HealthyGamerGG - Can You Have a Healthy Ego?

Episode Date: August 8, 2022

Today Dr. K talks about Ego, its purpose, protecting the mind, comparison, and more. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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That's D-R-I-Z-L-Y.com today. If you look at victims of trauma, they have self-image issues. This is conserved within humanity. That if you take a child and you're emotionally abusive to them for years and years and years, they will adapt to that way of thinking. And one of the survival mechanisms that they adopt is actually that they start to think lowly of themselves. If I don't deserve love in the first place, it doesn't hurt to not get love. So what we've learned at HG is missing one huge component.

Since the start of HD, we've steered clear of assertiveness and dominance. I know this is a touchy subject, but I honestly believe it must be addressed and more importantly taught. Dr. K has taught us about the Ahumgar or the ego and how to notice when it activates. The important takeaway here is that you should be in control of your ego and not the other way around, but I also see a huge issue here. I believe that in our community, including me, the majority of people have self-image issues. So in any scenario of conflict of interest, our intellect is going to rationalize that we should go, we should place our needs in second place so we can deal with our ego responses. I don't know exactly what that means, but this will lead to overly agreeableness, which is going to create a lot of problems in interpersonal relationships, because your bad self-image is going to make it impossible to make a strong case for yourself and stand your ground as you covertly feel.

that you don't deserve it slash have any chance. Thus far, Dr. Kay has talked about the parent-child relationship and also the work or workspace relationship, but what about the relationship between you and your peers, especially in group settings? I see a huge lack of education here. Also, I believe that noticing your ego and controlling it is important, yet learning how to build a healthy ego first should be the first goal. analogous to this is the relationship between worldly and spiritual success.

I think Dr. Kay has talked about this in one of his streams where he explained that trying for spiritual success can be escapism when you're basically fleeing from worldly successes. In the same way, I believe that controlling the ego while you've never had a good, healthy, and strong ego that is not keeping you down is escapism. I would really love to hear Dr. Kay's opinion on this, and maybe he has some good advice on how to be more assertive and dominant is a tool to manage your way through life. Controlling the ego is all well, but you will face moments in your life where you have to make a stand for yourself, otherwise you will turn into a pushover.

Okay, just my quick thoughts. I think there is more to say to this, but you get the point, I hope. So I think this is a really important post for a couple of reasons. The first is that it's pointing out a potential. potential deficiency in what we've covered so far. So I think that's really important. The second is that and we don't really ever talk about how to build a healthy ego. We sort of do, but I'm realizing now there have been absolutely deficiency in what I've taught. The other thing that's really important here is that this person seems to have done a lot of their homework, has been a part of the

community for a long time, has understood a lot of these issues. So what this person is kind of saying is that, okay, noticing and controlling the ego, so if I have an identity that has a low self-image, and if I think of myself as a bad person, controlling my self-image of being bad is a piece of the puzzle, absolutely. But we haven't really talked about how do I build a healthy ego to begin with, right? Like, it's one thing to be able to control a negative self-image. But the crux of what I'm hearing this person say is how do we create a healthy ego? So today what we're going to talk about is how to make a healthy ego.

So let's start by understanding what is the point of ego? Because oftentimes when we talk about ego, we talk about it in a negative light. Right? So like, oh, your ego, you have all these negative self-image issues. And the ego is bad. And we need to get control of our ego. So the first thing to understand is that the ego is neither good nor bad. It is a tool of the mind.

So the three major pillars of mind are going to be emotions, our manas, Aramkara, or ego are the sense of self or identity, and our buddi or our intellect. These three things relate to each other. Okay? They interact with each other. Now, the thing is, are any of these things good or bad? Like neither. What makes them good or bad is depending on how out of control they are.

So let's take emotions, for example. Or emotions good or are they bad? Well, it depends. So if my emotions rule my life, then that's a problem. Right? If I can't control my emotions, feeling emotions isn't necessarily bad. Feeling them too intensely, being controlled by them, like if I'm so anxious that I can't go to a party and then I let that anxiety control my life, then that's a problem. Ego is the same way.

