EGO – Boon or Bane for Excellence

EGO is an interesting thing, and a lot has been written about the same. Many people have defined it in many ways. Plenty of suggestions / recommendations regarding the same are available. It has been described in books / discourses as old as few thousands of years to the most modern theories of our time. It is mentioned that Ego is kind of perception of self, felt by oneself. It provides you the necessary strength to state/do what you believe in and do not get intimidated by the other egos in the surrounding but if the person’s ego becomes big then it can drive him/her to ground. It is also seen that more and more you achieve success, your ego starts becoming bigger and bigger without you noticing it. Many a times it is seen that people do not like to work for/with a person with bloated ego. It is also seen in the organization that many of the so called debates on what strategies to be adopted, which solution should be selected, how a program to be structured, etc. is actually battle of egos of the stakeholder and typically egos find various avenues to showcase themselves to other egos and establish its supremacy over others. We can continue writing things about ego for pages and pages but it will not end, I want to examine how ego plays out when we talk about Excellence

As we know excellence is a continuous journey wherein we try to climb steps which take us to the higher level of excellence and there is absolutely no difference in personal and professional life. It simply means that we need to identify that we are now comfortable of performing certain activity at specific level of performance and then trigger our mental process to see what would be the next step on the ladder of excellence. It is extremely critical that we identify this state as early as possible and prevent getting in to the resistance barrier that is created by the Zone of Comfort. So how do we identify this stage at the earlier? Well, our ego comes in handy for this. When we feel that we are doing a specific activity comfortably and successfully, we start getting recognition from the external world in some form or other for the same. This recognition starts building up our ego and our ego starts growing. We need to observe ourselves, as soon as we consider ourselves as “experts” or “go to guys” for a specific type of activity, it is time to look beyond. It is time to look at the next step.

Ego can also be used to provoke us to take the next step. It is our ego, which typically helps us with an urge to do something better by looking at other egos surrounding it. Some one has said that you need to be with some one to become like that some one. There is a connotation that when you will be with this some one, you will observe that some one and imbibe the best practice observed in to you. I feel that in reality, it is our ego which continuously wants to become bigger and is always in search of ways and means to become bigger. So a bigger ego is identified in the form of someone like whom you want to become and our ego starts getting associated with it and see how it can become bigger through doing certain activities, acquiring some more skills, positions, etc.  So one needs to identify and examine this urge to become like some one at the earliest but keep a watch as to whether the ego is asking us to learn new things or prevent others from learning new things so that our ego remains intact. We need to ensure that our ego is pointing towards learning and positive things.

Ego can actually be very useful to push ourselves while we are climbing the excellence ladder. It being a perception of self, it actually can act like a positive spiral in our journey of excellence.  

The same ego can also create significant problems in the journey we have undertaken. We know that many a times, we need to “Unlearn” few things before we “Learn” few things required for our next level of excellence. The ego plays its part in facilitating this process in reverse manner. It normally prevents us from unlearning, it does not accept that what ever he was doing was not correct, which actually gets portrayed as weakness and ego kind of becomes small. Ego never likes to become small so it prevents us from really accepting “unlearning”. We see many times during the discussion that we kind of “agree in principle” but do not actually implement the change agreed. If we do not implement the new things, we do not move to the higher level of excellence and higher level of ego. So, many a times, ego directs us to do things which will reduce the surrounding egos. This is detrimental and starts a negative spiral in our journey of excellence.

We now come to question whether ego is boon or bane for excellence?

Although the paragraphs above have depicted that ego can play boon and bane with respect to excellence; I believe that it can be used as boon if we are able to identify our ego. Many a times we take actions, which we feel right but they actually are dictated by our ego. So as mentioned earlier, if we act based on things we “agree in principle but do not act” we will be able to move forward. We will also need to look at our actions, if they seem to be against the over all direction of entire operations, that is typically result of negative spiral run by our ego. So we need to be aware of this and stop those actions. So “Ego is boon for excellence if we keep it in control”.

“Just do it” for Excellence

As we know, excellence is a journey and we continuously move from one level of excellence to next higher level of excellence be it personal life or professional. It is a gradual process and each person or organization goes through the same individually. One needs to regularly analyse self and decide the next steps to be taken in order to move to the next level of excellence. The world surrounding us is continuously moving forward and if we do not take these steps then we actually move backwards. This is why we need to take those actions to keep pace with the world if not outstep. It is critical that we take these actions at the earliest to see the positive results of our movement.

If we look at this in a little different angle, we see that we want to move from one level of excellence to another level of excellence; we need to change something we do or manner in which we think or way in which we approach a particular thing. When we want to change something with oneself, we need to take that first step which requires all the courage we have, we need to shed the inhibition we feel about what others will say and take that first step. 90%+ population typically lie in dilemma whether to take the action or not. This is where the famous Nike tag line “Just Do It” comes in handy. Just Do it, said very simply and effectively, telling “take that action immediately without bothering about external world”.

There is another quote by Tony Robbins “A real decision is measured by the fact that you have taken a new action. If there is no action, you haven’t truly decided”. A very apt sentence; the surrounding world actually interprets our decision and its seriousness based on what actions we take. One can find the difference between what one talks and how one acts and if these two are matching, the change takes place. As said by CG Jung, “You are what you do, not what you say you will do”.

The major reason for not taking any action preventing the improvement in our level of excellence is our fear of failure or fear of reaction of the external world. That is the reason why we need courage to take that first action. Conrad Hilton has said “Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving, they make mistakes, but they don’t quit”. We need to bring that courage out to continuously push us to act and continue to act inspite of mistakes that we might make. We need to use the mistakes to learn more and act better. There is another shloka by Shri Samartha Ramdas Swami in Marathi

Kelyane hot ahe re | Adhi kelechi pahije ||

Yatna to dev janava | Antari dharita bare ||

Which means the action will give the results we want, but first we need to perform that act. Unless that action is taken we cannot see the results. Efforts to make these actions are key and need to be continuously undertaken.

If we look at this tendency of procrastination over taking the first step and resulting stagnation at same level of excellence for a long period; this quote by John F Kennedy provides answer and necessary push to look out for action the quote reads like “There are risks and costs to every action but they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction”. The mental block which protests to change and tries to keep at the comfortable zone of current surroundings will lead us to stagnate at current level of excellence and over a period of time, we will actually move backwards as the world would have moved forward. Wayne Greteki says “You miss 100% of shots you don’t take” very simple and very powerful. Unless you take action, you will not see the improvement in the level of excellence so just to ensure that there is improvement, you need to take action. It is possible that you will get success in a few actions but atleast you will see a corresponding improvement. If we do not take any action, it is guaranteed that we will not see any improvement.

So it is extremely critical to take that first step at the earliest. Keep aside all the questions raised by your mind; if you have come to conclusion after analyzing the situation that certain actions are necessary to reach the new level of excellence, then JUST TAKE THOSE ACTIONS. You may want to split these actions in to several baby steps so that you can conjure the courage to execute those. See the results and encourage yourself to take some more actions. As Lao Tzu has said, “The Journey of thousand miles begins with a single step”; in this journey of improvement in the excellence level, you will need to train your mind to continuously identify these baby steps and executing them without any pressure. I am sure that success will be yours.