People have ambitions; they are striving ahead in life with fervor and sheer perseverance. However, they decline on the path to success while they are almost there due to their ego since they believe that they are more important than others and act as kings, humiliate their inferiors and subordinates, and their success has made them blind to the fact that we depend on one another, and the people we resent and push now, we may need them later in life. Couples who have been together for years fall apart and separate due to trivial issues, and one is not daring enough to say sorry and discuss issues with the other due to ego since he/she is not able to break his ego, which leads to destruction and collapse of their relationship. Ego creates life-threatening problems for us, leaving us alone in life, taking our loved ones from us, making our friendly environment hell—and making us miserable and depressed.
“Not me,” you think. “No one would ever call me an egomaniac.” Perhaps you’ve always thought of yourself as a pretty balanced person. But for people with ambitions, talents, drives, and potential to fulfill, ego comes with the territory. Precisely what makes us so promising as thinkers, doers, creatives, and entrepreneurs, what drives us to the top of those fields, makes us vulnerable to this darker side of the psyche.”
KEY POINTS:
- The ego is the enemy of your success.
- The ego creates walls between people which makes communication harder.
- An egomaniac faces long-term consequences for his acts.
The ego is the enemy of what you want and of what you have:
What happens when we achieve our goals, when we achieve more as compared to our peers, friends— and colleagues, we grow arrogant with time, and look down on those who are below us in status, rank—and wealth. When we succumb to our ego, people around us secretly resent us and do not respect us as they did before. Ego gradually pushes people away from us, we lose our strength from time to time.
“Ego is the enemy of what you want and of what you have: Of mastering a craft. Of real creative insight. Of working well with others. Of building loyalty and support. Of longevity. Of repeating and retaining your success. It repulses advantages and opportunities. It’s a magnet for enemies and errors. It is Scylla and Charybdis.”
Ego kills improvement:
It is hard for an egomaniac to work with people since he has created hurdles, which prevent them to get closer to him to discuss issues and important things which need to be sorted out to smoothly run a company or an institution, or any other workplace. People tend to avoid a person with ego problems because everyone wants to be heard carefully and their questions should be answered and their issues should be resolved as early as possible. An egomaniac person lives in his own fantasy world and does not entertain other people’s opinions and views, and they stay firm on his silly decisions.
The pioneering CEO Harold Geneen compared egoism to alcoholism: “The egotist does not stumble about, knocking things off his desk. He does not stammer or drool. No, instead, he becomes more and more arrogant, and some people, not knowing what is underneath such an attitude, mistake his arrogance for a sense of power and self-confidence.”
Long-term consequences:
An egomaniac wants to hear what he wants to hear, and people around him who are clever and good at reading people exactly tell him what he wants to hear, and it soothes his ego, makes him feel comfortable and superior, which makes him blind to the long-term goals and targets that they need to pursue with the help of his team, but owing to his ego, he meets a dead end in the end. A clever person would not just listen to what makes him feel comfortable, but rather he will listen to everyone and will reflect on their views. Diverse views have many advantages, and most of the time, we are blind to other areas which need improvements, and they are exposed to us by people around us.
The performance artist Marina Abramović puts it directly: “If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.”
Ego is the enemy of building, of maintaining, and of recovering:
It is difficult for an egomaniac person to maintain his successful life since he distances himself from others, pushes people away, and creates walls, which leads to his destruction. Ego not just prevents them from building their life but also prevents them from recovering after a defeat.
“Sure, ego has worked for some. Many of history’s most famous men and women were notoriously egotistical. But so were many of its greatest failures. Far more of them, in fact. But here we are with a culture that urges us to roll the dice. To make the gamble, ignoring the stakes.”
Conclusion:
The ego is a disease that kills relationships and takes what people have achieved over years. It is hard to maintain a higher position for an egomaniac person since people want to be respected and their issues should be solved, but a person who has an ego does not care about such things and prefer those who tell him what he wants to hear.
References:
- Holiday, R. (2019). Ego is the Enemy. Elex media komputindo.