Confidence Vs Ego - Episode 86

Confidence vs. ego is a very tough battle that we all deal with in our lives to some degree or another. My definition of confidence is knowing your ability to do something. You can be confident in many different things, from building a snowman to paddling a kayak, anything that you’ve done before and know you have the skills to do, or even if you’re just confident in your ability to learn how to do something. For example, maybe you budgeting for your company. You’re probably confident in your ability to run numbers, use Excel, among other things. I’m confident in my ability to play piano since I’ve been doing it for over twenty years! My definition of ego is believing your different abilities make you the greatest person of all time. Ego is saying that you have a talent or skill, maybe without even actually having it, and showing it off. Ego is saying things like “oh look at me I’m awesome at this!” or “oh yeah I can totally do that too, even better than that person can!” even if you’ve never done it before. I used to let my ego lead me in life, it led me in my jobs, in my relationships, and other areas too. I even let it get to a point where I even lost jobs and relationships because I was saying how good I was at different things, when really I wasn’t very good at them. I came off as condescending, rude, and arrogant because of my huge ego and that made me loose friendships and opportunities. The ego builds you up, and then knocks you down. It’s then you realize you aren’t as good as your ego made you believe. It’s a constant up and down that will have you losing in the end. Every time. If you have a large ego, it might seem great because you feel like the king of the world, but it also gives you a sort of emptiness inside. You can feel like you’re always trying to prove yourself, you’re missing the actual love for yourself, you don’t feel like you’re enough. That’s what we want to change. On the other hand there are people who don’t have any confidence and need more of it so that they can feel like they can do the different things that they are skilled at. I want to help you build your confidence so that you can hold your head up high and not let the ego come to play.

To work on building up your confidence, you should do something consistently, and start small. Let’s say you want to learn how to play the piano. You should start small with learning the names of the notes and which keys your fingers should go on. Practice maybe five minutes a day and do it every day. After a week you may find yourself confident in your ability to find the right keys and name the notes. Then build on it! Learn where the notes go on the staff, then try learning an easy song with basic notes using just one hand. Keep building on the skill once you grow confident with what you’ve already learned. Think about the first time you sat in the driver’s seat of a car and drove. You probably weren’t very confident with your ability to drive. I had a huge ego, but that went out the window when it came to driving, I was super nervous. Now I’m a confident driver since I’ve been doing it for so many years. The more and more you practice, the more confident you get. Pick an area in your life or a skill that you want to get better at and practice it every day. Then you can build on those accomplishments and move that confidence into other areas of your life. Back to the piano example, once you have become confident with your ability to play the piano, you want to try something new, like origami. You know that you can become confident in it and take the same steps you did to learn to play the piano. Start with an easy design and build up your skills. Learn the basic techniques and move to a different, maybe more difficult design.

If you feel that you aren’t confident, know that you are strong, you are amazing! Look for something you are confident at, it doesn’t need to be huge, but use that confidence to allow yourself to try to become confident in something else. If you are struggling with too much confidence and a large ego, do your best to let that ego go. It will hurt you to keep it. I challenge you all to start building confidence in some area of your life. I would love to hear what you think about Confidence vs. Ego! Please send me a message on social media @Jonesinfor or email me at spencer@spencermjones.com.