Ego - Shaken not Stirred

The cause of most of my poor decisions (and some of the good ones)

For most of my life I found myself annoyed with egotistical people.

I dealt with many investors and founders that seem to be suffering from an overabundance of it.

I took pride in what I thought was a lack of ego in myself, which is absolutely hilarious in hindsight.

There are different expressions of ego, and I realize now that I conflated certain expressions of ego as “wrong”, whereas my expression of it was “right”.

For example, I’ve known people obsessed with putting their name on a building, or in general highly successful people who sought fame as part of their legacy.

A simple nod to Buddha that all things are impermanent seems appropriate when thinking about your legacy or lack thereof.

I always shunned the limelight, preferring to operate in the shadows. I was mostly content with no one knowing who I was. However, I was suffering from a different expression of ego in a limiting way.

The Need to Be Right and for Everyone to Know it

Shortly after Dom and I launched a successful startup together we found ourselves at a retirement party for the CEO of a prior company we worked for.

The party was a fancy upscale shindig with an open bar and a large number of attendees.

I’m a natural introvert and absolutely hate going to these kind of events, but I felt compelled to attend this particular one.

A couple of vodka sodas into the evening the fun began, where the husband of one of Dom’s reports decided he was going to get into it with Dom, threatening to kick his ass. Big mistake. But that’s not the point of this story.

I of course was drinking dirty martinis, and at social events like this one my self-medication strategy was to avoid water because it got in the way of my alcohol consumption.

After about 5 martinis the chairman of the board finally caught up to me outside the elevator bank. I did not like this guy AT ALL. Describing him as an arrogant egotistical jackass is being kind to him.

A few months prior to this incident he had called me at work, screaming at me that “your software is shit and doesn’t work”. I was instantly pissed, attempted to reason with him and failed. Immediately after the call I marched into the CEO’s office and resigned blaming the chairman.

While I was intending on resigning anyway, this guy pushed me over the edge and expedited things.

Returning back to the party, I spent the next 30 minutes arguing with the chairman who insisted that he never said those words. I started yelling at him while he kept trying to insist I was wrong, but my old friend Mr. Vodka was having none of it.

Dom was standing talking to my wife, watching the fireworks. My wife asked Dom, “Do you think we should break this up?”. Dom grinned and said “No, Brian needs this, let it play out.”

The chairman had crossed one of my red lines. My need to always be right about everything. My vodka enhanced ego was out of the box for the world to see and nothing was stopping it.

Why do I need to be right?

I don’t even recognize this version of myself now. Over the years he comes out occasionally, but I think I’m finally winning the battle with him.

In my case, my ego helped me survive being a shy scrawny nerd in a rural high school. The one thing I had over almost everyone in my school was my mind.

I had no athletic abilities, I was too short to play basketball, too small for football, too slow for track, and soccer wasn’t a thing when and where I grew up.

The one thing I had was my brain. I tutored other kids in math. The jocks wanted to sit next to me to copy my answers.

So my quiet ego grew in its powers. My defender. If I knew something that others didn’t it helped my self-esteem…but it also became a great source of isolation. It allowed me to frame the world as me vs. the idiots.

1 + 1 = 5

Part of my current self-improvement journey is recognizing when my ego is rearing its ugly head and immediately observing it.

My ego is not me.

Keanu has it right.

What’s the point of arguing with someone? Why do I care if they are wrong? For that matter, why do I assume I am right?

Borrowing a line from “The Power of Now”:

My ego loves to turn situations into problems.

I’ll be doing a series of posts reviewing The Power of Now, and how it has helped me better understand myself and who I am.

The simple truth of that matter is that if you are fully present in the moment there are no problems.

I yelled at the chairman because of my memory of what he said to me in the past. And my ego needed to correct him, so he wouldn’t think the same thing in the future.

But in the Now none of that matters. Nor does your ego.

Namaste.