Hello everybody, welcome to episode 97 of Optimal Living Advice, the podcast where we take any questions you might have about the many struggles of life and get them answered for you here on the show. I’m your host, certified life coach Greg Audino and I’m happy to be back again with you today. We’re going to be looking at an awesome question sent in about self-esteem – particularly how it relates to the ego, and what we can do to make sure they’re both in their proper positions. It’s gonna be a fun one. Here’s the question for today…
QUESTION: “I generally struggle with low self worth and hence lately am feeling confused over having thoughts related to an inflated ego. I feel low self worth and ego are opposing emotions to have. I feel miserable when comparing myself to others and can’t seem to accept the fact I’m not as good as others be it at work abilities or social skills. I think this is the ego talking and causing me to be competitive and feel like I need to be as good as everyone else? Why am I having these opposing thoughts and how can I overcome it? Appreciate your advice on this.”
Listen to Greg narrate this post on Episode 97 of the podcast Optimal Living Advice.
Self-Esteem and Ego
I appreciate you. Good, good question. Thank you for sending this one in. It’s definitely a good question to explore and to ask of oneself. Yet another question really drenched in self-awareness, too. You guys impress me so much with that on some of these questions. It’s such a leg up to face these types of problems but understand where you’re going wrong versus facing problems and thinking everything is fine as it is. Huge difference.
Anyway, very interesting that you feel low self-worth and ego are opposing emotions. I totally disagree. And maybe I’ve somehow misinterpreted what you mean, but I would say that low self-worth is exactly what ego is bred from and they’re about as related as you could get.
The ego wants to be good at everything, wants to be right, wants to be recognized as much as possible. Why? Because the self needs a boost. It needs some reassurance, it needs extra significance which of course wouldn’t feel so necessary if self-esteem was high.
If self-esteem is high, you don’t need all the other accolades because you don’t equate yourself to them. You have self-esteem because of who you are, not because of what you accomplish.
So I would definitely think that the more insistent the ego is, the more desperate it is. If it can’t accept itself, it looks to others to accept it.
Imagine Accomplishing All of Your Goals…
With that in mind, let’s try to make sense of this whole thing.
Imagine this for me: Imagine you’ve accomplished everything you want to accomplish. All the areas of life in which you find yourself being extra competitive and wanting to win. Imagine you win and you’re the best performer at work, everyone finds you easy to talk to in your social circles – whatever else you may find yourself seeking.
Now what? Are you satisfied? From an outside perspective, has your self-esteem really gone up? I don’t know what answer you’re coming up with, but I can confidently say that it has not and I’d imagine many of our listeners feel the same. I wouldn’t think of you as more valuable, not intrinsically, anyway.
Maybe if you were the best soccer player on the field I’d find you valuable in the sense that I’d want you on my team, but that’s soccer. After 90 minutes we’d go back to real life, where I’d want you in my circle because of your character, not because you’re good at something.
Who You Are vs. What You've Done
Even if it’s hard to turn the mirror on yourself and see how it’s true of you, do you not feel the same of others? Do you not love the people you love because of who they are rather than what you’ve done? Of course you love them for who they are.
So I think it’s time to start asking yourself what you really think you stand to gain from accomplishing more that goes beyond superficial desires. Why do you need to feel as accomplished as others, and why can you not accept the fact that you’re not the best at everything you try?
While you’re pondering those questions for yourself, I’m going to go ahead and tell you what’s necessary for you to start recognizing that your accomplishments have no relation to your value and thus how to start overcoming this.
Address or Replace Demeaning Beliefs
You break down all the items in your life that have told you in the past or tell you now that you are the sum of your accomplishments. Whoever has or does actively demean you for not being good at a skill, it’s time to address them or replace them.
Mind you, this does not include people who provide constructive criticism and hold you accountable. It does include people who tell you you’re worthless because you’re not accomplishing more.
And you have to look closely at this, because it’s not just people you interact with. It’s television, it’s social media. Anything that makes you feel guilty for not having more skills on your resume. If it’s something meaningful you’re lacking in, work at it and improve. If it’s not meaningful anyway, why stick around for the guilt?
You also assess the fact that the people who are the best at the things you seek to be the best at still have a myriad of other problems in life, and some of these people may have enough other problems to qualify for depression. The accomplishment of one thing often just brings a new problem – be it wanting to be better, people only wanting you for that talent, not having the time to spend on other things and therefore having no sense of balance.
The list goes on. Mo’ money mo’ problems, as they say.
Focus on What You're Good At
You then acknowledge that you, too, are one of these people.
I don’t believe that there’s nothing you do well. I don’t buy that. Focus on one thing that you do perform very well at. Then put yourself in the shoes of the people who do not perform as well. Some of them are probably experiencing traces of the exact same feelings that you are – wishing they could perform at your level.
And what do you know about you? You still struggle aside from having this talent. You still want talent in other areas, bad enough that you’ve reached out to us for some extra support. Case in point.
Finally, try catching yourself as best you can. Maybe this means going into certain situations in which you know you want to be competitive, and intentionally performing poorly and having a laugh about it. Maybe it means doing some visualizing beforehand – so trying to picture the moment or the trigger at which you know you’ll switch from having fun to competing, and watching yourself gracefully take a breath and remind yourself of what you (hopefully) learned here today about real self-worth.
Building Self-Esteem is A Process
Whatever you try to implement, be it one or all of the ideas we’ve talked about today, just know and be ok with the fact that building lasting self-esteem is going to be a process.
Depending on how deeply ingrained your need for significance is, it could take a long time to get into a better rhythm and there will be countless setbacks or failed attempts at cooling yourself down when you wanted to. It’s part of the process.
But I do promise that the more you remind yourself of these things, the more you replay this episode, the more it all eats away at your need to be best, and that overtime, that need will start to vanish.
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There we have it, my friends. Thank you so much for putting up with me today.
Asker, thank you again for submitting such a great question, and I do hope we were able to help you out a bit. I think we came up with some concrete ideas today, nothing terribly abstract, right?
Anyway, those of you who would like some help with your own struggles, please join the club and reach out to us.
Send us your question by emailing it to advice AT oldpodcast DOT com
We’ll take your question there, have a look at it, and do our best. And that’s my spiel. I’ll talk to you guys again next time, and until then, take care of yourselves.
Listen to Greg narrate this post on Episode 97 of the podcast Optimal Living Advice.