So the reason that we sort of focus a lot on ego is because when the ego gets out of our control, it starts controlling us and controlling our life. And as the person sort of mentioned, a lot of people in our community may have self-image issues, self-esteem issues, et cetera, right? This isn't because we're a weak community or anything like that. That's because the way that technology is especially shaping us, right? So we're like sort of doing a lot of ego-inflating stuff, like on social media. I get likes.

I don't get as many likes as this person. So the more that we compare ourselves to other people, the worse our ego gets. So we sort of talk about controlling the ego because for a lot of people, it causes problems. And the third part of our mind is the intellect, which that too, if it gets out of control, will be really problematic for us. So not really a direct example, but an interesting example is we'll have people who are hyper-intellectual. And their mind is so logical, but then they still, like, run into trouble. Because the truth is, you can logically come up with something, but it's not going to change your behavior.

Right? I logically know I should never eat another hot dog for the rest of my life. Easy. I should eat broccoli and cabbage every day. I should have brown rice instead of white rice. I should never eat another cookie, never have another soda, never drink alcohol, never smoke a cigarette, never use marijuana. I know exactly what I should do. I should exercise every day.

I should uninstall all the video games off my phone. I should, I mean, sorry, on my car. computer. I should uninstall all the social media off of, you know, I know what I should do. Logically, it's easy. I figured everything out because I'm so smart. But that doesn't fix our life. So the key thing to understand about all the parts of the mind is that they're good, they're healthy. They're there for a reason. They're also conserved across every human mind, right? So like, there's a reason that we've evolved to have these. So let's start by understanding what's the point of ego. Why do we even have this thing if it's out of whack so much?

So ego is essentially a tool of efficiency. So in order to navigate the world, our mind needs an ego. So I'll give you all just a simple example. So when I go eat at a restaurant, let's say, with a group of my work colleagues, where do I sit? Who orders? Who pays the bill? All of that has to do.

based on ego or identity, who's the boss? Right? So like, because there's a social hierarchy amongst human beings, which we have social hierarchies, right? We know this. The way that we navigate social hierarchies is via ego. So where do I fit into the pecking order? That's all like, that's what ego allows us to do.

Imagine how on earth are we supposed to do stuff if we don't have any sense of identity or social hierarchy? like if I'm, you know, married to someone, that's a part of my identity. And that helps me navigate a lot of different things. Like what's okay for me to do and what's not okay for me to do? What's okay for my partner to do and what's not okay for my partner to do? So identity or ego helps us navigate social relationships, which is a big part of why comparison is a huge part of ego.

So I can't compare myself to other people unless I have an identity. Does that make sense? I can't be taller or shorter than someone else unless I have a height. And assigning a height to my identity is what allows me to make the comparison. The converse is also true where the more comparisons I make, the more my ego gets out of control or grows or strengthens, let's say, not necessarily in a healthy way. Does that make sense? So, for example, in medical school or in residency, like when I'm an attending physician, so I used to be a medical student.

Above the medical student is an intern. Above the intern is the resident. Above the resident is the fellow. And above the fellow is the attending. And I've basically been through most of those. Didn't do fellowship. Right? So there's like a hierarchy.

And who's in charge? Who's responsible? When someone speaks, does everyone else quiet down? And then things get confusing in the hospital setting because there's also the nursing staff and other auxiliary staff. So then there's like the nurse who's taking care of the patient. And then there's the charge nurse who the nurse reports to. And then there's the med tech, the medical tech, who's kind of like reports to the nurse. But then like things get sticky if you all have been in a hospital situation when it's like,

and the doctor's kind of at the top of the team, right? but then like what's the relationship between resident and charge nurse or resident and nurse or fellow in charge nurse that's when things get super confusing what's the relationship between medical student and med tech can the medical student give the med tech orders can the med tech give medical students orders so the reason like the way that we navigate all these complex relationships are ego and in a medical setting improper ego is 100% going to cause all kinds of problems in that hospital setting. And boy, have I seen it, it's incredibly common because people don't know how to manage their

ego is in hospital. And it's not just like doctors that don't know how to manage their egos or nurses that don't know how to manage their. Anyone can have an ego. Medical student can absolutely have an ego, even though they're at the absolute bottom of the totem pole. So we'll use phrases like needs to learn their place. And this is where like even as an attending, it's important for me to check my ego

and listen to the medical student. because here's the really important thing that you understand as an attending once you hopefully get this. Who actually knows the patient the best? As an attending, I'm responsible for 30 patients. I've got two residents on my team. One resident, let's say one resident on my team and two interns on my team. Resident is also sort of responsible for all 30. Personally manages 10 and each of the interns get 10 each.

