The Power of Not Letting Your Ego Do the Talking

Two decisions you can make rather than lighting everything on fire.

We have all had to deal with one of these situations where our ego gets to come out and play, and show the world who is boss. These situations are delicious and your ego gets turned on just thinking about them.

Before you know it, wham! your ego has taken action and you’re left wondering what the hell happened the way a drunk wakes up from a hangover to realize they vomited all over the floor and missed their kid’s soccer game again.

Maybe it was a phone call questioning something you said to someone.

Maybe it was an email from someone who has a massive problem with something you’ve done.

Maybe it was the act of having to quit your job or the other way round and being fired.

Maybe it’s being rushed into buying or doing something when you are not ready.

This week I’ve had four of these scenarios present themselves to me in one form or another and each time, my ego had two decisions:

Light the situation on fire and unleash a perceived ‘expert status’
Sit back, relax, be calm and respond with humility

Every single time I have chosen option two and been not just surprised, but overwhelmed by how effective this strategy is for dealing with almost every difficult, impossible, tough or messed up situation you could experience.

(Being a blogger that is known for self-improvement presents many more of these scenarios than I’d love).

If you think about your own life, you most definitely get many situations where you have to make a decision. Sadly, more often than not, I see people choose option one and set their goals, dreams and people that could help them on fire until they burn to the ground, Game Of Thrones style.

There is incredible power in always choosing option two and letting humility take center stage. It’s unconventional and it works far better than you could ever hypothesize it would.

Here are 3 situations that show the power of not letting your ego do the talking while simultaneously revealing the effectiveness of humility:

Situation One: “You said something about me”

This one comes up a helluva lot for me and it’s crazy when you think about it. While overseas last year, a colleague I worked with a long time ago contacted me and said I’d written about them in a social media post. They said, “There is no way you weren’t talking about me.”

What’s crazy and bizarre at the same time is that I wasn’t talking about them at all. Most of what they thought was about them actually had nothing to do with them. Thankfully it is easy to prove in these situations, but that is not the point. Given the aggressive tone of voice they had come at me with, I could have put them back in their box and responded with the same assertiveness that they had woken me up with on that cold, winters day when I was reading a beautiful book called “Tears of the Buddha.”

What surprises me in these situations is how often people can think that the whole world is thinking and worrying about them.

It’s this idea that causes a fear of public speaking as well as a fear of producing content for social media.

We’re worried that the whole world is judging us, so we choose to hide.

Having dealt with similar fears, what has taken me more than 4.5 years to realize is that this fantasy is a lie. The conversation in our heads has very little to do with what the problems are of people around us- we’re far more tied up in our own story of survival to ever worry about what someone else could be doing.

Back to the situation, I told the person the truth with respect. The response was as thoughtful as it could be and the tone in my voice was soft and flexible to working the situation out. To my surprise, the person in question quickly realized the post wasn’t about them and the conversation turned to other topics that we both loved.

Situation Two: You copied my work

It was one of those direct messages I didn’t expect. Apparently, I’d copied something another blogger had said except the short social media post in question mentioned a member of my family with a vivid description of them.

In my mind, it was impossible that the post could be copied and there was a real opportunity to pull out a metaphorical 12-gauge shotgun and blow the idea into a million pieces. I reframed from doing so.

The response I went with had a few core components:

It acknowledged where they were coming from and that they could be right even if they weren’t
The words used were not aggressive
There was no sense of authority exerted from my side
There was an offer to diffuse the situation through a voice call

That last point is crucial. The voice of your ego can accidentally be misrepresented when you respond with emails, texts and direct messages. Choosing to respond in-person, via a voice call, or using Zoom/Skype will help your human side shine rather than your ego.

The offer to have a phone call, in the above situation, was accepted. A critical question that has worked well on these calls is the following:

Could this difference in views or problem actually present an opportunity in disguise for both of us?

Image Credit: sproutsocial.com

After the call, we managed to find a middle ground and as we were both interested in very similar missions, we decided to collaborate with each other.

That’s yet another example of the power of not letting your ego do the talking. Humility produces these crazy results, time and time again in my life. They can do the same for you.

Situation Three: A hate article

One night at around 5 pm I was in the car with my girlfriend on the way home. It was a beautiful evening and the sun was setting. Life couldn’t get any better — until I unlocked my phone, that is.

There was a message from a long time reader of mine and a link. Someone had written an article about me and it wasn’t a nice one in case you’re wondering.

“Articles such as these can be described as defamation and there are laws which can protect us against this.” That was a pleasant answer from my brain that was evaluating the situation. There were ideas of lawsuits, requests to ban the user, and having the community stand up for what is right.

My ego was out of control, so I stopped. I found the person’s contact details, rang them up, and did nothing but listen to them for over thirty minutes. I decided to fall in love with this critic and see if I could learn something. When the ego is not talking, humility allows you to think, “You know what, maybe they’re right.”

When it was my turn to talk, I told them what I stood for, my background, and why I do what I do. I followed the same pattern as the other two situations.

Without a doubt, when the ego was silenced and humility ran the show, the outcome was far better than you’d expect.

The situation was defused and the chance of a friendship was born. Let me remind you, this outcome occurred when there was someone who hated everything about me and was willing to put everything on the line to prove it.

Nothing beats humility.

Experiment with humility

The first step before you can produce these type of results is to acknowledge what your ego is, what it looks like, and be honest with yourself when it comes out to play. Until you can do this step, everything else I’ve said is useless.

Once you know your ego the way a mother knows her child, you can move on to the second and final step of replacing your ego with humility.

If you’re still not convinced with letting humility take charge, try it for yourself and experiment with it. I should point out that adding compassion to the mix while having a modest view of yourself also helps.