Ego Lifting
About why it is hard to identify your own ego and getting rid of it.
It’s been a year now since I’ve started to exercise at home during quarantine. Have I done anything as consistent in my life before? I don’t know if I have but what I want to share today is a lesson or maybe a reminder I unexpectedly came across during this process. It’s about how not fighting your ego could be hugely detrimental towards your life.
I’m sure many people who lift weights has heard of this term before — “Ego lifting”. This term is used when someone lifts weight more than they could handle, usually just to show off and often resulting towards injury. As a beginner towards this trying to live healthy thing, I must say that I have fallen into this trap before. I was impatient and wanted to add more weight to my usual routine. Even though I haven’t been working out in a gym or around anyone, I guess I couldn’t control my ego that I wanted to be able to lift more which resulted in injuring my arm and wrist for a couple weeks.
For those couple of weeks, I had to stay away from movements which would cause pain on my wrist and arms which resulted on inhibiting my progress. It was an important lesson because these injuries could sometimes take a long time to heal and could even be permanent. Fortunately, the pain would soon go away as I gave it time to rest and fought the urge to quickly put back more weight on it.
That’s when I first thought up how that concept could apply on other aspects of my life as well. You could never underestimate my ability to philosophize every single little thing that happens in my life. I guess that’s fine as it keeps out the thought that life is ultimately meaningless. Anyway, maybe I do have ADHD. Anyway (2), I then remembered a few examples of how if I couldn’t identify and fight my own ego, it would be detrimental towards my personal growth as well.
Now talking about ego has always been a tough one to describe. It always likes to hide in plain sight which makes it hard to identify. It also seems to appear in different shapes in different people. Thought processes which includes ourselves being better than other people are often fuelled by it. Examples are thoughts about being more straight-edged or religious than others, undermining others who are lesser or learning something, and the unfathomable experience of admitting you were wrong. There will always be some sort of justification we make up to hide ego if we let it.
Maybe if I kept thinking I’m better than everyone else, I wouldn’t pick up new viewpoints and different opinions on things. Maybe if I always blamed my exes for the failure of my past relationships, I wouldn’t find anything to learn from them. Maybe if I kept thinking stock investments are basically the same as gambling, I wouldn’t be smarter in saving money. I realized I was wrong so many times since I own up to the possibility of being wrong and
It’s a tough journey and it might take a lifetime, but I’ve found that this realization is imperative towards our ability to grow. I also found a good way to keep my ego in check is to keep learning something new. It’s always somewhat humbling to start fresh, understanding the hard work of others to get to where they are. From there, I should be less likely to undermine people who are learning as well, especially learning from me in the future. Learning something new and not being scared of being a beginner again could help keep my ego in check.