medical student responsible for three. Nursing staff, each nurse has, let's say, six patients. Who knows the patient the best on the team? The nurse. Sometimes the medical student. So I would be an idiot if when a nurse comes to me and says, hey, I think you should consider doing this with a patient if I don't listen to them. I don't necessarily have to do it, right?

So I have more training, right? So they can say, hey, I really think you should consider this for this patient. There may be other reasons to not do that thing. But if I let my ego get in the way, like I should acknowledge that I have more training. I may have more experience. And ultimately, it's my responsibility, right? So I'm the one who's going to get sued.

If something goes bad. But it would be like absolutely idiotic for me to like not listen to what the nurse says. And even in the case of medical students, it's like, okay, if you like, because the medical student is going to, is supposed to read. And sometimes you have good medical students who will read all kinds of stuff about their patience. So why do we have ego to navigate these social relationships is a big part of it? Figuring out things like pecking order and hierarchy and stuff like that. There's more to ego, but that's just the simplest example of why we have it. So then the question becomes, okay,

how do we build a healthy one? So the first thing that I kind of want to point out is that the function of the ego is to protect the mind. So generally speaking, the ego activates when we are in a negative emotional state. So it tries to protect us. Our mind is like, oh my God, we're feeling bad. And the ego is like, let me help you with that. I will help us feel better by putting other people down or pumping myself up. Because that's what the ego does, usually.

We'll get to a couple of nuances. So this person was mean to us. Let's talk crap about behind their back and tell everyone how there's such a mean person. And the more that we throw shade on that person, the less it hurts us that this person said something mean about us. By devaluing our critic, we can feel better about ourselves. Right. So there are different ways you can devalue the criticism. That's different from devaluing the critic.

So that's what the mind does. Or it tells us, oh, like, they're not all that. So the classic example is person A asks person B out. Person B says no. Person A feels rejected and start saying stuff like, oh, I wasn't that into them. I dodged a bullet. They start telling themselves all kinds of things to help them feel better, to get rid of the rejection. Right?

Because the more you convince yourself that you dodged a bullet, the less it hurts to, then you're not rejected, right? You dodge. It was a win, actually. They turned you down. Wow, look at how lucky I was. Copium. Well said. So the ego is the matter.

of copium. The interesting thing is that even low self-image is a strong ego. It's a big ego. And you may say, wait, wait, how does that work? I thought ego was like devaluing other people. So remember, the goal of the ego is to protect you from negative emotions. So how does having a low self-image protect you from negative emotions? Don't bother applying for the promotion because you're not going to get it. Boom. Safe. No rejection. You can't be passed over if you don't apply. Don't ask that person out. There's no way they'll say yes. There's no way they'd go out with you.

No rejection. Easy. So this is the most devastating thing. And we understand this, right? So like, if you look at victims of trauma, they have self-image issues. This is conserved within humanity. That if you take a child and you're emotionally abusive to them for years and years and years, they will adapt to that way of thinking.

And one of the survival mechanisms that they, adapt, is actually that they start to think lowly of themselves. Because if I don't deserve love in the first place, it doesn't hurt to not get love. It's such a devastating but effective way to protect yourself from being unloved. It's like the last ditch effort. Because if I deserve love and I'm abused by my parent, it hurts so much if I deserve something else. But if I didn't deserve it in the first place,

like that's easier to manage. There's the pain of the actual abuse, but it's not like I deserved it anyway. In fact, it's just, it's just. It's the way the world is supposed to work. So I can even get some degree of peace over that. And what you see with people

