How many of us really understand ego. Ego is generally treated as a negative trait, and the word ego puts many people on the defensive, hurts the sentiments of many others, irritates and angers some others. But is that correct understanding? Is it how we are to react to this word.

Princeton dictionary defines ego “as an inflated sense of superiority over others”. I think this is the usual sense that people associate with the word ego, however I do not think that this is the correct or accurate meaning.

There is another most important definition of ego, “the “I” or self of any person; a person as thinking, feeling, and willing, and distinguishing itself from the selves of others and from objects of its thought”. Wikipedia based on Sigmund Feurd defines Ego as follows: “The Ego comprises that organised part of the personality structure which includes defensive, perceptual, intellectual-cognitive, and executive functions. Conscious awareness resides in the ego, although not all of the operations of the ego are conscious.”

Sigmund feurd defines id, ego and super-ego. The ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the id, which contains the passions. The Super-ego comprises that organised part of the personality structure, mainly but not entirely unconscious, that includes the individual’s ego ideals, spiritual goals, and the psychic agency (commonly called ‘conscience’) that criticizes and prohibits his or her drives, fantasies, feelings, and actions.

There are some who say that Ego is the I sense. True there are 2 ways to look at the this I sense. It can be constructed as attaching yourself to anything that happens and say that that occured because of me, this happened because of me, he agreed because of me, they did it because of me and so on… Here you try to impress a superiority sense into others. There are people who behave so, but most of the population, and “You” in particular do not belong to this category right? I learnt it the hard way that people tend to take this definition of ego, when you refer to ego.

The other form of “I sense”, is when you do or dont do something, say or do not say something, talk or do not talk to someone, agree or do not agree with someone for the only reason that You feel that way. You will not see any logic in anything other than what you feel is logical. “It is” because you said so… Here you are trying to block any other thought/emotion/person, unconsiously or consiously. This is the ego that most of us exhibit.

But is ego required or is this something wrong to have. I was of the opinion that ego is not at all required and it should be suppressed.

But can you eliminate or supress this ego? I think you can, If you start accepting people as they are, watching all the emotions that they generate in you, you eventually will eliminiate both these senses of ego. People are wierd, its the weirdness that makes them unique.

Lets call ego that we talked about till now as negative reaction of the ego. Even though it is not as bad as it sounds, negative ego make you loose your peace of mind. That is the only sense in which I call it negative. Often there are cases where this ego leads to voilent behavior, another reason to mark this as negative ego.

There is another sense of ego, that we will henceforth call as the positive ego or just ego. It is your perceived sense of self worth. It is what allows one to be pampered, it is what allows one do things that we believe will bring happiness, in the face of risks. Flattery or adulation can boost this ego, insults and abuse can hurt this ego.

There is another term that often gets mixed up, self-esteem. Self esteem is your own understanding of your worthiness. May be there are other defintions. What is the relationship between ego and self esteem? Are they the same? Are they related ?

A friend of mine defined these as “If you think that you can do something, it is self-esteem, if you think that only you can do it, it is ego”. I guess he meant negative ego.

There is low-self esteem or the lack of it and self-esteem. We’ll not go into the specifics here. The sublities of self-esteem and ego come into picture when they start playing a role in how you react to something that happens to you, when your defenses come into play.

In my opinion, If you are quick to anger, if you quick to irritation, you can possibly have a negative ego. The size of it is inversely propotional to the time it takes to reach your peak and burst out. Some will claim that when someone hits your self-esteem, you will get angry and irritated, it got nothing to do with ego. Does it mean that you cannot get angry, does it mean that you cannot express? No, getting angry and expressing has got nothing to do with ego, it is only in the way how you carry it forward that ego plays a part.

I believe self-esteem comes into picture in the control and recovery process. Abuse, threats, hurts and insults can hurt your ego, but your self-esteem is what takes you beyond it.

They say that time is a healer. I think self-esteem is the healer. Time just plays along. But what does self-esteem heal, it heals the ego. The ego plays an important role in controlling how far you can go in and deal with emotions that you are not comfortable with. It controls the risk taking ability of an individual.

The ego can pull you to places where it can take hits. The more hits you get, your self esteem takes a dip. This dip controls the ego’s risk taking attitude. But the more successes you face, your self-esteem goes inching up. So self-esteem requires the ego to grow, and the ego requires self-esteem to care for it. Its a love affair between the two. I think Self-esteem is something that you are born with and ego is its creation. A ego is very much essential to living as much as food, air, water and sleep.

May be a low self esteem or the lack of it can create a meek ego, or a voilent ego.

Theories apart, this blog is an affer effect. Somewhere there was a disconnect, I refused to see facts, I refused to accept things, I refused to see my self-esteem taking hits. But what would you do when you believe that something is your destiny, may be you will do the samething that I did. After looking back and seeing everything that has happened, I see that a lesson has been learnt. Class over.

I now respect my ego, and yours too.