You Diminish Ego by Apologizing With Humility & by Dismantling Underlying Beliefs
You diminish Ego by apologizing with humility. Recognizing your faults helps measure who you are exactly. You start to see your underlying beliefs and put them to question. You also diminish Ego when you dismantle underlying beliefs, which are beliefs that have other beliefs propagate from them.
The term Ego was first coined by Sigmund Freud in 1707. He defined Ego as the part of our psyche that mediates between the Super Ego and Id. The Ego behaves to filter thoughts from the Id and Super Ego and then translate what’s left into action. They both want control but Ego is the mediator. Ego is the logical part of us, in short.
In modern times, the term “Ego” adopted the meaning of “A person’s sense of self-importance”. This definition doesn’t work too well because you can have low self-importance and have an Ego complex or have a high self-importance and have an Ego complex. Ego, under this definition of self-importance, becomes a poor measurement system of your importance, especially when people think that it’s a good idea to destroy their Ego. Do you want to develop a complex by getting rid of self-importance entirely?
Personally, I refuse to believe Ego is self-importance. Obscuring the original definition leads to confusion and obscurity about what Ego even is.
Self-importance can get in the way of making friends or having relationships. Self-importance can come in the form of a superiority complex or inferiority complex.
People with inferiority complexes have an underlying belief that people who are not them are normal people and that normal people are better than them, so much so that the person with the inferiority complex cannot speak their mind and has to create a persona or a mask that imitates who they think normal people are. Do you feel inferior to others?
A superiority complex is the opposite, and the person believes they are grandiose. Their underlying belief is they are so great and royal that only royalty can ever speak to them. Their negative emotion is suppressed. They will not feel much shame or guilt for hurting others or treating people badly. Normally, they are not self-aware which makes them extremely difficult to teach. Do you feel you are superior to others?
Both complexes are poor measurement systems when it comes to estimating who you are. They get in your way. It is said that to overcome self-importance you must practice gratitude. Not only is this an extremely vague idea, it also doesn’t work. The reason it doesn’t work is because it falls under the toxic “positive illusion” philosophy people often recommend to each other by saying stupid things like “Stay positive” “Be Kind” “Be grateful for what you have”. Why would I do that? Relying on delusions and non-logical thought as a means to improve or maintain mental health is the most pessimistic method you can use.
How you actually overcome self-importance is by apologizing with humility and show you recognize your faults. Be honest with yourself. Ask yourself “Is this something I should be apologizing for?”
Some things you don’t apologize for. The reason I say this is so people don’t think that everything they do is a mistake. Everything you do is not a mistake. Over-thinkers need to hear that.
What constitutes mistake? Well, what are you cool with?
Some answers are so simple yet so vast that they are questions. They are concise.
A question as an answer helps dismantle an entire category that holds your beliefs. Each individual belief sprouts from underlying beliefs. Some of these underlying beliefs create complexes in your psyche, like the inferiority complex or superiority complex.
Common Underlying Beliefs –
“If I truly love them I would want them to be happy therefore I should let them go”
“I am not who I used to be therefore I would do a lot better in the relationship if I return to them”
“Be a man” or “A real man would do so and so”
You may have adopted underlying beliefs as motivation systems so you can either do or avoid doing certain things. If you have to build a motivation system to counter your unwanted desire then your desire has something supporting it or else the motivation system would not exist. Below is a dismantlement of the Common Underlying Beliefs.
1.
“If you truly love someone you would want them to be happy therefore you would let them go.”
Sometimes this thought is true, you do want the power to let even someone you love go, but if this belief festers, it is the beginning of an inferiority complex. It states if you cannot make someone happy so you let them go and are powerless to ever make them happy. Then things descend into thinking: if you can’t make one person happy, what are the chances of making other people happy? You think you are a burden. Then all people become things to let go of and you end up putting yourself at the bottom of all social hierarchies trying to hide away and show everyone that you are no threat, and that you can’t make anyone happy. You end up feeling inferior to everyone else. Feeling inferior to everyone else is sign you are not in control of your self-importance. This is an inferiority complex.
As an antidote to the quoted words above you instead you flip the situation. “If you are not happy, you can leave.”
