3 Common Ways Ego Can Destroy You And What To Do

Ego can be a cause of downfall for anybody.

When you have succeeded in a task or in your career, it is easy to think that you are the best. It is easy to think that you achieved success because you were flawless.

Ego can blind you to things that people around you try to warn you about. It is even easy to think that those people are unqualified to offer advice to you because they have achieved much less than you have.

In his book, Ego Is The Enemy, Ryan Holiday said:

“With success, particularly power, come some of the greatest and most dangerous delusions: entitlement, control, and paranoia.”

There are many ways ego can destroy whatever you have achieved. I’m going to talk about three disadvantages of ego.

1.     It makes you forget the past

It is easy to forget your pre-success period when you failed and failed again many times before you finally gained the success you wanted. Success can give you the illusion that you’re the perfect human being.

Out of the many attempts you made, you managed to hit success. It is easy to forget that you made many attempts that failed. It is easy to believe that you have succeeded where many failed.

“With success comes the temptation to tell oneself a story, to round off the edges, to cut out your lucky breaks and add a certain mythology to it all,” Holiday says about himself. “But a story like this is never helpful.”

This gives you an illusion of superiority that could work against you. Holiday says:

“It’s human to think that since it’s been done once – that the world has changed in some big or small way – that there is now a magical power in our possession. We’re here because we’re bigger, stronger, smarter. That we make the reality we inhabit.”

It is easy for a man of ego to criticise people who are currently unable to perform at his level. There is no patience for the subordinate who is learning the job.

This is a habit that can put you in trouble faster than you think. It is important to know that many things worked together to make your success a reality. Your success may be majorly because of your actions, but other factors contributed to it.

2.     You have too much confidence in the present

When you have achieved success in the past, you can cultivate a misguided belief that you now have the Midas touch. That everything you do will succeed.

This has many problems in itself. Ego reduces the amount of drive you had before your big success. It makes you think that you just have to show up and you will win.

When ego stops you from taking adequate preparation, it also sets you up for failure. Competitors who take adequate preparations are able to check their work properly for weaknesses.

“The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.” – Wayne Dyer

An expert filled with ego believes his/her name would do the job. They forget that even though their success may make things easier, it is even more difficult to perform at a high level consistently.

Ego stops you from doing your best at the moment. When this happens, you fail to get to the level that made you arrogant about your abilities.

If a man full of ego face difficulties, he sees it as the fault of others. He avoids taking responsibilities for the situation he finds himself.

3.     You have too much hope in the future

After a major success, you believe in your invincibility. You believe that your reach is limitless. You have the belief that you success yesterday guarantees your success tomorrow.

It is easy to underrate your competition. It is easy to overlook those behind you in your career. Whatever will happen in the future depends on what you do today.

One of the worst things ego can do to you is to restrict you to your past success. That is because when you become arrogant as a result of your past successes, you stop doing the best that will give you the real future you want.

What can you do?

The best way to reduce ego is through humility. It is important to always acknowledge that you have weaknesses. Having weaknesses is not a problem because no man is perfect.

“If your ego starts out, ‘I am important, I am big, I am special,’ you’re in for some disappointments when you look around at what we’ve discovered about the universe. No, you’re not big. No, you’re not. You’re small in time and in space. And you have this frail vessel called the human body that’s limited on earth.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

This can be a check when people have hyped your success. It will serve as a check for your arrogant tendencies when most people you know have praised your achievements.

For you to maintain that success and be an influencer in your field, it is important to be humble. You have to work today as if you have never made the big achievement.

It is vital to think of any new career work as an opportunity to be great. You have to be patient with a colleague who is not yet at your level.

Your new job is not an opportunity to show yourself as the greatest, it is an opportunity to do the best work possible. Ego can give you a false sense of pride and superiority which will prevent your best work.

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