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How do pride and ego fit in with fear and anger?

How do pride and ego fit in with fear and anger?

Do you take so much pride in what you accomplish that you let it inflate your ego? How do you react when you experience challenges or setbacks? When you struggle with something you take pride in, does your ego take a hit? When your ego takes a hit, do you feel fear, anger, both or neither?

When we take pride in our accomplishments, we have a deep level of satisfaction or pleasure in those accomplishments. When we take pride in ourselves, we have a deep level of satisfaction in our abilities and who we are. Taking pride in something or ourselves will build up our ego. When we fail at something that we had been able to accomplish in the past, our ego will be bruised. When we fail at something we were once good at, our ego will be bruised. The challenge is to keep our ego from becoming too inflated or too bruised.

When our ego becomes overinflated, we start to tell everyone how good we are. When we start to brag about how good we are, we begin to believe that we will always need to be that good or nobody will like us. When we feel like we make a mistake, our ego is bruised, or we do not live up to the expectations we set for ourselves, we begin to fear that people will leave us. When we fear we are doing something that will make people leave us, we become upset with ourselves. When we are afraid and upset with ourselves, we react to others with anger. Our reaction is what eventually leads people to leave us. We end up causing the very scenario we were trying to avoid.

Keeping yourself centered will keep you balanced so your ego does not get to bruised or too inflated.

How this applies to authentic empathy…

When it comes to authentic empathy and how pride and ego affect your reactions, to begin with, I invite you to have a high level of authentic empathy for others who have experienced your negative reactions. Neither you nor they knew where those reactions came from. When you reacted like you did, they were caught off-guard and caught by surprise. Inside, they started to feel like they were walking on eggshells. When approaching these people with a high level of authentic empathy, you create a fertile environment for forgiveness, understanding and authentic empathy. If you have been on the receiving end of someone’s negative reactions, it will require more strength at the beginning to give them the authentic empathy they need. I invite you to understand that they did not know where their reaction was coming from. I also invite you to see the work they are doing on themselves now and making the steps in the right direction to stop it from happening again.

How this applies to WACASHWI…

When it comes to WACASHWI and how pride and ego affect your reactions, if you find that your pride and ego do affect your reactions, I invite you to consider centering yourself and reducing the effect that pride and ego have on your reactions as one of the first things you work through on your list. Doing this will allow you to mend fences and prevent new rifts from forming. It will also increase the support network you have and give you more success fuel for your transformation.

Your daily invitations…

• I invite you to think about how pride and ego affect your reactions today.
• I invite you to consider if your pride and ego have recently had any negative effect on the people closest to you.
• I invite you to write down your thoughts, feelings, and actions in your journal.
• I invite you to talk about what you have realized and your thoughts with the people you considered above if it is safe to do so.
• I invite you to find a good coach, mentor, or therapist to help you work through things if you uncover that your pride and ego have led to major arguments or fights.

Final step – how will you implement one thing you learned today in your life?

This all is but one step in your journey to living a more stress-free life, beating the demons of fear, and raising your level of authentic empathy towards yourself and others.

I appreciate you!