When you say “If you are not happy, you can leave.” you do not single yourself out and blame you for having something intrinsically wrong with you. You instead leave, whether someone wants to go is up to their opinion of what makes them happy. It shows that you are understanding and can join their world, how they see things; you being just another contender in their lives. You can have people leave your life without remorse. The other persons leave does not affect your life, and when a person can leave you and not have any effect on you, it means you are so big that for someone to leave is just a tiny feather flaking off from your abundance of everything. To let someone leave without remorse is highly attractive. This creates an abundance mindset. Symbolically you become a giant covered in feathers unbothered by the few feathers falling from you.
2.
“I am not who I used to be therefore I would do a lot better in the relationship if I return to them”
What this belief does is make you cling to one person. Although you do recognize you have transcended your past self, which is a good thing, you are also someone who holds remorse when others leave, which is unattractive. The thought of returning to someone you once admired is always there. What this does to you is it gets in the way of all your relationships. You are not contempt or happy with the ones you date. The experience you had with the one you admired becomes something that cannot be propagated because you see people in life as individual packets that produce moments instead of seeing them as elements that are part of your life. By seeing people as individual packets you value one over all else which reduces the enjoyment you could have with every single person. By seeing people as elements that are part of your life you understand people appear or disappear in your life like blips on radar. For the time they are around, you bring to the table enjoyment to your own life, and simultaneously bring enjoyment to their life as a consequence of you being in the moment. When you win, everybody wins. Your mission becomes number 1. You form a love of life. They tag along with you, or you tag along with them.
Again, as an antidote to the quoted words above, flip the situation.
“They aren’t yours; it’s just your turn.” — Darius M.
This quote is connected to the above paragraph too.
You are not entitled to the ownership of a person or to spend your life with them. They stay by choice and leave by choice. You had your fun, now, without them, you’re off to other places for more. When you cling to someone, it keeps you still. You feel stable and secure like a child feels when he clings to his father’s leg. It’s a weak and needy behavior. If you are instead thankful the person has gone, you also accept they are gone. By accepting you had your turn with someone you banish any ownership over them. You abandon the desire to want to prove yourself. You don’t owe them anything. Everyone knows that as the times pass, we all change, often for the better. Yet they let us go.
What do they know that you don’t? Why do you even owe them anything when it changes nothing? What are you cool with?
3.
“Be a man” or “A real man would do so and so”
These words are just plain manipulative. Who is it that constitutes what a man is? Who is it that constitutes what a real man would do? What even is a “real man”?
Telling someone concisely that their identity is the opposite of what they want it to be in order to squeeze out what you want from them is a manipulative thing. It does more harm than good.
In the video game the Blair Witch your character is a man dealing with PTSD. The notion of being a man had been shoved down his throat so much by his shitty ex-girlfriend that he tries tackling a mental illness on his own without help and then to show how strong and manly he is, he goes into the Black Hills forest, where the Blair witch lives, on his own with his therapy dog. Both cases end badly for him and he is haunted from guilt because of his broken relationship and how he was never a “real man”.
Instead, flip the situation “I don’t put up with manipulation.”
In abusive relationships, how the abuser continues to get the victim to bring more to the table is by making them feel guilt. By making yourself feel guilty by telling yourself to be a “real man” you place yourself in a constant state of thinking you are the perpetrator for not doing what a real man would do. If you are someone who doesn’t put up with manipulation then you establish your ability to bare teeth and defend yourself. The definition of being a man is so loose its definition can be changed by anyone, which is dangerous because people can be selfish and alter the definition so you best suit their needs in trying to prove yourself. If you tell yourself to be a “real man” you’ll spend your time trying to be other people. All that shines at the end of that journey is tragedy.
“The core element of the hero’s journey, which is the proper journey through life, is voluntary confrontation with what is unknown and terrifying. That’s the human way.” — Jordan Peterson
The human Way already exists inside you. Don’t be running from yourself by chasing who others tell you to be.
You just read my dismantlement of some underlying beliefs. Our beliefs fit inside our Ego determining what logical action we could take as our Ego mediates between the Super Ego and Id. Here is a resource to help you understand the Id, Ego, and Superego | Simply Psychology
Will you go dismantle your underlying beliefs? Will you write apologies? Will you have a better measure of yourself?
Will you diminish your Ego?
