Life in the Observer’s Seat

We previously saw that the “real” you and your ego / mind are separate entities. Your ego, rooted in survival, tries to protect you - but also prevents you from living a life of flow and possibility.

Your daily life provides ample opportunity to practice noticing when your ego is running the show (our default mode) and getting your real self to take over.

Response vs. Reaction

This beautiful quote is often attributed to Viktor Frankl, the famous psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

We can use the heartbeat between stimulus and response to interrupt automatic behaviors and respond from an expansive - rather than limiting - place. Say your boss tells you that your work was not up to par (stimulus). With no awareness you may react from ego - justify why it’s good, explain you didn’t have time, blame others etc. Ego responses come from an underlying fear: Do they hate me? Am I not good enough? Will I get fired? With awareness, you notice your internal ego reaction but then take over, coming from a place of higher self-worth and assuming your boss has good intentions. Now you’re solving problems and building relationships: Asking where the work fell short, explaining how you’re going to fix it, debugging misaligned expectations etc.

It’s possible your boss will react from ego, but when you come from a heart-centered place people often reciprocate. You may end up with a stronger relationship even if your work was indeed terrible! You can see how this gets you to show up as the person you truly are (or wish to be) and achieve better outcomes over time. 

You may have noticed the parallels between the victim / striver / empowered adult definitions and the ego / real self. When we’re in victim or striver mode we’re living from ego; when we’re an empowered adult we live from our real self.

Mind Spirals

A few executives sitting together stop talking as soon as they see you. Are you more likely to think “I’m about to get fired” or “they’re about to promote me”? Our mind gravitates towards fear, living in a bad future that hasn’t happened yet. This is a true story: Executives were discussing promoting someone and fell silent when that person walked by. The person was so sure they were about to get fired that they started underperforming and did eventually get fired.

If you catch yourself in a negative thought spiral about the future (“if this happens then this bad things will happen, then this…”), you can stop the momentum and bring yourself back to the present, reminding yourself it’s just a story your mind makes up to protect you. This is not to say you should deny reality - if you can take action to prevent a bad outcome please do, but there’s no point living in fear in the meantime, especially when only a fraction of the bad things you imagine ever materializes.

You’re talking to someone who was dismissive of you before. Are you present or are you running in your head all the ways in which history may repeat itself? If the latter, you’re living in the past, harping on things you can’t change. If you catch yourself in a negative thought spiral about the past you can refocus on the present and make a positive outcome more likely.

Daily Practice

The closer the relationship and the higher the stakes, the easier it is for our ego to get in the way, which is why it’s useful to practice in low-stakes situations. For example, on the road (when it’s safe), catch yourself getting frustrated with other drivers, pedestrians or bike riders. You’ll see that the awareness gets you to relax faster. Same goes for when you're the phone with an unhelpful customer support rep, when your children are fighting yet again, when you have a physical symptom that your mind turns into a terminal illness, when your spouse is late and not answering the phone etc.

These shifts take time. You may fail multiple times before you succeed. The only way to learn is to react rashly or go down mind spirals and eventually realize what you’re doing, so the next time your awareness kicks in a bit earlier. This is similar to a meditation practice, except you practice all day every day. The ideal would be hijacking every situation from your ego before it has a chance to react from fear. But realizing you reacted from your ego mid- or post-situation and shifting to a more heart-centered approach is a win. It’s not an all-or-nothing game.

Most importantly, leave self-judgment out of this. Cut yourself some slack and realize that undoing nature along with 20, 30, 40+ years of conditioning takes time. In fact, a lifetime.

Up next: How our mind holds us back from living a more creative life.

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