My Battle with Ego
How I Got Out of My Own Way
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However, I didn't tell the management company the truth. Just that it would be used for, "business purposes."
Naturally, I chose to rent another unit in the building and essentially live for free!
My Place
Airbnb Place
In January alone, I made more than twice my rent.
Through March, I flourished. With Airbnb taking my mind off my cost of living, I was able to explore new revenue streams and take risks.
This short-term comfort comes at a terrible cost.
When a problem isn't your fault, then you won't feel that you have to solve it.
You will almost certainly lash out with your blame and make everything worse.
The further you dig yourself into this hole, the more you will have to continue blaming others until you finally start blaming yourself.
The only way out, is to confront your failures, and learn from them.
My ego immediately started blaming everyone for the problem.
Back in April, I fell flat on my face.
Living in Florida, I recognized a huge opportunity this winter to Airbnb my place in downtown St. Petersburg.
Then just as I took one of my biggest business risks yet, the management company evicted me for breaking the lease agreement.
It only feeds your ego.
Ego is worried about what you say, how you look, and what others think about you.
When you face tough circumstances like I did in April, ego is there to tell you that it's everyone else's fault.
Which also included paying the rent on the empty place until they could find a replacement tenant.
So I now had to make 2 rent payments. Goodbye, free cost of living.
Ego has held many definitions throughout history, but I think of it as my internal "Politician."
As I was experiencing all of these emotions, I realized just how dangerous the ego can be.
At that moment in April, I decided that my number one goal for however long it takes...
I will defeat my ego by bringing my best self to every moment.
It doesn't matter.
Blaming someone for a problem doesn't solve it.
Here is each step I've taken since then in pursuit of bringing my best self to every moment.
#1 Create a sleep routine.
If you struggle to get to sleep at night, you can thank your ego.
The worries that run through your head as you try to sleep are the ego nagging at you incessantly.
I've struggled for a long time to establish a sleep routine.
My determination to solve this problem, rather than blame people for it, finally gave me the motivation I needed to do it.
#2 Increase your self-awareness.
The next place that my ego was hiding was in the results.
If your goals and progress are vague or abstract, you have no idea how to improve.
So the ego turns to blame someone or something for why you're not successful.
It hurts looking at your own failures. But if you have the will to look at them, you have the ability to make good decisions about them.
#3 Notice your thoughts and emotions.
So many of our judgments about ourselves are subconscious responses to our emotions.
Last week, I was exhausted after a long day of work.
Immediately, this feeling turned to negative thoughts about my self-worth.
My ego turned a perfectly rational feeling of being tired from working all day, to the idea that I'm, "not cut out to be an entrepreneur."
Taking time to simply notice how your emotions influence your thoughts in this way can help you overcome those negative feelings about yourself.
#4 Understand what makes a difference.
One of the hardest lessons I had to learn through this process is discovering what really matters.
The Universe doesn't care what I say, it doesn't care what I think, it doesn't care about my dreams, vision, or all the things I'm "going to do."
Ego wants you to believe that saying you're "an environmentalist" is good enough. The environment, however, doesn't care what you say. It cares about the consequences of your actions.
#5 Leave social media.
There is one place where ego loves to convince me that talking is the same as doing – social media.
Social media trains your brain to favor talk over action.
With every post, tweet, and instagram, you worry about what other people will think about it.
It trains you to see the world in terms of objects, that you can use for your own validation.
Whatever benefits come from social media, this wasn't worth the price to me.
#6 Create a concrete plan.
However, ego is just as likely to convince me that I'm "righteous" for leaving social media. And that I should just hit the "eject button."
Instead, I needed to understand that social media is a reality, and my best-self needs to account for it.
This understanding led me to a profound question highlighted in Ryan Holiday's book, Ego is the Enemy – "To be," or "To do."
#7 "To be," or "To do?"
In other words, do I want "to be important?"
Or do I want "to do important things?"
The temptation to seek attention, to blame others for problems, and to give in to the comforting voice of the ego will be with all of us until we die.
But every moment that you choose "to do," the volume of the ego grows a little quieter – and your best-self makes the world a little better for the people around you.