Ego is something that many people struggle with. Some say to avoid and despise it. Some say to embrace it. Others say to transcend it. How you relate to your ego is up to you – this post will share the consequences of ego as well as possible solutions for diminishing the negative aspects of those consequences in your life.
Consequences of a High Ego
Lack of Care and Empathy
There’s a difference between confidence and ego. I always encourage you to believe in yourself and to be confident about your abilities. High ego is when everything is about you. When everything becomes about you, you develop a lack of care and empathy for others.
The best leaders have empathy for others, so a high ego will prevent you from being the best leader you can be. When you lack empathy, you don’t fully think through, know, and understand the consequences of your actions for others. Essentially, high ego people don’t care what others are experiencing.
An Empty Illusion
Living within the constraints of a big ego is like living in an empty illusion. A good metaphor here is a black hole – your ego always wants more but never feels fulfilled; ego brings about more ego in a downward spiral.
To be vulnerable here, I sometimes find myself caught up in my own ego. When I listen to music I fantasize about seeing certain people from my past and “being the man” in front of them, as if I have something to prove to them about my worth – including people I didn’t especially get along with. Put simply, my ego wants to be liked and admired by everyone, which is an unrealistic goal in a world with so many different people and opinions.
For example, I imagine being back at college in the “quad”, a big central square in the center of the whole campus. My ego imagines a lot of my former classmates gathered there and seeing me show up. The fantasy then plays out with me being a stud in front of everyone by talking to popular, intimidating people and holding my own.
There’s nothing wrong with being excited to see people, though even if I were to return to my college for homecoming I wouldn’t see everyone in the quad, but likely in a different setting like a bar or something of that sort. And the situation probably wouldn’t play out as I imagine it in my mind.
I’m not talking about visualizing or setting goals here – I’m talking about fantasizing about impractical, even ridiculous scenarios that probably wouldn’t happen in the first place. The ego then diminishes the spontaneous enjoyment of the way the experience actually plays itself out.
Lack of Realism
Closely related to the previous point but with its own nuance, a high ego creates a lack of realism in your life. This leads you to not facing reality. Not facing reality can cause you to lose touch with your core and the truth of who you are. When you don’t face reality, you lose touch with the way things really are.
While it’s important to have a vision and dream big dreams, authentic leaders are in touch with reality.
There are ways through awareness to flip ego on its head and find its opposite if you choose for that to be the case. The consequences of high ego are not all bad if you stay aware and understand how to best process those consequences. For example, if you start to realize that you have a lack of realism, you can begin to change that.
Hard to Admit You’re Wrong
High ego makes it hard to admit you’re wrong or that you made a mistake. We all make many mistakes, and it’s an important skill as an authentic leader to say something along the lines of, Look – I screwed up and this is on me. Where do we go from here?
A great example of someone who recently admitted they’re wrong is Snoop Dogg. For the record: I support Snoop Dogg on this one and have his back. With that said, he did make a mistake. After Kobe Bryant’s death, reporter Gayle King asked Lisa Leslie some outrageous and insulting questions about Kobe’s legacy. Gayle inquired about some mistakes Kobe made in his life and even implied that Lisa, as Kobe’s friend, couldn’t see the full negative impact of those mistakes in Kobe’s behavior.
I get that Gayle was doing her job. I say this with the utmost respect: it wasn’t the right time to bring up something like that, and in the way in which she brought it up. Kobe Bryant just passed away a few weeks ago at the time of the interview and the world was in mourning. In my opinion, it was disrespectful to Kobe’s family to harp on one of Kobe’s mistakes like that, especially when Kobe isn’t around anymore to defend himself. Kobe admitted to his wrongdoing and paid for his mistake, literally and figuratively – now it’s time to move on and focus on the wonderful legacy he left us with.
Snoop Dogg proceeded to make a video swearing at Gayle and calling her some harsh names. While I’m right there with Snoop as far as how he felt, he could have phrased it in a better and more mature way. Some people were offended by the way Snoop verbally attacked Gayle, and while I’m more on Snoop’s side with this situation overall, I do get why people didn’t like Snoop’s cruel words.
The point is, Snoop could have hidden behind a high ego and chosen to not apologize. Instead, he publicly apologized to Gayle King, and Gayle accepted that apology. I’m still annoyed by Gayle’s tasteless actions (we all have a job to do, but there are things that come higher than that like respecting the family enough to give them space to heal before bringing up mistakes) – but Snoop was a great leader and example by choosing to own up to his impulsive reaction instead of defending himself.
