10 lessons learnt from failed relationships

 10 lessons I would like to share about  getting over failed relationships from lived experiences. 

They are  as outlined here below.

One: Even the strongest feelings fade. You had a life before they came to your life,  and you’ll still have one after them. In the material moment, this may be difficult to accept. Nonetheless, you’ll eventually get over a lover, you’ll even wonder what it was you saw in them.

Two: Don’t make assumptions. Let things be as clear as they can be before coming to a conclusion about the status of a relationship.

Three: Being a ‘sweet guy’ doesn’t always mean you’ll be accepted. People will post all those cute John Legend vibes and the proposal at The Hub, but she will leave you, a caring person, for a toxic relationship with some bad boy who barely (if at all) gives a darn about them.

Four: Love and affection can make one do stupid things. Don’t judge those who do. Advise them with kindness, and hope you’ll never get that crazy. As you spend money on people, do it within your means and without expectations. We all know of someone who paid college fees for their better half, only for the beneficiary to find a college lover and marry them. If you will, do it like a church 

offering: in secret, without expecting anything in return. Kill the transactional thinking. It hurts everyone.

Five: Do good,anyway. I’ve been motivated to set the bar high and doing good without a motive to  manipulate situations for my own good . My ex once confessed how the poem I wrote her on her birthday remains etched in her mind. That doesn't in any way mean she has my name etched in her mind.  That said, know your worth. Respect yourself enough to know when to walk away and set her free to explore the world as she seems fit. 

"Even the strongest feelings fade. You had a life before them and you’ll still have one after them. It may be difficult to accept in the heat of things, but time heals".~Neil Samuel

Six: Don’t give false hopes. Life taught me to appreciate ex’s gesture of making her stand known early enough before things got deeper. There’s a trend among women of keeping a man they have no interest in wrapped around their little finger. Then when they are in financial distress, the man becomes their saviour. Leading someone on, for whatever reason, when you know you are not into it, is a perfect recipe for disaster.

Seven: Seek therapy in form of whatever your heart longs to do as self-care . Talk to people. Vent. Write it out. Sing it. As I write this, I feel better about it. I also find solace in songs like 'Take a Bow' by Rihanna.

Eight: Reach out to your friends. These people could be going through storms themselves  and they need you to be there for them. Misery loves company. You still have more to give to those who still matter in your life.  You are not empty after losing what you probably did not need in the first place.

Nine: Beware the words, “We need to talk.” I am more than convinced this phrase is a curtain-raiser for bad news. Any time you get it, apply Murphy’s law: Anything that could go wrong will go wrong. Happened to me thrice. Brace yourself for it by keeping cool and listening. Say only 'thank you' after that long one way monologue  and move on. 

Ten: Most importantly, I learnt that it’s never that serious. No matter what happened, you need not kill someone’s 

daughter. It will only make things worse for you. Had I taken that course, I’d have moved from being a good  student  of 'facts of life 'to running from the long arm of the law.

Bonus point;  One day, you will thank yourself for not taking every small loss seriously. Be a man and walk away from problems that need not be solved. 

Not every problem has a solution. 

If you won’t remember anything else in this article, just remember: even the strongest feelings fade. So before you get that knife, gun or axe, think twice. Time heals the deepest of wounds. Trust the process and join me in the call to end crimes of passion.

The best way to conquer uncertainty is to learn to live with it

     

“It is not given to human beings – happily for them, otherwise life would be intolerable – to foresee or predict to any large extent the unfolding of events. In one phase men seem to have been right, in another they seem to have been wrong. Then again, a few years later, when the perspective of time has lengthened, all stands in a different setting. There is a new proportion. There is another scale of values. History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes.” –Winston Churchill

As a much younger man, Churchill witnessed some of the most epic military failures of all time. In the decades before WWI there were no serious wars. This left plenty of room for academics to theorize about how new technology might be used in war; in fact, WWI was possibly the most thoroughly planned war in history.

Yet from the first encounter, the theories unraveled in the face of situations that could never have been predicted. The most respected generals in the world were made to look like amateurs. Their faith in abstract planning blinded them to the reality of the situation. It took years of conflict before they began to really adapt to the reality of their situation.

These generals didn’t realize that they were engaging in the world’s first truly modern battles. These battles required the ability to improvise more than they required detailed plans.

The same transition is currently happening in business. A plethora of business books came out this summer building on the concept of The Lean Startup methodology introduced by Eric Ries. That is, it is cheaper in most cases to run an experiment than to create a plan. Even massive companies are starting to turn their focus towards quickly implementing a strategy on a small scale to test a concept before rolling out a massive change.

Poke and prod rather than plan and plan.

