Ship Management companies, Ship captains , HRD management pundits and the common man will benefit from this piece.
Placing your ego on the back burner is the first step in realizing one's potential, having a happy family life and living in harmony with society.
It is a wise thing to drop your ego once you get married. What ego calls love is actually possessiveness that can turn into hate within a second. Human love is limited because ego and selfishness is contained in it
Emily Post , the etiquette czarina requires a genteel lady to crook her little finger while holding the tea cup— out of sheer “ consideration for other people ” — what nonsense !
The ego thrives on others and lives on attention . Human ego demands personal recognition and wastes energy in resentment if it does not get enough. The underlying emotion for the ego is fear, the fear of being a nobody.
There is always a sense of insecurity around the ego even if on the outside it appears confident , perfumed and powdered. Ego strengthens itself by diminishing others—the uncultured females who had no clue of how the little finger must be crooked.
Ego is insanity of the human mind. Unhappiness is an ego created mental cum emotional disease. The chatter of the ego continuously disrupts the natural state of well being. Stress is from within the mind , not by external threat. Ego creates suffering without recognising it.
Many people carry large amount of unnecessary baggage, both mental and emotional through out their lives. They hang on to the old emotion to strengthen their identity.
Let me go beyond insignificant Emily Post , to leaders and Managers of Companies.
I can already see lot of my colleagues smiling wryly.
It’s hard to get into the boardrooms and MD offices of some organizations because the egos of the leaders take up way too much space. Only bootlickers and hand kissers are allowed into their inner sanctum. They recruit yes-men instead of capable men.
Their own agenda is always ahead of the business agenda. They would disagree with someone’s point just because the is the one who said it. Their ego makes them take everything personally. They mistake a short memory for a clear conscience and are miserabe within.
They are unable to listen to another person's view without feeling threatened. They leave debris and destruction wherever they go. They are very eager to see their picture or name on the cover of a business periodical .
Their Indifference arises due to ego. Their ego cannot distinguish between a situation and their interpretation and reaction to that situation. Cooperation is alien to ego except when there is a secondary motive. The ego becomes the grit in the system that gets in the way of authentic meaningful communication.
Their self-talk is the mouthpiece of ego, Their inflated, overbearing egos create rules for rules’ sake. They complicate procedures , squash good ideas and keep good people down.
Their ego makes them unwilling to admit that they know zilch about a subject in a meeting—the equivalent of the ear trying to tell what it saw and tasted and smelt, in a bulldozing manner. They brood endlessly on their petty grievances, never held before them any vision that might have lifted them out of themselves. They substitute their thinking capabilities with their loud cynical talking capabilities.
Compulsive liars are driven by egos feelings of insufficiency.. Ego will force them to make life difficult for others—for they feel the need to put people in their place or get into one-upmanship games.
“ If you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” -- Abraham Lincoln.
Such wretched people would give only conditional love to a small child or a kitten.
Enough on these wretched self righteous leaders, infatuated with their own brilliance , self delusions of grandeur and hidden agendas.
Let us move on.
Road rage has become very common these days. The offence will be small but our reaction would be ridiculous—here it is the power of his car’s engine..
Ego tries to enlarge and strengthen by forming gangs and posses. Here the ego has simply shifted from the personal to the collective.
An immature leader douses the spark of creativity, rather than fan it, for the bottom line is always about him.
Your ego can prevent you from being an effective and truly great leader. Ego, popularly conceived as an over-inflated sense of self-importance, is a major stumbling block to effective leadership.
Good leaders surround themselves with talented, outspoken individuals, not yes- men. Leadership is not an ego game!
Ego confuses opinions with facts . Every ego is a master of selective perception and distorted interpretation. Ego likes to judge and be right. You have a problem if you allow your ego to supersede your common sense.
Ego drives us on to greatness, then thrashes us soundly when we let it get out of control. Ego is a demanding unforgiving parasite . To the ego the present moment NOW hardly exists and is always concerned with keeping the past alive. Ego looks at the present with jaundiced eyes of the past.
When people argue they will act as if they are fighting for survival and there is a imminent need to win at all costs. Such is the self delusion caused by ego. The ego thrives on reactivity.
The ego burns up considerable amounts of energy.
People with king sized egos , when they suddenly fall ill suddenly become nice and gentle and humble—for the hospital is a great leveler.. But alas, when they get better energy returns and so does the ego. Every ego is therefore schizophrenic – with split personality.
There is no ego in telling the waiter that there is a cockroach in your cold soup. To be free of ego all you need to do is to be aware of your thoughts and emotions as they happen. Awareness and ego cannot coexist. It is difficult to see one's own ego.
You can be sure you are correct, but then you have no right to take away people’s dignity to prove yourself. Let people see your soft side. This will make you much more endearing. Done properly it will not be perceived as weakness . It will make you more approachable and believable.
Surround yourself with equally capable and strong-willed people. Give them permission to disagree with you , on a regular basis.
There is a fine line between pride and arrogance, that line is called EGO. The danger zone is when you start thinking that your accomplishments earn you the right to be condescending, obnoxious and abusive. Arrogance is having an attitude of superiority, delighting in your own significance and thriving on others feelings of inferiority.
The person with a king sized ego, will understand the whole of the planet,, but he will not understand what his own ego is doing to him. The left brain lobe is the home of his ego. It is the nature of ego to take and that of spirit to give. Since leadership is of spirit, the ego powered men can never be good leaders--they can never rise over the post of a mangy manager. It is the nature of the right brain lobe, to be accepting and free of judgements. Ego makes a donkey think that he is THE champion race horse.
Murderers in the death row have in the last few hours experienced the ego less state and the deep joy and peace that comes along with it.
Even Saddam Hussain agreed to wear the black hood on his head without protest before he was hanged , in front of several people —under normal circumstances he would have spat on the man who suggested it to him.
The PARADOX is that suffering caused by the ego eventually destroys the ego. When ego disappears , bliss enters.
CAPT AJIT VADAKAYIL
No comments:
Post a Comment