If you refuse to ever own up to your mistakes, you become a bad example for others and only further solidify your ego.
Quickly Removing Someone From Your Life
High ego people are very quick to remove someone from their life, even for the slightest faults (and sometimes for things that aren’t even faults).
There’s a delicate nuance here. As an authentic leader, it’s important to get away from the wrong people and hang around with the right people. The key is that authentic leaders do this respectfully and without making people feel bad about themselves. Just because someone doesn’t suit your network doesn’t mean you need to put them down in any way or make them feel crappy. Also, authentic leaders step away from bad people for the right reasons.
High ego people, on the other hand, cut people out of their lives immediately, without warning, and often for inauthentic reasons. For example, I had a mentor in the past who I frequently spoke on the phone with for many years. He’s a successful guy, I respected him, and for many years I always got back to him as soon as I could.
One summer day, while my girlfriend was visiting me from another country, this mentor called me. My girlfriend and I were in a long-distance relationship for many years, and still are together and now living with one another – at the time, I didn’t get to see my girlfriend a lot due to living in different countries, so the time we did have together was absolutely precious.
I didn’t get back to my mentor for a number of days because I was focusing on time with my girlfriend. Instead of following up with me or asking what was up, he proceeded to completely block me across all social media channels and never speak to me again – all because I didn’t call him back as soon as he would have preferred. The relationship is now completely dead.
Had he asked me why I wasn’t getting back to him right away, I would have been more than happy to tell him what was going on with my long-distance relationship. But he didn’t even give me a chance. He felt offended that I didn’t respond to him right away and decided to end the relationship. I myself don’t like it when people ignore me, but I feel that my mentor took it to an extreme – I have plenty of friends who need some time to get back to me, and I don’t feel offended about that. I start to get annoyed if I follow-up with someone two or three times and they don’t respond – even then, I usually don’t resort to deleting them on social media, especially if we had good interactions in the past.
This mentor of mine, who was caught up in his own ego, went from talking to me all the time to instantly cutting me out of his life for what I believe to be an imagined offense. Had he been patient, I would have gotten back to him in a few weeks. When you have a high ego, you cut people out of your life for the wrong reasons.
I spoke with a good friend of mine who was also friends with this mentor guy, and my friend agreed that this mentor of mine does have a high ego.
“When someone has high ego,” my friend said, “and they cut you out of their life – that’s it, the relationship is done for good. They’ll never admit to possibly having made a mistake.”
Please note: I now think about and focus on the powerful things I learned from this former mentor of mine over the many years we spoke with one another, not the weird and unexpected way in which the relationship ended. With that said, it was still a good example to use here because of its relevancy.
Solutions to Ego
Some of the solutions to ego are built-in to the consequences, so this section will be somewhat of a recap of what was discussed in addition to adding in some new content.
Face Reality Exactly as It Is
One of the solutions to the ego is to face reality. The best and most authentic leaders face reality exactly as it is. As we’ve learned, the consequences of ego can be both negative and positive. When you face reality, depending on your reaction, you can either feel humbled in a life-affirming way, or you can feel like a failure and not good enough.
The way to feel humbled in a life-affirming way involves:
- Counting your blessings and focusing on what you DO have
- Thinking of the lessons learned from a difficult situation
- Changing from within and from your core, instead of from an artificial and surface-level perspective
- Staying in awareness
As I talked about in my award-winning book Reach Your Mountaintop, if you get too high on yourself you will have a crash. That’s why it’s important to stay grounded so that you don’t force life to teach you a lesson the hard way.
Be Present and In-The-Moment As Much as You Can
In addition to using humility to your advantage, another powerful solution and antidote to ego is to being and becoming present in the now. I want to acknowledge how hard it can be to be present, especially when you’re struggling with something – I know this first-hand. With that said, becoming present can be a practice that you become increasingly better at over time.
If you slip up and find yourself losing the present moment, don’t beat yourself up – it happens to the best of us. Instead, gently remind yourself to focus on this moment as it is. Focus on your breath. The past is over and the future is an illusion – there’s only ever now. Again, I know this is easier said than done, but it is a powerful solution to ego and therefore is worth discussing.
Consider implementing a practice in your life of reflection, meditation, and/or mindfulness. Also, going for walks outside can be a helpful way to get out of your own head. Calling or texting a close friend can help, too.
Bringing It All Together
Ego is no joke. It ruins lives, destroys relationships, and creates so much anger. But if we can become aware of the negative consequences of ego, we can more easily step into the truth of our being by staying humble and present.