This has implications not just in business on a grand scale, but on an individual level as well. Twenty-year career plans aren’t effective anymore. The amount of variables in our lives has multiplied, and with that, every day seems to contain growing uncertainty. There seem to be two schools of thought on how to deal with this increasing inconstancy:

1. The Technophiles: These are the guys who say you should embrace everything that’s new. Technology will annihilate uncertainty. The aim is to integrate ourselves with machines as much as possible.
2. The Paleophiles: These are the guys who say you should reject anything new, recover our ancient human history, and live according to that (effectively ignoring new uncertainties). Technology is making us less human. The aim is to detach ourselves from technology.

My goal here is to take a more sober look at ways to deal with (and even benefit from) the ever-increasing uncertainty of daily life. This isn’t a “middle” path of half-measures between the two views, but a totally new way to approach things.

Two Types of Uncertainty

The first thing to understand about our unpredictable world is that there are two types of uncertainty:

1. Soft Uncertainty. This is the uncertainty you feel inside yourself. It encompasses the moral, spiritual, or philosophic uncertainties in your life, and the doubt that surrounds your choices in what to do and which way to go. It’s the uncertainty you feel before asking for a raise. It’s the uncertainty you feel before attempting a project. It’s the uncertainty of the existential crisis. It’s the uncertainty in the minds of generals at the start of WWI.
2. Hard Uncertainty. This is uncertainty that exists outside of you. It’s the uncertainty that exists after you ask for a raise and after you begin your new project. It resides in the probabilities and randomness of the world. This uncertainty is the work of the Fates. This is the type of uncertainty that soccer moms and economic planners fail to solve, every time. It’s the fact that weapons will be used in ways never imagined.

If we look at these as problems, they are impossible to solve.

Soft Uncertainty seems, at first glance, to be a solvable problem. Just adopt the proper mindset – often that of some religion, nation, or political stance – and you’ll be golden. Many of us, however, are unable to adopt some ideology whole-heartedly.

Hard Uncertainty also seems like a lost cause. Each time we are promised some scientific or economic certainty, the forecasts miss and everything changes.

The problem isn’t uncertainty itself. The problem is our rejection of it.

Perhaps we don’t need to solve Soft Uncertainty by finding the answer. Maybe the ability to comfortably hold a paradox in our mind is the better answer.

Perhaps we can’t control Hard Uncertainty. Maybe we ought to position ourselves to actually benefit from things out of our control.

The tools we discuss below develop our strength to handle both types of uncertainty simultaneously.

Instead of becoming arrogantly certain, we will become confident in our uncertainty. Instead of pretending we can predict the future, we will be ready for a future we could never imagine.

“You get pseudo-order when you seek order; you get a measure of order and control when you embrace randomness.” –Nassim Nicholas Taleb

 

Some Things Are Certain

Let’s not forget that there are areas in life that are certain. John Kay explains the differences in Obliquity: Why Our Goals Are Best Achieved Indirectly:

“If you are clear about your high-level goals and knowledgeable enough about the systems their achievement depends on, then you can solve problems in a direct way. But goals are often vague, interactions unpredictable, complexity extensive, problem descriptions incomplete, the environment uncertain. That is where obliquity comes into play.”

The world isn’t pure chaos. If you want to learn to tie a bow tie, then you can find instructions on exactly how to do that. If you want to get fit, you know you’ll go far by eating less crap and working harder in the gym. It’s when you begin building a business, starting a romantic relationship, or writing a book that things get more complex. (Sure, there are best practices for these complex tasks, but these will only take you so far.)

These uncertain areas are the most interesting and the most valuable; they provide the most challenge, and thus the most growth, satisfaction, and ultimately, joy. It’s where your time is best spent, and where the concept of obliquity mentioned above factors in. Some problems — the complex ones, especially — require indirect solutions and the ebb and flow of a risk and discovery cycle.

The best chance you have at taking advantage of an uncertain world is to be operating with the proper framework. The tools below will take you a long way in developing that framework.

5 Tools for Dealing With Uncertainty

We are going to look at five tools for dealing with uncertainty through the emotional and professional lens, but understand that this is for the sake of space; many of these have the potential to benefit you in all areas of life where uncertainty resides. Which is to say, everywhere.

1. Stoicism: Focus On What You Can Control

When I was a day trader I would often lose thousands of dollars while making what I believed to be the correct trade. The next day I might make thousands of dollars while executing a foolish trade on a whim. If I allowed my emotions to tie themselves to these outcomes I would have gone broke within a month.

In an uncertain world we might have a great outcome follow a terrible choice or a terrible outcome follow a great choice.

The best we can do is stack the probability of winning in our favor and then act consistently towards winning.

This is terribly difficult because it hurts especially bad to lose while doing the “right” thing.

