Podcast - Episode 0269 - Does Ego Work Screw You Over?

12 comments

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  • Drew
  • March 29, 2019 at 6:12 pm

  Thanks for this episode! I’ve been thinking a lot about your dependence-independence-interdependence model lately and can really see that in the process of ego work. I think that a lot of people (myself DEFINITELY included) really try to create an illusion of independence fairly early on in their personal work, especially if/when they enter Graves 4.

  I definitely strived for this independence in the second half of my teen years (I’m 24 now) in order to preserve my notion that I’m morally pure and good. I noticed this paradigm start to shift following a conversation with my therapist/psychiatrist, in which we discussed my worry of becoming very arrogant if I were to indulge in certain thoughts I had about myself. My therapist, who also specializes in developmental psychiatry, told me that this fear would absolutely come to fruition, not because of a certain failure on my part, but because that’s just what happens when people reach their twenties.

  I think that this was the permission I needed to start leaning into my ego’s uglier aspects. From my perspective I’m sort of doing a form of shadow work that’s incredibly liberating. My teenage “lack of ego” was no less ego-driven than my current state, and it feels really nice to stop lying to myself. I’m holding space for myself to let my arrogant self out to play, and watch what she does, and notice what parts might be helpful and what parts might not. I like banging pans together and chanting “I’M SO GREAT! I’M SO GREAT!” Which is all I can expect of this part of myself, because I hadn’t allowed it to mature past its childish state.

  And hopefully she’ll grow up and learn, and catch up with my better-developed parts, and I think at that point, and not sooner, I’ll be able to think about transcendence.

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  • Marie Garrido Zoeller
  • March 28, 2019 at 10:07 pm

  Thank you for this thought-provoking episode! The issues and concepts that you are grappling with are similar to a book I am reading, Daring Greatly, by Brene Brown and a book that I read almost 20 years ago when I first started teaching, The Courage to Teach, by Parker Palmer. Both deeply resonate with me and both discuss the role of ego and inform my response to the question in your title, Does Ego Work Screw You Over? I would say that the answer depends on your time horizon.

  No one triggers adult egos more quickly than middle schoolers. In my work as a middle school teacher and now a teacher trainer, I learned to keep the long view in mind. The willful teen who thinks your class isn’t important is often the same young man who comes to visit after graduation to tell you that he is a success because of you. The teacher in the corner with her arms crossed, wishing she was in her classroom instead of your training is often the same teacher who tells you that she will only attend trainings facilitated by you from now on.

  I now view the work I do as planting seeds, not being too attached to the results and knowing. Sometimes I get to enjoy the fruits of my labor, other times it feels like I am up against a brick wall. When I remember to lengthen my time horizon I trust in the process and sometimes get the wonderful surprise of a late bloomer who comes to thank me.

  Teaching teens and adults has supercharged my personal development (I don’t claim to have “arrived”, but I am far from where I once was). I am a different person from who I was before because every day through my work I have an opportunity to stay curious and respond in a way that builds relationships rather than react to defiance or apathy in a way that exacerbates them.