who have self-image issues is if people start treating them well, they get very confused. Because their identity is like, like, wait, I don't deserve this positive treatment. I'm confused. Where's the trick? When is it going to stop? What are you, what's your game here? What's your angle? You're treating me well. Like, what are you, what are you trying to get? It's all based on what you deserve, the identity of who you are. And so we can have big egos that are in a positive direction as well, where we sort of get more

traditional narcissism, which, by the way, recent research has basically shown is also tied to insecurity, which we've kind of known for a while, right? So at the end of the day, there's always insecurity at the bottom of ego. So this is where you start to get arrogant if you've got a big ego. I know the best. And then if I'm the smartest person in the room and I know best, what happens when someone else on my team, if I'm the attending and I'm the boss? And my resident comes in with a research paper that has demonstrates that the plan that I have for the patient isn't the best plan for the patient. And actually there's a new study that shows that we should do something else instead.

And I'm an egotistical attending. How do I respond to that? I know best. Who is this pipsqueak bringing in this random paper? Does this idiot understand that one paper does not make clinical care? That's sort of true, right? You can't necessarily base clinical care based on a single paper. It's not that simple.

But my ego can't handle that someone else knows more than I do, so I shut them down. And then that hurts the patient. because we should consider it, right? So this is big ego and small league. I mean, sorry, sort of a negative self-image ego and a positive self-image ego. But if the ego is big, that's still going to be a problem in either way. You can be arrogant or insecure. Same problem.

It's all a hum-gad, at least according to the Eastern perspective. And I think the more that we learn in the West, the closer we're getting to the Eastern perspective, by the way. And the other thing that's kind of interesting about Eastern versus Western psychology is the third wave of psychotherapy. So the first wave of psychotherapy was like psychoanalysis and psychodynamics. Second wave was cognitive behavioral therapy, which was much more behavioristic, much more manualized, protocolized, scientific. The third wave of psychotherapy is like psychotherapy plus mindfulness. And what we've discovered as a field is when we start incorporating these Eastern ideas of the mind

into our treatment protocols, things actually work really well. So I think Western psychology is quickly learning the value. of Eastern psychology. The interesting thing is that they don't even think about it that way. They just think about it as mindfulness. There's a ton that's still left to learn. So if you want to build a healthy ego, there are five things that you can do. The first is to recognize that comparison feeds the ego.

So the more you compare, the less healthy your ego will become. And this is important to understand. Thinking of myself is better than other people or worse. than other people is both of those are going to lead to unhealthy ego, right? Because one's going to make me arrogant. We don't want to be arrogant. One is going to make me have low self-esteem. I don't want to have low self-esteem. So try to limit your comparison as much as possible. And this is where the person who wrote this post, I think, missed one really crucial thing, which, I mean, the reason I missed it is because I've never articulated it this way. So they didn't actually miss it. It's my fault.

But the key thing is that when we talk about noticing and controlling is important, yet learning how to build a healthy ego should be the first goal. The way that you build a healthy ego is by noticing the ego. This is actually one of the key components. Noticing the ego is actually a key step to building a healthy ego. And how does that work? it's because as you notice, oh, look, I'm comparing myself to this person again. Actually, I don't even know why it's fair.

I'm comparing myself to, let's say, Artizi in terms of Dota skill. It's a professional player, for those of you don't play Dota. I'm comparing myself to double lift, right? So I'm comparing myself to XQC. Or I'm comparing myself to whoever. Any kind of comparison is going to result in growing your ego. So noticing that comparison and recognizing, oh, by the way, all these people are just different from me. I have a completely different set of background.

I have a completely different upbringing. I have a completely different set of advantages and disadvantages. I'm me and they are them. They can still be better at Dota than I am, but it has nothing to do with me as an identity. Like, it doesn't make me a bad human being, right? So noticing is a key part, but you want to try to reduce comparison as much as possible. So comparison is key and noticing is key. that's actually how you build a healthy ego, is to recognize the actions of the ego.

Oh, so I'm not speaking up here because I'm afraid of looking stupid. So even though I have something to share and I have an important contribution to make, my ego is preventing me from speaking. That degree of noticing will build a healthy ego because the ego weakens a little bit every time you do that. Third thing is spend time in nature. So if we say that comparison feeds ego in terms of negative image or positive image,

both of them are unhealthy. The best way to avoid comparisons is to go out of nature because there's nothing to compare yourself to. And your mind may linger with comparative thoughts. You'll have echoes from past things. Oh, I'm out here just taking a hike and all my friends are doing this.

