Description

Cultivating the Witness

To witness yourself, to keep the ego in its appropriate role (the ego is the CEO for the vast majority of humans, like 99.99999999%!), we need to catch it at its tricks.

Here’s an initial list. You may want to keep it on your phone and add to it when you notice a new trick it tries to play on you!

Also note when the ego tries to take over it’s helpful to use the Feedback Frame on your current life experience (ask what’s working and what you’d like to see more of, be sure to have equal amounts). The ego sees everything as negative. Interesting. 

Tricks of the Ego

The ego’s only function is to hurt self or others. Catch it when it tries to bum your high/make you feel lousy...

Favorite ego behaviors/beliefs:

• Feel offended
• Feel left out
• Feel others aren’t appreciating or acknowledging you
• Feel less than others
• Feel more than others 
• Feel self-pity
• Feel self-righteous or justified for inappropriate behavior (“they started it!”)
• Relentlessly seeks approval/validation
• Relentlessly seeks to control
• Judges self and others
• Competes with self and others 
• Fears the future
• Dwells on the painful past, regrets it, is obsessed by it

The ego wants all of the above to be fixed by someone or something else. The ego does not take self-responsibility.

Resources Mentioned:

• Emotional Agility infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/emotional-agility-in-the-workplace/
• Outcome Frame infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/outcome-frame/
• Reframing infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/reframing/
• Feedback Frame infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/the-feedback-frame/

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