Dealing with the Ego
How many times have you done something you knew would do harm, would make you feel bad about yourself?
How many times have you recognised that side of your behavior, that leaning of your mind, and still somehow decided that you could ignore it, just for this time around?
That is how bad behavioural patterns originate from, and how they grow in strength.
While the rational mind tells me I should not grab that extra piece of food that can raise my blood glucose, another voice in the corner of my head tells me that that treat tastes great, and that I deserve it after all.
That voice is the Ego doing what it does best: tempting us. The Ego seeks instant gratification and screams in tears when we fail to provide it because it hurts its pride. When the Ego voice becomes too loud, we find ourselves doing all the things we’d rather avoid, just because there is a part of us unable to trade a short term gratification with the longer term game.
When we constantly trade “the long term game” with the “short term gratification”, we are signing up for a miserable existence. One made of cravings, regrets, frustrations and constant disappointment with ourselves.
This week, the Ego knocked on my door to pay a visit. Last time it knocked, it messed up badly with the management of my diabetes and made a disaster in terms of blood glucose, insulin resistance and hyperglycaemias.
This time it played around with my running journey. I let him in and I got injured. No, he didn’t throw me a punch in the face, his hurtfulness was much more subtle: it played with my sense of pride and made me do something I knew I should not have done. Still, I did it anyway because my Ego knows what itches to scratch, and I still have a long way to go to deal with this properly.
Here’s what the Ego did to me, what I have learned and how I am going to deal with my Ego from now on.
“Knock knock”. Who’s there? It’s the Ego!
I am busy training for long distance running races. Running makes me feel great and is a bottomless source of joy for me, a place of mindfulness, self awareness and discovery. That is all great! But here comes the trick: running burns a lot of calories, and the “Ego” wants to see a big number of “calories burned” on my watch at the end of the day. The Ego feeds itself and its sense of pride when one day’s number of calories burned surpasses the day before.
That is when the Ego knocked at my door. My training week was going great, but I after my third run on Wednesday I noticed a small pain on my right knee. Nothing major, but a body signal I wanted to pay attention to. On Thursday I had the option to either go for a short recovery run, a walk or just stay home and do some mobility work in preparation for the long run foreseen on the weekend, the most important session of the training schedule.
The day went great, with no apparent pain, but given the sensations of the day before my rational mind would still have opted for the conservative approach: don’t force it and go for a walk, even if you feel ready to run. One extra full day of recovery will only do good to the joints.
Then I had a look at my watch and glanced at the low number of calories burned and…
The Ego feeding its pride at my expenses
…the Ego threw the rational mind out of the window and took over. It perceived burning less calories than yesterday as an unacceptable failure, one that would prove I am weak.
I noticed this feeling arising, and I recognised it was the Ego doing its thing. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. But guess what? I somehow convinced myself that the pain was gone, that it was just a small thing that would go away in no time, and that I could run on it because I had some calories to burn.
And so it happened. I laced up my shoes, started my slow run, ignored the sense of pain and came back home limping after 30 minutes.
The short term gratification of seeing the number of calories grow and “meet” the daily goal came at some great costs: not only did I limp (a point a runner should never reach), but I also felt extremely bad about myself, about how stupid I had been, and I potentially screwed up my training schedule since my body would probably not be ready to run the weekend’s long distance. That mood stayed with me and compromised all my activities the day after: I felt 10 years older physically, and I was mentally destroyed, which impaired my performance at work.
I thought a slow run would have done good to me. But it was the Ego tempting me and forcing me to ignore the fact that I should have slowed down even more by not going for the run at all. I have learned a tough lesson, and I am now more ready to…
Showing the Ego the exit door
…show the Ego the exit door. No matter the number of calories, the whims, the crying voice that blames us for taking the “way of the weak”.
My goal is not to be fast NOW, but to be faster and stronger and in good health on the day of the race, and to get to that peak form in a sustainable way.
I went for my long run this weekend, and I was ready to slow it down at any moment, and even to interrupt it and take the tram to go back home. The Ego was still screaming loud trying to persuade me to keep going because “I have X miles to run at this or that speed, so I MUST run X miles otherwise I am weak”.
But the true strength was in exerting rational thinking: i kept repeating “I want to stay in it for the long run”…literally and figuratively! What is the purpose of running my way to an injury and possibly be out for one or more weeks, while one single extra rest day taken at the right moment could easily put me back on my feet again in just a few days?
And so I ran, paying extra attention to any signal my body gave to me. The run was great, because at the very last miles I recognized one of those signals and regulated down the pace, despite my Ego leaning on the opposite way. I completed the run, without pain, because I was more able to tame the screaming baby inside me with my rational thinking.
Learning lessons the hard way is never fun, but sometimes it is necessary. Being injured was not fun indeed, but it reminded me how fragile we can be if we don’t take the time to reflect. In running, as in any other area of life, the Ego constantly tries to take the driver seat and steer us away from the right path. We must be vigilant and observant, and be humble enough to take notes of our “defeat” when it occurs.
After my running injury, I took my journal and wrote down how I felt, how the injury impeded me to be at my best, and what led to it. Writing it down was what I needed to do to take stock of how miserable I had been, and was just enough for me to see the Ego and stop running today, because there was nothing to gain in running on pain. I will now rest and get ready for the upcoming trainings, knowing that Ego is the enemy, and that I am the one driving.
Someone already treated the subject quite in depth! Check out Ryan Holiday’s work!