Stoicism is a powerful tool to help us through the emotional turmoil that this can cause.

Even more than any Roman philosopher, Nassim Nicholas Taleb has summed up what it means to be a modern Stoic:

“Stoicism is about the domestication, not necessarily the elimination, of emotions. It is not about turning humans into vegetables. My idea of the modern Stoic sage is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.”

William Irvine has written the only true guidebook to modern Stoicism that exists (the Stoics didn’t bother with this, which tells you a lot about the differences between their minds and ours). In it, he describes one of the most important topics of Stoicism: control what you can, forget about the rest. He uses a tennis match to illustrate:

“Remember that among the things over which we have complete control are the goals we set for ourselves. I think that when a Stoic concerns himself with things over which he has some but not complete control, such as winning a tennis match, he will be very careful about the goals he sets for himself. In particular, he will be careful to set internal rather than external goals. Thus, his goal in playing tennis will not be to win a match (something external, over which he has only partial control) but to play to the best of his ability in the match (something internal, over which he was complete control). By choosing this goal, he will spare himself frustration or disappointment should he lose the match: Since it was not his goal to win the match, he will not have failed to attain his goal, as long as he played his best. His tranquility will not be disrupted.”

This is easier said than done. It takes constant practice to separate your emotions from external situations.

How do we go about this?

Every time you begin to feel anxious or upset, try practicing the Triad of Control. To do this, you simply distinguish, in any given situation, whether you have total control, no control, or some control. Then, focus on what is in your control with your whole being.

At first glance it seems like this may rob you of power. It’s acknowledging that you can’t, in fact, control everything. After some practice, though, you will notice a growing sense of control in your life. Instead of tiring yourself worrying about what-ifs and shoulding all over yourself, you are concerned with what you are able to do. You connect yourself to reality.

If you practice this consistently for a month or so you will notice that you actually seek out adversity. Consider Seneca’s description of a wise man:

“So far… is he from shrinking from the buffetings of circumstances or of men, that he counts even injury profitable, for through it he finds a means of putting himself to the proof and makes trial of his virtue.”

Working toward that mindset will make you a force in an uncertain world. You don’t hide when things shift, you push harder. You’re not afraid to learn when new skills become necessary. You aren’t afraid to see opportunities where others only see chaos.

For more on Stoicism check out Ryan Holiday’s quick and motivating The Obstacle is the Way, Tim Ferriss’s favorite essay by Seneca, or, if you want something comprehensive, William Irvine’s A Guide to the Good Life.

If you’d rather visit the primary texts (which are extremely readable and approachable; these guys were more concerned with solving problems than sounding smart) then I’d suggest Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic or Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations to start.

2. Make Many Small Bets

 

“People are bad at looking at seeds and guessing what size tree will grow out of them.” –Paul Graham

In most situations, it’s cheaper to test the validity of something than to spend a lot of time guessing about it.

In my business, StartupBros, we will use a blog post (investment: time) to gauge demand for information on a certain topic. We have an idea of what types of posts will hit, but we can never be certain. If a post elicits an extreme reaction from readers we consider building a paid course or coaching program based on that topic.

We make small bets (blog posts) and then pour more resources into the ones that show promise.

Venture capital funds operate in a similar way. They never know what is going to be the next Google or Facebook and so they are forced to make a ton of small bets, knowing that most of them won’t work out.

Paul Graham, founder of Y-Combinator, discusses the odd place this puts venture capitalists in:

“When you interview a startup and think ‘they seem likely to succeed,’ it’s hard not to fund them. And yet, financially at least, there is only one kind of success: they’re either going to be one of the really big winners or not, and if not it doesn’t matter whether you fund them, because even if they succeed the effect on your returns will be insignificant. In the same day of interviews you might meet some smart 19 year olds who aren’t even sure what they want to work on. Their chances of succeeding seem small. But again, it’s not their chances of succeeding that matter but their chances of succeeding really big. The probability that any group will succeed really big is microscopically small, but the probability that those 19 year olds will might be higher than that of the other, safer group.”

We can use this same approach to taking risks in our own lives. Put most of your resources into something safe while putting a small amount into extremely risky bets with massive potential.

An example of this for your career: keep your day job while working on a crazy startup at night.

If you’re operating in a random world you don’t want to have all your eggs in one basket. You want to be able to take a lot of small losses while being exposed to potentially massive wins.

3. Give Yourself Options

 

“[B]iology rarely rests with a single solution. Instead, it tends to ceaselessly reinvent solutions.” -David Eagleman, Incognito

An option is something you can take advantage of but don’t have to. If you buy a movie ticket then you’re guaranteed to be able to see a movie, but you don’t have to. That option cost you about $10. If a friend invites you to dinner it’s not a terrible cost to forgo the movie. A ticket to an AC/DC concert will be a much more expensive option.

