Everyone has battles. You don’t have to go far to find one in yourself. There’s an angel and a critic sitting on either shoulder.
At any given moment you can be wrestling with both. The critic is eager to enter your thoughts and pull you down. Your mind can play tricks. We have complex brains.
If you’re not careful, your regretful, evil intended, or prideful actions can occur from bad thoughts from the critic.
(Unless you consciously decide to turn on the right switch and shut off the wrong one).
Your mind can be your worst enemy. Internal battles can be most self-destructive when you don’t know there’s an internal battle going on.
If you’re breathing, there’s one happening.
Knowing is half the battle.
These 3 prideful words and acronyms are most harmful to you and your relationships:
1.DENIAL – don’t even know I am lying
2.BLAME – be lame
3.EGO – edging God out
Denial is self-sabotaging, pushing away authenticity, and people. Covering up authentic truth with the irrational belief of a false truth is a common behavior.
Blame is projecting your problems, a fault or a wrong onto others.
Your Ego is the part of your brain that can badly react and cause you to hurt people. In its control and devastating wake, ego judges, blames, denies, and feels threatened.
Ego is mostly responsible for your negative behaviors and the Dark Knight of the Soul behaviors.
The opposite good behaviors are humility and love.
If your ego is active, reading this makes no sense to you, and if I was a partner sitting next to you, you’d probably start a disagreement.
Ego minds invisibly place a wall between you and your rational and loving self. It isolates, and is threatened by competition and fears.
All your personal growth can be thrown out the window in an instant. If you let Ego rear its ugly head in the moment, by a simple entering worry or reminder of an old wound that never fully healed.
Don’t self-destruct. Stop the madness at the gate (of your mind).
You may not see the discrepancy in your actions born by Ego, but others do. You may not even know that you’re the problem and not others’ interpretations.
Ego at its worse throws you off life’s productive course, robbing you of peace love, and higher roles, in your own disconnect battle.
What Others See
Unless and until you become humble, self-aware, take constructive feedback and make necessary changes, you may not end your internal battle.
You and your daily relationships can continue to suffer, as you have discord and problems with yourself and others. You have to fix you.
With an active high ego mind, it’s inevitable your behaviors show up as inconsistent.
Consistency in crucial for effective leaders and people of good influence. And for successful marriages.
Your pride can prevent you from evolving
In this conflict state, partners see two sides of you they may think are personality flaws. They are actually seeing two minds at work in you.
Depending on the severity, they may think they’re dealing with two people, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
One good and one bad. And sometimes multiple personalities.
In inconsistency, others see a prideful person as your ego relentlessly demands your thoughts turn into actions if you don’t run the other way from that part of yourself.
Authentic people in your life see someone who disguises their character to fit the situation (lacking integrity).
In passing, acquaintances may appreciate the person who appears confident, but those in deeper relationships see a selfish or self-centered person (inconsistency).
Because if a pride-less nature were focused on, consideration for others would be at your core. You would not have your own agenda. You would be kind and thinking about others’ needs, the higher love calling.
If not self-aware, when a prideful person is told a sad story, they may not be listening or may even have a grin on their face when they should be feeling compassion and empathy towards others’ misfortunes. Feeling no personal accountability to their moral disconnect.
How sad for the person and everyone who has to spend regular time with this unpleasant person. You’d probably agree if you could see those traits you may have or others have pointed out to you.
Pride can show up in many forms such as road rage where anger is unproductive. Or feeling superior above others that reduces harms deeper, enriched relationships.
How to Change Your Prideful Behaviors
Be open and self-aware.
High ego provoking prideful behaviors can happen to anyone, at any time. Be aware you’re double minded.
Fight for your mind liberation. If you don’t want to or see a problem, no one can motivate you and change your thoughts. They can only support and point out what they see.
I have heard of self-aware and evolved couples who point out to each other their high ego state whenever the ego flares up in conversation, using a code word. It’s common and the reason for many divorces.
This code word triggers both to retreat from the conversation topic so a heated argument with no end or productivity, stops. They don’t need to go down that ugly, destructive path.
Ego wants to send you down lower and lower into the imaginary pit. Look for your eagle to soar to your higher place.
Stop the blame.
Own your part. If you were part of a decision, you played a part. Don’t blame others.
It could be mostly someone else’s fault, but blaming them won’t be productive and thinking so can cause your ego to flair up. Come up with solutions. Use productivity as a healthy guide.
Help loved ones connect the dots with their pride issues when their ego is not hyperactive. Unless you cite examples and tell them what they’re doing that needs correction, they may never change. You could be their only hope. Use that as motivation to be brave.
Stop denying.
Catch yourself telling fabricated or embellished stories. Correct anything, white or gray lies, that you said that’s not truth. Think of strike throughs in your words as healing, and setting the record straight.
People will respect you for being thoughtful (and not careless with words). Leaders are self-correcting communicators.
The more you practice self-correction, the better you become until your mind only tells truths.
Find and remind yourself of love.
When I think of successful stories from people, they inspire, encourage and give me hope. I can then feel love for a world that may seem chaotic and create fear at times.
It grounds me to know there is order, authenticity, compassion, beauty on every corner, creativity, and hope. Your ego can’t exist in loving thoughts that crowd out fearful ones.
Keep the love alive. And watch while you attract the right people and build the best relationships.
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This post was previously published on Change Becomes You and is republished here with permission from the author.
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Photo credit: Unsplash