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Your ego serves a purpose, but it can get it the way.
By Roland Legge — Written on Jan 04, 2021
You could not have survived your childhood without your ego. Your ego helped you to understand yourself as an individual. It enabled you to stay safe.
As you grow into adulthood, your ego — if left unchecked — will cause problems.
Your ego likes to keep you doing the familiar. It loves the status-quo. In this way, the Enneagram can help you determine how to keep it in check as you learn more about who you are.
Your ego wants to keep you safe, but it's robbing you of new and exciting experiences. Anytime you try something different, it will do its best to stop you through the inner critic's negative voice.
The Enneagram is a great way to stop your ego from controlling your life.
The first step is to discern your Enneagram type, and this can take some time.
There are nine different possibilities. The lens through which you experience the world is different for each of the nine Enneagram types.
Once you discover your type, the Enneagram provides you with a map for personal development. It shows you the places where you get stuck in your ego and how to become free.
As you become self-aware, you will catch yourself getting stuck in the delusion of the ego.
Here are 3 ways the ego deludes you and how the enneagram can help.
1. Your ego loves to lie.
Once you become an adult, your ego thinks it knows who you are. For your ego to keep its influence, it will lie to you so often that you won't see the difference between what's true and false.
It will lie to you about what you're capable of doing. It will tell you that you're stupid. It will tell you to keep to what you know than what you don't know.
It will yell at you to give up when trying something new. It will not allow anything to get in the way of its keeping its influence over you.
Your ego will try to turn you into its image. It will blind you from the truth of who you are.
No matter how many people try to warn you that you are on a path to self-destruction, your ego will make sure you reject these comments.
2. Fear is the best friend of your ego.
When you get stuck in your ego, anything that might liberate you from your ego's negativity will bring you into fear. Maybe you will be fearful of learning to drive, swimming, traveling, going back to school, getting married, and more.
The more stuck you are in your ego, the more you will be frightened at the thought of trying something new.
The more fearful you become, the more anxiety you will feel for things you have no control over.
However, when you face your fears, your ego will eventually let go when you show it that your best self is in charge.
3. Your ego loves negativity.
The more fearful you get, the more negative you get. Your negativity may push family and friends away.
Anything new that you might want to do will get attacked by your inner critic. It will tell you and anyone around you that your efforts are a waste of time.
Why bother learning something new? Your inner critic will remind you over and over that it will never work. It will remind you of all your failures.
You will start to echo negativity wherever you go. You will attract negative people around you, and you will push the positive people away.
Your head will be so full of the negative that you will have a hard time connecting to your true self. Your ego will be so loud that you will struggle to make a change in your life.
The good news is that you do not need to allow your ego to control you.
If you are feeling stuck in your ego, you may need professional help. If you are struggling to function every day, you might need a psychologist.
With the help of the Enneagram, you can learn to be self-aware. You can learn to notice the difference between the voice of your ego and the voice of your true self.
With practice, you will find the courage to follow your dreams. You will discover the inner courage that you never realized you had.
Every time you take a risk and try something new, you will gradually reduce your ego's power.
Your ego will never completely go away, but it will no longer control you as it did. You will discover your true self's power to show you what you are meant to be doing in the here and now.
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Roland Legge is a life coach who offers coaching through REL Consultants for individuals, couples, families, and executives to help them to be the best they can be. For more information, please arrange for a free 30-minute discovery call by sending an email.
This article was originally published at REL Consultants. Reprinted with permission from the author.