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Friday, March 29 2024
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Follow Your Heart, Not Your Ego

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Your ego needs to die if you want to live — it is that simple, says Deepshikha Dhankar in this

Ever attended an interview where you dealt with the heart-sinking, resume-defying and mind-blowing question “Tell me something about yourself?” How did you deal with it?

For the longest time, I used to start the answer with “I was born and raised in the eastern / western part of India, have working parents, two younger siblings. I did my schooling from..and so on.” What does this say about me? Nothing, right? Everybody gives these pretty straightforward answers which are actually right there in the resume. So, why do we repeat ourselves or are expected to?

This is the self-story you have grown up with.

The well-crafted and repetitive answer you give when faced with this heart-sinking….you got the drift, question tells you how you associate with yourself and what kind of a story you have been telling yourself — this is also your ego! A fantastic car in which you have taken many ego trips, a great job which boasts of your achievements, a pretty mansion, which mirrors your beautiful ego are the things you generally associate yourself with if you take pride in all these.

It was during one of the events a few years ago where someone asked me the same question and I actually didn’t start with my usual script. Instead, I started with “I am pretty resilient”. I don’t know why I said that, but that forever changed the way I associated with myself.

Nothing is absolute. Everything exists in relation to something else. And this is how we construct or deconstruct our ego.

We are living an autopilot life due to this very ego and it gets worse if we are not aware. Then, we don’t see things as they are, we live those things as a part of them.

It all starts with the desire to be different — without actually realising that each one of us already is.

Since adolescence, we have been told to be a certain way. So, we start shedding a part of our authentic selves little by little as we grow up, just like a snake sheds its skin. The only difference is that the snake becomes new and we become egoistic. Part of the problem is that we stop identifying ourselves with the qualities we possess and start identifying with the things we have. Soon enough, we start becoming more and more of our ego-self and less and less of our authentic self, driven by the heart.

Creative people suffer the most.

It’s true. Because they express through some form of art. They are most vulnerable to other people’s feelings, at the same time to what others think of them. Even if they do want to follow their heart, the inability to remain fragile and accept the purity of it makes them take the same route of ego as everyone else.

The more people hide who they truly are inside, the more potential they are destroying without realizing it.

Think about it! Everyone is unique and so is everyone’s potential. But the minute we all get into the mad rush of ego — to be superior to the other, to accomplish more than the best friend, to prove a point of our worthiness to others, we start blocking our own path.

Can we still be saved? Yes, we can be!

Stop killing your creativity

Everyone has some sort of creativity in them — some sort of self-expression. When we are in the rut, we stop expressing ourselves, we stop using our creativity. And the less creativity we use, the more unproductive we become — in life. You don’t need a degree in empowering yourself, you just need to start being yourself.

Bring back your emotional confidence

You don’t ever have to feel bad about expressing your emotions. So what you cried? So what you snapped? You do not need to spend so much time being anxious about how you reacted to things if you want to actually be aware of how you react to things. Only when you fully accept yourself can you begin to improve, otherwise how can you address something your ego tells you doesn’t exist?

Drop the autopilot life

If you don’t feed your ego, you’ll actually get out of your autopilot life. You’ll stop doing things without awareness. Ego feeds on your energy when you battle inside about whether or not to follow your hear. But once you start practising being aware, the ego-self will vanish.

It’s okay if everyone doesn’t like you

This growing need to be liked by everyone, to be adored and praised by the whole sanity of this planet is breath-taking — in a literal sense! IT IS okay if you are not the star of the party, the apple of everyone’s eye and the jewel in their crown. It doesn’t define you. What defines you is how true you stay to yourself.

If we all worry about being liked by others, our collective ability to do best will diminish.

Follow your heart

With all you have got! If your heart feels driven towards creating something, it is probably because that something needs to be created. Simple. We do not need to justify our existence by following what everyone else is doing, just because your ego tells you that you are everything others don’t want you to be. Instead, start following your heart and shedding your ego. You’ll be in Wonderland.

 

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