It's a comparative thought. but that thought was born yesterday. It didn't come from your nature experience. So the more time that you spend with nature, you may sort of notice that there's residual comparison energy, but the more time you spend in nature like you're just not thinking about other people. Because there's nothing to compare yourself to. And so this is why people who go camping and stuff, they love it.

It feels so good to unplug. Other advantage of going in nature is that there's a natural reduction in technology usage. And technology usage is very pro-comparative, especially social media. So literally spend time in nature. The more, the better. Go for a walk every day. That feels amazing, if you can. If you want to go hiking for a couple of hours on the weekend, like do that. If you can afford to go camping for a week or two and it's like safe and fun and stuff like that, do that. Go sit at the edge of a lake, take a rowboat out, go fishing. whatever, spend time with nature.

The other interesting thing is that when you spend time with nature, you also spend time with yourself. And this is huge because growing a healthy ego involves spending time with yourself. Because when you spend time with other people, even if they're very complimentary, they're stroking your ego all the time. You're going to grow an unhealthy ego. A healthy ego is spending time with yourself. getting to know who you are, just being with yourself, it's great.

The next thing that you need to learn, if you want to grow a healthy ego, is remember, the ego is a protective mechanism. It activates primarily to protect us from negative emotions. So learning to tolerate and not be afraid of negative emotions will naturally reduce the ego. We'll naturally build healthy self-image. and when I say reduce the ego, the larger your ego is, the more solidified your self-images. And the healthier self-image is like more of a neutral self-image. And we'll share a meditation with you all in a second about that.

So it's kind of like a smaller ego is a healthier ego, in a sense. So as you tolerate your negative emotions, as you no longer need to avoid your negative emotions, then the ego will get healthier. So just to use our, let's say, like our answering a question example, teacher asks a question, and I know the answer, but I don't want to look dumb. It is the avoidance of feeling dumb or being embarrassed that causes me to stay quiet. But if I acknowledge that, okay, I may answer wrong, I could feel embarrassed, and that's okay, I can actually handle a little bit of embarrassment.

Like, I don't need to shape my life to avoid embarrassment at every time. turn. We're not saying we're going to go out there and do the most embarrassing things all the time, but like in this individual instance, like, it's just a little bit of embarrassment. The teacher will correct me. And then like tomorrow, like the embarrassment will be gone. Because the tricky thing is that the more we avoid negative emotions, the more egotistical we become. And the more restrictive our life becomes. The classic example of this is the 180 IQ quantum physics amateur on the internet. They're so smart.

They have such a big ego. They know everything else. And by the way, yeah, no, I just sit at home and I read quantum mechanics for fun. I don't actually do anything with it. And then if you talk to that person, if you work with that person, because I've worked at that person a lot for those people, what you tend to find is a very, very low tolerance for negative emotion. Because why are those people sitting at home studying quantum mechanics instead of working,

you know, at jet propulsion laboratories or in a quantum computing place. It's because the gap between being at home and actually like doing substantive work in quantum mechanics involves a lot of exposures to negative emotion.

Including going to class where people may know more than you. Including going to class where people may be smarter than you. And I don't like the way that that feels. Including being afraid that you may not actually be able to get an A in quantum mechanics if it's real quantum mechanics.

There are all kinds of negative emotions. And what we tend to see is that intolerance of negative emotion is correlated with an unhealthy ego. So learn to tolerate your negative emotions, expose yourself a little bit more to negative emotions, and your ego will get healthier. And the last thing to do is meditate. So we'll share a technique with y'all. a second. But before we do that, we're just going to recap. Actually, we can meditate now. So I'm going to teach you all a meditation technique to try to discover the self outside of ego. Because a big part, one of the key things, so this is what meditation does,

is it helps you realize that you are not your ego. In most of life, we go through assuming that our identity is us. But even in our language, we sort of know it isn't. My identity. Identity is owned by you in that sentence. My self-image. Who's the owner there? Right? So how do you understand that? Because once you understand and you're grounded in the true self through meditation, then ego becomes much easier to deal with. So how do we do that? So we're going to go through this. okay, so I want you to sit up straight. And what we're going to do is, so sit up straight, close your eyes. Let's start with a couple of deep breaths.