Being exposed to more options means more potential opportunities.

Being able to move freely in life depends on the options you open up for yourself. Robert Greene explains how optionality is used in warfare:

“The world is full of people looking for a secret formula for success and power. They do not want to think on their own; they just want a recipe to follow. They are attracted to the idea of strategy for that very reason. In their minds strategy is a series of steps to be followed toward a goal. They want these steps spelled out for them by an expert or a guru. Believing in the power of imitating, they want to know exactly what some great person has done before. Their maneuvers in life are as mechanical as their thinking.

To separate yourself from such a crowd, you need to get rid of a common misconception: the essence of strategy is not to carry out a brilliant plan that proceeds in steps; it is to put yourself in situations where you have more options than the enemy does. Instead of grasping at Option A as the single right answer, true strategy is positioning yourself to be able to do A, B, or X depending on the circumstances. That is strategic depth of thinking, as opposed to formulaic thinking.”

The best generals aren’t the ones with the best plans, they are the ones who open themselves up to the most options.

In order to take advantage of these options one must be able to adapt.

Here are 5 ways to increase your options right now:

• Learn a new professional skill. If your company goes bust right now, would you be able to get another job doing exactly what you’re doing in your current gig? If not, you need to expand your skillset. This kind of learning can create asymmetric payoffs – skills often work together synergistically.
• Start a side hustle. Work on something on the side. Again, if everything goes to sh*t it’s nice to have options.
• Save money. It’s also nice to have options if things go well. Money in the bank gives you the option to take advantage of opportunities – be they investments or some amazing offer that requires you to quit your job. Money in the bank also makes it easier to transition if everything goes to sh*t.
• Go to parties. Opportunities often come in the form of humans – both personal and professional. One of the best ways to meet people is by going to parties. I hate parties until I get to them, then they are always worthwhile.
• Shift your perspective. I know. This is BS. But it’s also not. When you shift your perspective and become aware of more options, then you can take advantage of them. Train yourself to see your opportunities and what you could do to expand them even further.

4. Adaptability: Learn How to Perform in the Present

 

“The problem is that we imagine that knowledge is what was lacking: if only we had known more, if only we had thought it through more thoroughly. That is precisely the wrong approach. What makes us go astray in the first place is that we are unattuned to the present moment, insensitive to the circumstances. We are listening to our own thoughts, reacting to things that happened in the past, applying theories and ideas that we digested long ago but that have nothing to do with our predicament in the present. More books, theories, and thinking only make the problem worse.

Understand: the greatest generals, the most creative strategists, stand out not because they have more knowledge but because they are able, when necessary, to drop their preconceived notions and focus intensely on the present moment.” -Robert Greene, The 33 Strategies of War

Abraham Lincoln put it more succinctly: “My policy is to have no policy.”

Remember the WWI generals. They had access to decades of theory and planning when they entered the war. The first person to make a move that wasn’t in the playbook made all that theory irrelevant. Worse than irrelevant, clinging to old plans actually makes them harmful.

The war didn’t call for the generals with the deepest knowledge, it called for generals who were able to adapt to a rapidly changing situation.

We are in a similarly volatile situation today. Industries are completely changing shape in the time it takes college students to graduate.

If you want to be a writer you’re not going to take the same path writers in the past have. There are different demands on writers now. Publishing doesn’t work the same. Instead of waiting to get picked up by a publisher, you may need to release your own work on Amazon.

If you want to make movies, you may be better off starting a YouTube channel than working your way up the studio system. You’ve got to adapt to the new mechanics of the industry.

Even those who are looking to get a job need to adapt. Looking to the past might teach you that getting a degree (and then another) is the best way to get hired. Actually, you may be be better off creating a badass side project and showing it off online.

This world is changing so fast that no book (or even blog post) can give you a definite path to follow. You’ve got to quickly look around and act as best as you can given the environment you see.

Doing what makes sense in your specific circumstances will serve you much better than doing what you learned you ought to do in a situation similar to yours. There are best practices, of course, but until you grow past them it is impossible to fully take advantage of the randomness around you.

Robert Greene’s 48^th law in The 48 Laws of Power is about remaining fluid. It’s about evolving into something other than you are in order to take advantage of a new situation. He explains the importance of adaptability in evolutionary terms:

“In the evolution of species, protective armor has almost always spelled disaster. Although there are a few exceptions, the shell most often becomes a dead end for the animal encased in it; it slows the creature down, making it hard for it to forage for food and making it a target for fast-moving predators. Animals that take to the sea or sky, and that move swiftly and unpredictably, are infinitely more powerful and secure.”

