Mindfulness and Ego

Written by: Lorraine Twombly

Published:

Recently, I’ve been learning about Ego that is offered through PositivePsychology.com in the Mindfulness Section of the course curriculum.

I’ve always been fascinated by ego, and I have, at times, thought negatively about it. The Ego section surprised me when I finished that element. What I learned is that our ego helps us to make decisions, solve problems and to understand that we have a sense of self-importance and self-esteem. It’s our story since birth and how we live our lives. It’s what we’ve learned, experienced, and accomplished.

I used to think exhibiting self-importance was off putting and conceited, especially when someone is acting superior to others. People simply are not great at exhibiting self-importance. Self-esteem is easier to understand. When we show our confidence, people tend to listen, pay attention, and are willing to receive the information and trust it. When we behave or have conversations exhibiting self-importance, people may get the wrong impression and think egocentric.

Here're some words that I found on Google about self-importance:

Of the 23 words, only five are neutral or positive. So, can we be self-important and behave in a way that others will not judge or assume in a negative way?

I say YES!! Our self-importance is (I think) our ego and esteem. It’s a way for us to learn as much as we can and, therefore, be important to others. I for one am learning ways to help one of my friends with dementia. Another one has multiple cancers and at least five in my family have chronic illnesses or palliative care. Learning what they are going through and how to support them is my way of being self-important without them even noticing. It’s my way of being benevolent to the people I care about. It’s rewarding to me, and I believe in the folks I’m helping. Taking this initiative is important to my self-worth and important to the way I live my life.

Positive self-importance helps us make better decisions for others who ask for it and who are not as knowledgeable. We do this without opinion or shaming folks because they didn’t know how. It’s a positive way to be self-important. We are helping people to become self-important when we share our knowledge in a respectful way, while asking open-ended questions for clarity (to fully understand the issue) and executing a good plan or solution moving forward.

The more we learn and try to execute what we learn, the better our self-esteem. Our mistakes become learning events for change and our self-esteem gets better with time. We have more successes than failures, especially when we truly learn from our mistakes.

A good healthy ego keeps us viable, sane, less apt to cave under criticism, and confident!! Confidence is the behavior that people are attracted to. That can seem good and bad, depending on the leader or influencer. If a leader exhibits behaviors that encourage people to commit  crimes or behave badly, the people who listen or follow them are headed for serious negative consequences. If a leader exhibits confidence in doing the best work they can on projects and teamwork, that is a positive situation which promotes good will, a good working/home environment, and promotes self-confidence, esteem, and importance.

There’s scientific research that indicates that being self-confident in helping others has several health benefits:

• Improves our self-awareness/confidence/esteem
• Reduces symptoms of depression
• Releases endorphins in our brains
• Elevates happiness
• Creates deeper connections and empathy

Having a healthy ego with positive self-importance and esteem requires us to be as mindful as we can. Throughout our lives we’ve had to learn and relearn so much about how to maintain relationships in a positive way. I’m in my 70’s and I am still learning so much about how to be a good influencing leader!

Thank you for reading!!

Lorraine Twombly