedback from
friends and colleagues you do that in a
number of different ways
so you’ve got to look for the areas of
your life that you’re one percent wrong
and usually
that opens up a portal for your brain to
find out where you might be five or ten
percent wrong as well or maybe
80 wrong who knows you’ll find out and
then number four is
you’ve got to consciously choose what is
going to consume your curiosity all day
because you you can you can allow this
idea that you’re
you’re you’ve got to slay your dragons
and your ego is your enemy you can allow
that to consume your curiosity
or you can be consumed with this idea
that your ego is your best friend
and that you get to dance with your
dragons
and if you’re willing if you’re one it
could take some time and effort just
like working out like a hard workout
it takes a lot of time and consistency
um
and if you’re willing to do that you’re
going to realize something
you’re going to realize that you’ve been
fighting something your whole life that
you were never designed to fight with
your dragons aren’t for slaying they’re
for dancing with
your dragons aren’t for slaying they’re
for dancing with
and at the beginning i pose this
question if you ever wonder why
we do this and
sometimes there’s probably a lot of
really good answers for this
but sometimes the reason we do something
is simply because we don’t know a better
way
we didn’t know something we didn’t know
a better way existed and so we go with
this default mode and we
we let our dragons torment us
and it’s simply because we didn’t know
there was a better way
but now we do and we can start over
right now