So we're going to start this meditation. I want you to keep your eyes closed. I'm going to just guide your attention to a couple of things. And we're going to start by focusing on permanence and impermanence. So we're actually going to start with the outside world. So I want you to notice. What is permanent or impermanent in the outside world? Let's think about whether the sun is outside.

Is it daytime or is it nighttime? The weather? Now we're going to kind of shrink a little bit. Even as you notice sensations. So the sound of my voice, how permanent is it? And I want you to notice all of the sounds around you and appreciate their impermanence. and I want you to consider the objects around you,

the chair that you're sitting on, the objects in your room, a plant, how permanent are those objects? So objects tend to be more permanent, but even then there are qualities of objects that can be changeable. So a chair can be disassembled, a plant can grow, a chair can also be moved. So even the physical world is fluctuant. things can be arranged, rearranged, moved around.

They're not fixed forever in that way. And even the sun, is the sun permanent? Will it exist for all time? Has it existed for all time? And now I want you to withdraw further into yourself and look inside you and try to see what is permanent. You may be feeling particular physical sensations like hunger or thirst or an itch, if you feel an itch, or like your posture is a little bit

uncomfortable, is that feeling permanent? Is hunger permanent? Thirst? And what about emotions? Does happiness last for a lifetime? Does fear last for a lifetime? And now I want you to notice your thoughts. Appreciate for a moment how much your life is dictated by your thoughts. What are all the things that you do in a day because you think of doing them? I want this, I don't want that. What will this person think?

If I do this, this will happen. I better not do that. Or I absolutely have to do this for this to happen. And now notice the quality of your thoughts. Notice how they pop up. into existence and fizzle out. And now I want you to notice your breath. Is your breath constant? Even it fluctuates. There is an inhalation, an exhalation. It can be rapid or slow, slow or slower. Now what I want you to settle down into is the part of you that has been

doing this practice. The part of you that has been doing the noticing. And see that no matter what you observe, there is a part of you that is constant. The emotion may fluctuate. But who is the one who is observing the emotion? Is that person emotional as you observe the breathing? Who is doing the breathing and who is noticing the breathing? And notice that you can get caught up in your thoughts or notice that you're in a wrong headspace. So there are times where we fuse with our thoughts and times which we are aware of

them. And now what I want you to do is sit in that noticing capacity. We'll sit for about 30 seconds. You can go into the breath if you want to. The breath is more on the constant side. And now I'll leave you with some final reflections. The first thing to consider, I'll give you some hypotheses. So as you practice this, do this practice for about seven days, every day for a few minutes, I want you to try to figure out which of these signals do you respond to to make the best and worst parts of your life. So when you're thinking about the worst decisions you make, let's say, are the worst things that you do or the worst situations in your life, what within you dictates you winding up in

that situation. And when you make the better decisions in your life, where do those decisions come from? And so look at your life and which part of you dictates what happens in your life and what the effect is when you listen to that part of you. So a simple way to put it is when you act due to your emotions, what impact does that have in your life? When you act due to your thoughts, what impact does that have in your life? When you act from the breath, and you may be asking yourself, how does one act from the breath? That's a very good question. So we can figure that out. The next time you want to do something that is good or difficult, ground yourself in the breath as you do it and see what happens. And now go ahead and come on back.

So this is a very useful meditation for understanding what is the ego and what is the self. And if we're talking about how to build a healthy ego, one of the simplest ways to build a healthy ego is just in recognizing what the limits of ego are. Because the most unhealthy egos are the ones that think that the ego is the entirety of life. And the more that your life is encompassed by ego, controlled by ego, the worst your life is going to be. You may be successful, but you'll be miserable. You may use all kinds of copium and egotistical rationalizations, but at its core, you will be unhappy. And any observant human will be able to tell this about you. The only ones who won't notice this are the ones who themselves are unhappy.

and look up to you because they think that getting what you have will make them unhappy.