Ego is a hallmark of the beta male. Church youth groups are teeming with it and you can smell it on them. Wherever you find ego, you can be sure you have found an individual with significant insecurity or stupidity. The confident man has no need of ego. Ego is an outwardly expressed overcompensation for inner emptiness.
“Pride comes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall”.
Proverbs 16:18
“The LORD Almighty has a day in store for all the proud and lofty, for all that is exalted (and they will be humbled).”
Isaiah 2:12
Ego is what some refer to as “bad pride”.
There is a good type of pride that is fulfillment in your work. There is the negative pride of ego that leads you to believe you are good at something or better than someone. Men who have even a small amount of self awareness know they can constantly improve, and so they reject any type of ego.
There are different levels of ego. The mildest is the boastful form.
This form is found in the lowest of all males; the males who no female would ever mate with. They have the need to talk about themselves or their “accomplishments”, as if anyone in a one-thousand mile radius even cares at all. These men are deluded about how impressive their accomplishments are.
Young men brag about what sport they play (because doing what hundreds of thousands of other males do obviously sets them apart).
They brag about how many girlfriends they have had or how much money they are making. They boast in superficial accomplishments that no one will remember in ten minutes, much less ten years.
Middle aged men brag about their kids. The older man’s children absorbed his entire life so now he is forced to live vicariously through them. He has no pride in what he does, only in his kids. These men do not understand how uninterested in his kids all other men are.
Older men brag about what they did ‘back in their day’ in order to justify their lack of success in the present moment. Low-level ego is spread across all age groups. Low-level ego is a marker for low character and low intelligence.
Another level of ego is the person who gets offended constantly.
Why are your ideas so important that you must be emotionally “Offended” when someone else has a different idea? Why are your philosophies so intertwined with your personality and character that an individual cannot question your ideas without questioning your personally? Here is the answer: your ideas aren’t important; consider putting your ego to death.
KEY: Any idea that is weak and built on unstable grounds must be supported by combining it with emotionalism. Atheism is a prime example of this. Atheists hold beliefs that blatantly violate natural law (Big bang = 1st & 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics, possible Newton’s 1st law, Law of Causality. Spontaneous generation = violates the Law of Biogenesis), and as a result, they are forced to become militant and emotional about their faith in order to justify it. You see this in modern politics as well, where men attack each other’s character instead of questioning one another’s ideas using rationality and a genuine desire for the truth, instead of a desire to hit the opponent with a zinger.
More subtle levels of ego would include simply being defensive at criticism. Why are you being defensive? Ego. Why do you dislike criticism? Ego. “But I have a highly sensitive personality”, no you don’t, you have a weak personality and a huge ego.
Even if you are sensitive, no man may justify his failure or a negative character trait by blaming his personality, that behavior is for the weak.
Ego is the mark of a boy, not a man. Become a man by putting the ego to death or you will die.
Mantra
I walk in humility, and my ego is fading to dust.
Application
Awareness of your own ego is going to be one of your best tools for bringing it under your power. Notice yourself boasting about your petty accomplishments, getting offended by the statements of others or becoming defensive at their criticisms. Noticing your problems is a key to victory in the war of converting those problems into power.
Some men may even find that simply by becoming aware of their ego, it went away. Men who notice it are often so disgusted by how it truly looks that they stop letting their ego determine their actions. They are able to see themselves from the outside.
- How am I appearing to others?
- How will this statement be taken?
- Am I talking about myself in conversation?
- Is my tone arrogant?
These are all questions you must ask yourself regularly to exercise the muscle of self-awareness necessary to bring your “bad pride” into submission. Ego stands in the way of your ability to gain power, both personal and worldly.
Shut down your negative character traits one at a time.
Start by killing your boasting habit if you are on that level of character development. Kill that form of ego before moving onto the more slippery and subtle manifestations. Whatever you do, utterly destroy that ego from the face of the earth.
When you interact with others with ego, do not get annoyed. Know that you have found a person with profound weakness of character. This is a man who is either insecure, stupid or both. There is no point in attacking this person directly, you will only enrage him. The way you help this individual is by taking indirect routes of attack and flanking the ego. Do not say to him, “You are really arrogant. You need to work on that ego”. You will only create an enemy if you do this. Instead, outline the benefits of being a man of humility. You have to appeal to the other person’s self-interest or they will not care what you have to say. Just know, that unless a man is willing to change and reduce his ego, there is very little point in trying to help him.
Conduct yourselves like Men
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