Get to Know Your Ego
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Our personality is a combination of our behaviors, thought patterns, emotions, beliefs, and motivations, which ends up being how we express ourselves in the world.
Personality formation has several bases. Among them are genetics, environment, and individual abilities to experience events in general.
In this text, we will talk more about the influences of the environment and our vision of the world, according to our ego.
Freud's theory says that our personality is composed of three parts namely: ego, id, and superego. The ID is the most basic part of our personality. It is the part that drives us to do our most primary needs, such as going to the bathroom when we need to. The SUPEREGO is the moralistic part of our personality. It tells us how we should do things in a way that is socially appropriate, such as finding a bathroom when we need it. To the superego, doing something that goes against our moral values is unacceptable. For the id, not doing what we want to do is impossible. The EGO is that part of our personality that has taken on the responsibility of mediating what the id wants and what the superego tells it to do. To do that, the ego takes into account all of our life experiences, along with everything that comes with it.
We can compare the id, ego, and superego to a car, the driver, and the traffic laws respectively.
The car (id) drives off at the speed that the driver (ego) is putting on the pedals. The driver, in turn, must respect the traffic laws (superego). If the driver has not correctly learned the lessons he received while in driving school, he will not know how to mediate between the car and the traffic laws in the right way.
The driving schools of our lives are our families, societies, and cultures. There we experience, learn, and form our values. Based on these values, we form our beliefs. Depending on our beliefs, our ego develops (or doesn't develop) the ability to understand and discern between right and wrong, and good and evil. During the entire time, we learn our life lessons, the ego plays an important role since it is committed to ensuring our survival and well-being. The ego decides what beliefs we will accumulate and how we will use them. The focus and effort we put into our growth, and the level of expansion of consciousness we achieve make our ego able to do its job well or not. The ego, by itself, is neither good nor bad. It does what it has to do according to what our consciousness tells it to do.
The ego's primary function is to protect us, and the greatest protection it can give us is that of survival.
The ego does everything it can to preserve our life. It mediates between the id and the superego depending on what it understands to be or not a danger to our survival. The ego depends on our help to get information about what is good or not good.
If the ego doesn't have our support, it simply goes about doing what it thinks is best. To make good choices we need to have a broader view of the situation we are experiencing. In the same way, the ego needs to be well instructed by us to make good choices. It cannot tell if any important information is missing.
People with a strengthened ego are objective in what they want, and they know their strengths and weaknesses. If they don’t know how to solve something, they observe themselves and eventually find satisfactory ways out. They can also resist external pressures by knowing which responsibilities are theirs and which are not. They don't feel overwhelmed. People with a weakened ego tend to be impulsive and emotionally insecure because they feel very vulnerable, which leads to a strong feeling of inferiority. Since the ego does not like to feel inferior, the strong tendency, in these cases, is to show itself superior to others. From this, we can understand that people who have a superiority complex try to show themselves as strong because they see themselves as weak.
In psychology, the ego is very much related to how a person thinks, behaves, and relates to other people. Observing and knowing our behavior patterns helps us to know our ego.
Some tips on how to know your ego:
- Observe your behavior patterns - Are you always trying to seek others’ approval? Do you often feel inferior to other people? Does other people's success bother you? Any observation is valid.
- Keep observing, but don't judge or blame yourself - Just watch and learn to know your ego. This is how you will help it.
- Live in the present - The ego is always in the past, thinking about what happened, or it is in the future, worrying about how to protect yourself or how to impress other people.
- Take responsibility - Everything that happens in your life is your responsibility. Giving that responsibility to others will only make you feel weak and powerless in the face of what happens to you.
- Recognize your feelings - Pay attention and try to notice when something makes you feel rejected, demeaned, upset, anxious, sad, and so on. Afterward, try to find out if there is any real reason for that feeling.
- Practice objectivity - Pay attention to your reactions when you don't like something. See if your reaction was proportional to what happened.
- Practice gratitude - Learn to recognize what others do for you, no matter how little you have received, and give thanks. Gratitude makes us see life with the eyes of love and brings us peace.
- Read good books - There are many books that help clarify how we feel and how we react. Choose a reading that brings you knowledge about how you feel.
- Practice unconditional love for yourself - Try to understand how your self-esteem is and take care of yourself. Try to defend your interests without harming the other people around you.
- Practice unconditional love for others - Loving others means being patient and non-judgmental. It means accepting the other as he or she is. It means understanding that making mistakes is part of everyone's growth.
Nowadays there is a lot of talk about controlling the ego. We really should do this, if necessary. But I also like to think about transcending the ego. What does this mean? Transcending the ego means reaching a stage of expanding consciousness, where we realize that we are all one. When we understand this, we understand that if we do something bad to anyone, we are doing something bad to ourselves. In the same way, if we do something good, we are doing it to ourselves. If we help a person to grow and become better, we are growing and becoming better ourselves.