Just because you’ve mastered a skillset doesn’t mean that skillset will continue to matter. A friend of mine was a well-known wedding photographer. When digital cameras began taking over, he refused to adopt the technology.

After years of refusal he became a sort of novelty. For a window of time he was the person to go to if you wanted old-school film prints. Ten years later, nobody cared about film anymore, they just wanted great images. Now he has finally made the switch and is slowly building up his clientele again.

When a machine takes over your job your best bet is to learn how to use the machine. Don’t hold on to your old-school way in the name of tradition.

It’s easy to think of castles or fortresses as symbols of protection. We think that if we become strong enough nothing can harm us. Remember France’s Maginot Line? It was an impenetrable series of fortresses built as a reaction to the German invasion in WWI.

When WWII came around, the Germans marched right around the line, making it totally useless. The French, instead of looking around at their current circumstances, reacted to a previous attack. They prepared for the past instead of the future. They spent a massive part of their national budget on digging their heels in.

Their refusal to adapt was even more expensive.

5. Embrace the Undefined

 

“It’s also important to remember that no one is ‘the bad guy’ or ‘the best friend’ or ‘the whore with a heart of gold’ in real life; in real life we each of us regard ourselves as the main character, the protagonist, the big cheese; the camera is on us, baby. If you can bring this attitude into your fiction, you may not find it easier to create brilliant characters, but it will be harder for you to create the sort of one-dimensional dopes that populate so much pop fiction.” -Stephen King, On Writing

Our efforts to contain the world in a system or idea may be doing more to hurt us than help us. Instead of trying to find the answer, maybe we ought to embrace that there isn’t any answer besides what we do and what is.

Remember that this is true of both our external and internal worlds. John Kay describes the achievement of decision making under complexity:

“We do not solve problems in the way the concept of decision science implies, because we can’t. The achievement of the great statesman is not to reach the best decision fastest but to mediate effectively among competing views and values. The test of financial acumen, as described by Buffett and Soros, is to navigate successfully through irresolvable uncertainties.”

And so it is with our interior lives. At times it feels that we don’t know who we are. This would be bearable if we didn’t believe so intensely that we should know who we are. That we should be able to wrap up our identity into a box or sentence and serve it up to anyone who’s interested.

It’s not that easy, but it is that simple. Steven Pressfield has a suggestion for overcoming this dilemma in The War of Art:

“Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action.

Do it or don’t do it.”

Let the actions you take define you and let the words fall away (they lie anyway).

Let yourself embrace the paradoxes of the world and begin to effectively mediate between the poles.

Let go of the need to explain and you’ll be amazed at what you do.

The aim here is to not just deal with the uncertain world that we have to live in but to embrace it — to love it. Nietzsche said it best:

“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary—but love it.”

 

Conclusions & Action Steps

 

“…it is much better to do things you cannot explain than explain things you cannot do.” –Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The world isn’t going to get any more certain. In fact, it looks like it’s going to get increasingly complex.

This doesn’t mean that we need to feel uncertain. It does mean we need to learn to operate under uncertainty more effectively.

I offered 5 specific ways in which you can go about doing this:

1. Adopt Stoicism. Specifically practice the Triad of Control. Every time you feel disturbed by a situation, ask yourself what is in your control. Attach your mental well-being to your effort and the actions you take rather than the outcome. (Again, this is simple, effective, and incredibly difficult.)
2. Make Small Bets. Think hard about small risks you can take that have the potential to pay off in big ways. Don’t focus on the possibility that you win but instead on the magnitude of the payoff if you do.
3. Optionality. Give yourself more options in your life. Save money. Go to parties. Make your work public. Don’t commit until you need to. Get multiple offers. Always put yourself in situations where positive options are likely to be created.
4. Adapt: Stay Present, Fluid. Stop reading about how to start a business and take the first step. Stop reading about fitness and go to the gym. Don’t think about what the book says you should do, think about what makes sense for you right now. The situation you are in is unique to you; a book or advisor may help you think through something, but only you fully understand the context of your situation.
5. Embrace Uncertainty. Uncertainty is a force of nature; you don’t get to “beat” it, you can only hope to use it. How can you use it? Steps 1-4. How can you make room to begin applying those? Let go of your need for certainty. Begin to see that more ideas can be correct in the abstract — yet when you take action you find that only one reality exists. You can’t explain it all and you don’t need to. In fact, if you did, something else would just change. The goal is to love this. Amor fati!

Godspeed!

Don't plan on killing your ego before you read this

 To grow as a spiritual being, you need to let go of your ego.

You’ve heard it so many times that you don’t question it anymore.

You may not know how to put it into practice yet. But erasing the ego seems to be an obvious step forward.

