Egotism vs Success

Dear loving people,

I hope you enjoyed and learned from my last post on the wise vs the arrogant goat? This is a logical extension of that post and we will be dwelling on egotism and its negative ramifications.

Thomas Carlyle says “Egotism is the source and summary of all faults and miseries.” I strongly agree with him. You see, to achieve goals seems to be about being good at converting feelings into action. It’s one thing to feel inspired or enraged, but what do you do with that emotional energy? Are you able to convert it into actions you’re proud of? That ability to convert explains achievement. Some people achieve a lot out of a small amount of emotional energy. Others seems to have massive quantities of emotional energy, but it never goes anywhere productive.  Now, how does this relate with ego? Having a big ego, if managed well, can be a useful source of energy in achieving things. To do difficult work requires fuel, and ego can burn quite well. The biggest trouble we have here is that most people allow this latent energy – their ego to get out of control and overshadow its good attributes, that’s how they find themselves in untold problems.

Generally when we say someone has “a big ego” we really mean their ego is out of control, and gets in the way. They talk down to people, treat others as inferior, and their sense of self makes them unpleasant to work with. We may actually have bigger egos than they do, but we manage them better. Someone with “a big ego” is likely someone who, for whatever reason, is not self-aware enough to realize their lack of respect for others. Or worse, realizes it but either doesn’t care, or takes pleasure in making people feel bad. Somewhere deep down inside they probably know it. Odds are good they’re taking it out on everyone else, as they don’t have the courage or the tools to focus that energy on improving themselves.

Lack of ego can be equally disastrous. On the one side too much ego prevents humility and too little ego prevents confidence. Arrogance is the opposite of humility and excessive self-importance is synonymous with what's referred to as an oversized ego. An out of control ego can hurt you in any area of your life. Ego can be helpful to men in business and in love, but when a man's ego is out of control, he'll fail in both areas of life so, there is obviously some balancing to do if you have to head towards your fondest dreams.

From another perspective, an oversized ego is one of the central elements that cause leaders to auto-destruct. If you look at leaders in real life, you'll discover that some people in leadership roles maintain their effectiveness over time, but that others go from being effective to becoming ineffective, sometimes becoming destructive forces in their organizations. How can this be? One common cause of this kind of negative shift involves the ego that can occur when someone is in a leadership position and loses perspective about his or her role in the organization. It's not uncommon for someone who has power and authority to come to believe that he or she is far more important, knowledgeable and able than is really the case.

Leaders who allow their egos to run rampant will tend to stop doing what made them successful in the first place. For example, a leader may succeed because he or she created good relationships with those around him or her, listening, responding, and so on. With success (and the belief that it's the leader that is creating great success), some leaders will stop listening, and become out of touch.

All of this boils down to the concrete fact that succeeding in life and especially achieving your fondest dreams is hinged on balancing your levels of ego such that it does not get oversized and dampen your will to positively self-motivated.