Bigger Than We Actually Are
“Confidence is attractive, Arrogance is offensive.”
I mentioned in part one of Stop playing it Small that part of playing big is, ironically, getting rid of the part of us that keeps falsely big: the ego.
According to Freud’s model of the psyche, the id is the primitive and instinctual part of the mind that contains sexual and aggressive drives and hidden memories, the super-ego operates as a moral conscience, and the ego is the realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego.
Technically then the Ego isn’t really the bad guy, but more like the part of our minds that negotiate between human impulse and social standards. So abandoning ego in a technical sense is not accurate. But dealing with boastful arrogance is.
Arrogance: a sense of superiority, self-importance, or entitlement
Puffing up the wrong part of us
Scientists discovered in a 2012 Harvard study that bragging is a common behavior. In fact, it is synonymous to our craving with food and sex. Not to brag, but I seem to remember a lot of bragging going on in college in the 80’s well before the Harvard group stamped this study in 2012. Hmmmm…
Our best self gets buried under the pretense, the delusion and the distraction of feeding the inflated self. Think about it. Have you ever tried to blow up an air mattress or a beach raft for your kids? Man, before the days of having a foot pump, you would just about black out from blowing air into that little rubber stem.
You may be blowin’ yourself up if you are:
1. Needing to dominate conversations
2. Wanting the spotlight
3. Crushing others to get what you want
How we abandon our ego
Simple. We find humility. We hone our confidence. We unleash our best self when we are freed from the pretense, delusion, and distraction of feeding our inflated self.
And that’s what part two is about.