In the mainstream talk about mindfulness and spirituality, the ego is usually pictured as something bad or at least — redundant. You’re told that as long as you’re controlled by your ego, you can’t surrender to the natural flow of life.

Abandoning the ego seems necessary to attain the bliss of equanimity and mindfulness that you’re after.

But when it comes to letting go of your ego in the real world — what does it actually mean? How does this translate into your actions and choices?

And should it really be your number one priority?

In the world where numerous traditions blend together, spiritual growth can be a tricky endeavour. If you don’t have a teacher, you’re often bound to be your own guide. You do your best to assemble the scattered pieces of spiritual knowledge into one coherent picture.

But with such a complex endeavour, there’s a high chance that something gets distorted along the way.

What if I told you that letting go of ego isn’t something you should really pursue?

What Is Ego And Why We Think It’s Useless

To put it short: ego is who you tell yourself you are.

In this article, I will use the above as our operational definition of “ego” or “self.” This simple definition is coherent with both Western psychology and Buddhist teachings.

A hundred years ago, Sigmund Freud identified ego to be the “mediator” between our unconscious, “animal” impulses and the demands of society. Modern psychology still draws on his work today:

“A more modern conception that is certainly related to Freud’s is to consider the ego as the self-consciousness system. The self-consciousness system is the narrating portion of human consciousness that reflects on one’s thoughts, feelings and actions and inhibits or legitimizes them to one’s self and to others. In this sense, ego is very similar to what is meant by the term identity (…).” — Gregg Henriques, PhD

Buddhist scholars agree that the ego is a mental construct we need to navigate the world. While in the Buddhist context you may more often run into the phrase “the sense of separate self,” its core meaning is very similar to the Western concept of ego.

The Buddhist tradition recognizes the psychological importance of the ego. But as Buddhist teachings about the “illusion of separate self” migrated to the West, the “illusion” part became more pronounced than the usefulness of ego.

The result is that many Westerners who explore Buddhist ideas today get the impression that they should kill their ego. It only seems logical once you grasp that it’s illusory. On top of that, we often judge the ego as “bad,” because we associate it with selfishness and arrogance.

That’s how I used to think about it. When I discovered mindfulness, I went on a quest to “let go of my ego.” To me, this meant ignoring my desires and “surrendering” to what life presented me with.

Even when I found myself with toxic people or in abusive situations, I abode by my quest. I was convinced that “just letting it all be” was the right thing to do.

This attitude caused me to harm myself in many ways — from burning out at work to engaging in the wrong intimate relationships. After a few years of religiously following the doctrine of “ego abandonment,” I started suspecting that something was wrong with it.

The doctrine that I constructed from the scattered pieces of spiritual knowledge clearly wasn’t working for me. I needed to dig deeper. I started with one fundamental question:

Did the Buddha really advise to disregard the ego?

What Happens When Ego Tries To Eradicate Itself

When ancient ideas get transferred to another culture, they often lose their context. Because they are detached from their roots and planted on foreign ground, the fruits they bear are often deformed.

The concept of selflessness, useful in navigating spiritual path within the Buddhist culture, may bring very different results when planted in a contemporary Western mind.

One reason this is so is the self-hatred which is so common in Western culture. Buddhist abbot Thanissaro Bhikkhu points out:

“The Dalai Lama isn’t the only Asian Buddhist teacher surprised at the amount of self-hatred found in the West. Unfortunately, a lot of people with toxic super-egos have embraced the teaching on egolessness as the Buddha’s stamp of approval on the hatred they feel toward themselves.”

When you interpret self-hatred — or even just unhealthily low self-esteem — as a sign of egolessness, you experience spiritual bypass. The term was coined by John Welwood, a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist. He used it to describe a more general “tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.”

Spiritual bypass happens when you try to erase your ego before you make it functional. This usually leads to reinforcing your psychological issues, instead of resolving them.

Consider this story Jack Kornfield tells in his book A Path With Heart. He describes an encounter with a woman who claimed she experienced a deep sense of selflessness in her spiritual practice.

“As she walked, I pointed out a heaviness in her walk and a contracted quality of her body. Soon she could see it too. As she explored her experience, it turned out not to be emptiness at all, but numbness and deadness. As we talked, it became clear that her body and feelings had been shut down for years. Her self-esteem was low, and she felt herself incapable of doing worthwhile things in the world. She confused this inner feeling with the profound teachings of insubstantiality.”

Aware of the trap of spiritual bypassing, many Buddhist teachers don’t encourage students to begin their spiritual path with the eradication of ego. More often, they talk about working on a more skilful concept of self — “reclaiming your true nature” — in the first place.

