I view having an ego as a game that everyone plays and loses — which sucks.
We all have to build our egos, or you have to build your life around not paying attention to society.
In today’s world, so much of who we are is built around our ego. Social media encourages you to build a profile and add as many posts and photos as possible to increase your following and likes.
You need to increase your likability in order to get those followers. The main way to build an audience or get likes is to do things that society founds valuable.
What society finds valuable might not be what is true to you.
The same can be said in the workplace. What the workplace finds valuable in a person might not be true to who you are. This has potential negative side effects which I discuss later.
What if you choose not to participate and just chill on the sidelines? People will think you are cool right? People will follow you and chill on the sidelines next you, right?
Wrong!
People will still play the social media and workplace game even if others choose to sit out because there will be someone with an ego who flaunts and gets attention from other people who envy their ego. The people that envy their ego will try to achieve the same ego status as that person. Whether they are able to or not doesn’t matter. By trying to build your ego around something other than what you truly believe, you are feeding into society and large corporations. Corporations and social media want all of us to have huge egos and look outwards to feed our ego. They want this because they can shape all of our egos if we look outward for validation.
If you want to build yourself up as a good mate for a potential partner, then your ego might tell you that you need to have a nice car and a good house. Having a nice car and good house can be central to your “successful” ego that you’ve built for yourself. If you want a nice car and a good house, then you are more susceptible to advertising. This advertising might tell you that “successful” people have a house worth $500,000 and the newest autonomous car worth $200,000. You might not agree with that subliminally, but you don’t give it much thought since you’ve built this “successful” ego model for yourself. Corporations know the types of egos that we build, and they try to mold what these egos should value.
You can see how this plays itself out.
Be careful how you craft your ego. Our egos are malleable. You can have a successful ego today and then have a loser ego tomorrow. Is one inherently better than the other? I don’t think so. The definition of a loser is in the eye of the beholder. You might be your own hero, but society tells you that you are a loser. Who cares what society thinks?
Usually we craft our egos based on our families, friends, social media, tv, streaming services, etc. Be careful how you craft your ego. Don’t craft your ego based on other people’s models of success unless they align with yours.
Another issue I’ve encountered is communication. We don’t communicate honestly because we are protecting our ego or other people’s ego. More specifically I encounter this in the workplace. You can’t call your boss out on poor leadership as often as you’d like. You need to make sure you are good corporate citizen. Leadership is put there for a reason. Even if they don’t have the brightest ideas, you still have to buy into them. Otherwise, you will make your boss think they are incompetent. You might not get a promotion a raise as a result. You could even lose your job just by being honest.
Communication is made harder in general by the ego. It’s hard to ask people out on dates because of fear of rejection or societal standards. People also won’t have honest communications about emotions and creative thoughts for fear of being seen as a weirdo. If you have a “cool” ego for yourself, then you can’t face rejection, right?
I think playing the ego game is a lose-lose situation. You can either build up your ego according to societal standards that might conflict with your inner desires. This will cause negative emotions. Alternatively, you can build your ego up the way you believe is best. This will increase positive emotions as long as you don’t act counter to society in too many ways. If your true identity is counter to societal standards, then you risk being rejected. Rejection is fine if you have taught yourself not to look to the outer world for validation. If you haven’t done that work, then you will likely feel negative emotions because you will most likely feel ostracized.
When you play the ego game, you have to figure out how you will play it. Will you build an ego around fitting in or will you build an ego that is true to yourself?
