Every business I know has suffered when an ego got involved.
Every single one.
No exception.
Either the business has gone under or the business has suffered a massive financial blow because of egos. In addition, when egos get involved, betrayals and other underhand behaviours surface. Behaviours such as a partner setting up another business and stealing a large number of the existing customer base, or stealing from the other partners.
In How PANDAS Eliminate Betrayals, and The 7 Deadly Sins of Business Owners we see that one attitude that you need to look for in business partners is the attitude of “no ego”. This “no ego” concept caused quite a few readers to ask very similar questions.
The queries come in two parts. The first was “how can people have no egos?” and the second was “why are people who try to help others and never accept any help in return considered to have egos?”
First everyone has an ego. Egos are great. We need them to understand that we and everyone around us is special and valued. We need to understand that we are also special and valued. We can’t help but to have an ego. Egos are as much a part of our being as water and oxygen. However a lot of the time we let our ego get in the way of making decisions that could result in WIN-WIN situations.
It’s so easy to let our ego get out of control. When our ego gets out of control, serious issues develop. In the next 1,000 words, I’m going to explain how our egos get in the way of good decision making, and how to spot someone that won’t let their ego get in the way.
The problem with being right all most of the time
Out of control ego occurs when our success or lack of success defines us to the point where we can longer grow. In these instances, our ego separates us from the people we are trying to give value to. Whether those people be; our customers, our work colleagues, our life partners, or anyone in the communities we work or socialise in.
For example, my own ego quite often causes me issues between myself and my grown-up children. It causes issues with my children because in the majority of cases my years of experience outweigh my children’s knowledge of life.
At least 90 per cent of the time I am correct about the outcome when it comes to life choices and matters compared to my children. My ego becomes a problem because, the times when my children are correct, I do not always hear them “because I am always right.” This “rightness” then causes a rift between me and my children.
In the same way, those who believe themselves to always be right are unable to see some opportunities, or may ruin the opportunity for themselves, through their efforts to prove their “rightness.”
Egos with nothing to contribute
An out of control ego also applies to a person who feels they have nothing to contribute to society. These people’s egos cause their personal lives to live up to this paradigm.
Now here’s the sad part about someone’s negative belief from a compound effect perspective. The more someone believes they have nothing to contribute, the less they will have to contribute. The less they have to contribute, the more they will believe they nothing to contribute. You can see how this compound effect works until eventually this belief will become a natural part of their psyche and personality.
This belief system of unworthiness will eventually sabotage anything and everything beautiful they have in their lives. Their feelings of unworthiness will sabotage a successful business partnership, a good relationship, or a business they run.
Put another way, a person who intrinsically feels unworthy, but obtains success beyond their belief system will self-sabotage to reduce their success level to what they feel worthy of.
Just like those who have to be right, people who feel unworthy sabotage their businesses time and time again. We know this anecdotally from stories such as the many lottery winners who over time become worse off than before they won the lottery. Scientifically, a 2008 study by Francesco Drago, from the University of Naples, found a strong correlation between self-esteem and income.
Let’s use the example of a salesperson who believes that they can only earn £50,000 a year. Imagine one of these sales people has an extraordinary month and brings in a substantially large bonus. In the following months, their subconscious will cause them to behave in manners that will cause them to lose business. For example they will overspend, they will forget to call customers, they will behave rudely.
This is the sales person’s subconscious fighting to return reality to what it believes it should be to ensure that this salesperson’s average earnings will return to the expected lower amounts.
The tough question then is….
How do you identify someone with no ego?
People obsessed with showing how right they are, and those with no self-worth, have egos which are out of control. A person with “no ego” has their ego under control. To identify someone with no egos look for patterns in:
- Body language
- Verbal language
- Their actions
Several patterns of people with no egos include those who:
| Won't | Will |
|---|---|
| Belligerently force people who disagree with them down | Be open to all types of correction even if they don’t need it |
| Argue to prove themselves right | Listen and try to understand (if they have time) other people’s perspectives |
| Undermine themselves emotionally, socially, or financially | Focus on value and fairness |
| Undermine others | Look at how to build another person’s esteem |
| Be self-sabotaging (which is another form of attention seeking) | Be happy to be their unique individual self |
A person with no ego will look and put into action scenarios that result in a WIN-WIN scenario. On the other hand, a person with an ego may talk about WIN-WIN, but their actions will create a WIN-LOSE scenario or a LOSE-WIN scenario.
If you found this article helpful or useful, please do share it with your friends and give us a comment below. If you are interested in the ego, here are a few useful articles I found on the subject
Other articles from the author:
- Achieve any dream with buckets of rubbles
- Turn your dream into reality in four stages
- The seven deadly sins of business owners
- Understanding the gift of betrayal
- Stories illustrating the gifts from betrayal
- How to eliminate betrayal with PANDAS
- Why being busy is a waste of time
- The truth about positive thinking
Image Credit: Warner Brothers