Instead of abandoning your ego, you’ll be wiser to develop it into more healthy, skilful forms first. But what does it mean in practice?

Why You Should Make Friends With Your Ego

“Neither Buddhism nor psychotherapy seeks to eradicate the ego. To do so would render us either helpless or psychotic. We need our egos to navigate the world, to regulate our instincts, to exercise our executive function, and to mediate the conflicting demands of self and other.” — Mark Epstein

Buddhism views a healthy ego as necessary to interact with the world in skilful ways. This includes enduring a meditative practice.

Jack Kornfield stresses that “a strong and healthy sense of self is needed to withstand the meditative process of dissolution and come to a deep realization of emptiness.”

If your ego is wounded with afflictions such as self-belittlement, you need to reclaim a balanced sense of self in the first place. As Thanissaro Bhikkhu says, a healthy ego is necessary to have an “honest sense of how to learn from your past mistakes for the sake of greater happiness in the future.”

Because here’s the thing: the Buddha advised to use the pursuit of happiness as the most trustworthy compass in life. However, what we need to understand is that Buddhism doesn’t see happiness as a zero-sum game.

The notion of benefiting at the cost of someone else only makes sense if you see happiness as dependent on external pleasures. When you learn to create happiness inside of yourself, the whole paradigm shifts.

Suddenly, your own happiness naturally adds to the happiness of other people. It becomes a team sport instead of a competition.

In the Buddhist paradigm, the pursuit of happiness isn’t just about you. It’s about the collective amount of happiness you can bring into the world.

From this perspective, you need a healthy ego not just for your own sake. You need to “upgrade” your identity so that it’s more helpful to you and the rest of the world.

This way, your natural pursuit to be happy becomes the only compass you need. It motivates you to update your sense of self into more skilful forms. Inevitably, it also leads to letting go of your ego — but that comes as an end result, not the starting point of the process.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu expressed it this way:

“Only on the highest levels of practice, where even the most skillful concepts of self get in the way of the ultimate happiness, did the Buddha advocate totally abandoning them.”

5 Practical Tips To Skilfully Evolve Your Ego

“You must be somebody before you can be nobody” — Jack Engler

After looking at the original Buddhist ideas, it seems that all that “selflessness buzz” misses the point.

Letting go of ego is an effect of following a spiritual path, rather than a step you should take.

I experienced this to be true on my path. As I tried to erase my ego in unhealthy situations, I allowed others to walk all over me. I gave people consent to make fun of me, abuse and offend me. I thought that by doing so, I was practising selflessness.

Turned out this was my way of bypassing the real issue I had to deal with: my lifelong low self-esteem.

Eventually, I understood that I needed to resolve that issue before I could experience selflessness. As I started working on it, I learned a few lessons that can be helpful in working with your ego, too.

1. Create a strong sense of self, or your environment will do it for you.

The people you encounter shape your attitudes and behaviours. If you have a well-defined personality, you can, to some extent, mitigate their influences and remain “your own person.” But when you’re vulnerable or confused about who you are — watch out with whom you spend your time. Chances are that others’ views of you may become more convincing than your own.

2. Practice focus.

Without the basic ability to focus, it’s hard to determine what kind of problems you have with your ego. It takes deliberate attention over a period of time to identify your areas of struggle. If you want to learn how to observe your internal world, learn the basics of mindfulness meditation.

3. Commit to one spiritual practice.

It’s okay to try different things here and there for a while. But many teachers emphasize this: after a period of exploration, it’s important that you commit to one spiritual path. Because a lot of people walked this path before you and described it, you’ll have a coherent roadmap for your practice.

4. Seek a teacher.

I still haven’t found a spiritual guide, but I’m looking for one. Meanwhile, I find it helpful to connect with people who are also active spiritual seekers. Sharing my own experiences and hearing their insights can be a great help. Even if you don’t have an “official” teacher, it’s still valuable to learn from fellow practitioners.

5. Balance discipline and compassion towards yourself.

The way you treat yourself is vital in developing a healthy ego. On one hand, spiritual growth is a pursuit of self-improvement, on the other — a practice of accepting yourself the way you are. To provide for both sides of the equation, you need, respectively, discipline and compassion.

To start with, try to accept your ego as it is right now. From that place of acceptance, it will be easier to discipline yourself and cultivate a practice that allows you to expand your sense of self.

Your Ego Will Lead You To Liberation

You just learned a lot about the Buddhist concept of egolessness and cultivating a healthy sense of self. Hopefully, you understand the role of the ego better now.

But how can you act upon this new understanding?

First of all, remember that there’s nothing wrong with having an ego. On the contrary, it’s a necessary part of any person’s psyche.

