Hi Amanda,

I don’t try to go into combat with it 🙂 It’ll just suck you in and beat you up. Instead, I’ll just nod, smile and let go of those thoughts. To try to fight them would be to spend more time obsessing over them. It’s easier to just not get into it and focus on something more interesting.

There are exceptions though. When something hurts me and I react to the pain; the ego is my shield. Then it’s more difficult to let go and I get preoccupied by the attempts to find ways to not get hurt again. When I’m not hurting though, it’s easier to understand that all the “great ideas” that the ego has about what I should have, be, own…aren’t that great. They are just distractions from something much more precious.

The ego does have a purpose, which is to shield you, but it’s just not very good at it 🙂 No amount of success in a career, for example, will shield you from possible harm or pain. Nothing can, but that’s OK. It is OK to get hurt sometimes. It will pass just like everything else. So the better you get at dealing with fear, pain, uncertainty, the less you have to deal with the ego. No point in fighting it, but rather find ways to make it obsolete 🙂