Because your sense of self is something you’ve built up over time, you can improve it if it’s too weak or not enough to help you deal with reality. You can work on it as a part of your own personal growth. Also, since your ego strength comes from your psychological and social growth and is based on your ability to deal with reality, you can figure out what its strengths and weaknesses are. When you do that, you’ll know what tools to use and develop to build up your ego.
When you work on your ego, you give yourself the strength to do things as yourself, as a person who makes mistakes and dies. And because life can be hard, even cruel, you will sometimes need all the strength you can get to face it and deal with it. This is what ego-strength is all about.
Use the following pattern to figure out what and where you need to get stronger, as well as how to get stronger so you can face reality with courage, grit, commitment, resilience, etc. In this process, you first find the tools you need to build your ego, and then you figure out how to solve problems. Use this pattern to feel more at ease with who you are on the inside.
Developing Ego Strength
Ego-strength is the ability of your mind, body, and emotions to deal with whatever comes your way without giving up or having a fight-or-flight reaction to stress. Ego strength is being able to deal with and overcome the problems in your life. In a strange way, ego strength comes from having a strong sense of self, self-worth, dignity, and trust in your skills. You don’t have any ego or ego power when you’re born, but you build it up as you learn, get better at things, and move through the world.
The Ego-Strengthening Pattern:
1) Consider an event that triggers a threat to your sense of self.
What is the triggering event that you find hard to face? (e.g., facing loss of a loved one, loss of a job, a career, facing criticism or rejection, being bullied, health crisis, etc.).
As you recall it, describe that event as if you are observing it—as a neutral observer.
2) What “strength” or “strengths” do you need?
In your list of resources or powers for yourself, what do you need?
Menu List: Acceptance, appreciation, flexibility, ownership of your innate powers, social powers to connect with others, distinction between responsibility to/for, forgiveness, compassion, vision, values.
3) Identify your beingness apart from all of your expressions of self.
Have you distinguished yourself from what you do and experience? If not, then make that distinction now: There’s two parts of me— myself as a human being and myself as a human doing. These are not the same. The first is unconditionally valuable, the second is conditional and depends on my skills and learnings.
Are you more than your thoughts, emotions, speech and behavior?
Is that all you are?
As you use the words, “I am more than my thoughts, emotions, speech, behaviors, experiences, history, etc.” What comes to mind? How well does that settle?
4) Access the neutral explanatory style to clean out any “trauma.”
Exchange the three P’s (personal, pervasive, permanent) for the three T’s (that, there, then). Consider the situation or experience and say to yourself:
∙ It is that and not me, not personal.
∙ It is there or here, not everywhere, not pervasive.
∙ It is now or then, not permanent, not forever.
5) Integrate into your self-definition and future pace.
Adopt a solution focus that there’s always a solution. Say that to yourself. Say “I am more than, and different from, whatever happens.”
How well are these words settling inside you and integrate into yourself and your identity?
How often do you need to repeat these words until they become fully embodied?
What other resource do you need?
Take time now to coach your body to feel these resources.
Finally, make an executive decision to continue this until it becomes your way of being in the world.
Are you fully aligned with this? No objections?
Where will you first use them?
Conclusion
With this pattern you can strengthen your own ego (your sense of self). You can also use it to coach a client in finding and adding the needed personal strengths for a secure ego-strength. Repeat until it is fully integrated and you or your client knows that you can face whatever happens.
Curated by Danielle Tan.
Reference:
- [Certified_meta-coach] 2023 Morpheus #36 STRENGTHENING THE EGO by L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. Executive Director, ISNS.
