- Your current super boss(boss’s boss) moves, and someone new comes in. You start thinking about how this will impact you and start creating scenarios in your mind. What will happen if my boss does not get along with the new person etc.?
- Your spouse gets a big promotion at her workplace. Instead of feeling thrilled, in the deep recesses of your mind, you are thinking, “I need to get my promotion,” so that you can also feel worthy.
- A couple of colleagues discuss something in hushed tones, and you think that they are speaking ill about you. You feel threatened and start straining your ears to hear what they are saying.
For people to have these kinds of thoughts is not uncommon. There have been many times where I have also experienced similar thoughts and feelings.
In everything that you come across, if your immediate thought is “how will it impact me?”- You are living your life with a “Me” centered approach. You think the world revolves around you- My happiness, What is good for me, How or what others are thinking about me, Will I be successful, etc.
If this is where you live- in your head predominantly, you are living a life of heightened Ego.
In his book A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle says it nicely “The moment you become aware of the Ego in you, it is strictly speaking no longer the Ego, but just an old, conditioned mind pattern. Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and Ego cannot coexist.”
Become aware of the play of your Ego by building your awareness. Your awareness will help you break out of the shackles of your Ego, and you will realize that the world does not revolve around you.