Further, there’s a big difference between selfish behaviour and having a healthy sense of self. According to the Buddha, the latter helps you reach for authentic happiness.

Trying to forcefully erase your ego altogether won’t lead you to happiness. Building a healthy one instead is where you should start.

A healthy ego will show you that happiness isn’t a zero-sum game. Your happiness doesn’t happen at the cost of another.

Instead, the authentic happiness you source from within will naturally add to others’ sense of wellbeing — alongside your own.

As your sense of self becomes more established, it helps you see which behaviours and attitudes are useful for this authentic happiness. This will allow you to access inner wisdom that you’ve always had within you.

Over time, your more skilful concepts of self help you attain higher and higher levels of happiness.

Then, one day, when the ego is the only thing standing in your way to experiencing ever greater bliss… it may just naturally let go of you.

Adopting a sceptical mind helps interrogate the truth

 A young man caught a small bird and held it behind his back. He then asked: “Master, is the bird I hold in my hands alive or dead?

He thought this was a grand opportunity to play a trick on the old man.

If the master answered “dead,” the young man was planning to set the bird free. If the master answered “alive,” he would simply wring its neck.

The master spoke: “The answer is in your hands.”

Certainty is a trap— it makes us feel in control, even if we have to deceive others.

The young man didn’t care about the master’s answer — he wanted to be in control. The young man was willing to kill a bird to be right.

We want life to go according to our plans. We wish to know what will happen next. However, life is out of everyone’s control. Your cravings for certainty can derail you from experiencing life as is.

The certainty mindset —wanting to have ‘the’ truth — can stop you from growing as a person. Rather than discovering life, you get stuck in what it is familiar.

The world is fluid and unexpected—life is always a surprise. You don’t need certainty; but to be open to challenging your truths. That’s the path for personal discovery — to seeing life sharply.

Certainty can cripple your life

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” — Voltaire

Being certain doesn’t mean that you have the right answer.

The mind is incredibly averse to uncertainty and ambiguity. When we don’t know something, we create our own reasonable explanation. According to cognitive science, we prefer to hold on to these invented justifications than to admit we don’t know what happened.

Having an answer is not correlated to seeing life sharply.

Social psychologist Arie Kruglanski coined the term ‘cognitive closure’, to describe our aversion toward ambiguity and uncertainty. We prefer having an answer as quickly as possible than to discover the truth.

During times of fear and anxiety the need for cognitive closure increases.

Studies have demonstrated that, after terrorist attacks, society feels an urge to find who’s responsible. Fear feeds rumors and fake versions — people share stories without any validation. The desire to punish someone gets everyone out of control — it becomes okay to accuse the first apparent suspect.

Being under attack rapidly affects our logic. Anyone is guilty until proven innocent — not the other way around, as it should be. That’s how the desire for certainty can cripple our lives.

The need for closure makes you see the world in black and white — you simply close your mind to new information.

Skepticism doesn't mean fighting reality

“Do you want to know what my secret is? I don’t mind what happens.” — Jiddhu Krishnamurti

Trying to find an answer is not wrong — being blinded by the need for quick resolution is the problem.

When we overreact, things get out of hands. The medicine becomes more dangerous than the disease we are trying to cure.

The opposite to the need for closure is skepticism. Rather than taking the first answer for real, you challenge the truth. You don’t let irrational fear dictate your answers.

Skepticism is not nihilism or being negative; it’s adding an extra filter. Rather than taking anything for granted, you want to validate the truth. You don’t take social constructs as true no matter how strong peer pressure is.

The need for certainty can shape your perception — your own stories cloud reality. You don’t do it on purpose, of course. We all fall victims of the mind tricks. Challenging your own beliefs requires training your mind.

Developing a critical mind will prevent you from taking the social constructs — rumors or not — for valid.

That’s how rumors get started in the office. One person creates the story and shares it with two different people. Then they wait and see. When someone listens a similar story coming from two different ‘sources,’ the rumor is validated.

Being skeptical doesn’t mean being rigid, dogmatic, hypercritical, or obtuse. You simply understand that you cannot react to the first answer, you want more evidence before buying into it.

Skepticism is not denialism either. Anything is possible (or not) until proven the contrary. Challenging a theory is how new lines of thinking are created. If you believe that one idea is an absolute truth, you don’t leave room for incremental improvement.

You can be a skeptic without being a cynic.

Cynicism is distrusting most information you see or hear, especially when our beliefs are being challenged. Cynics are tricky — they have a strong argument to debunk other people’s ideas, but have little support to justify their beliefs.

Cynics are intolerant — they have inflexible thoughts that leave no room for additional ideas.

Skepticism is not thinking that beliefs are wrong, but that they may be wrong.

There are two types of skepticism: negative and positive. By removing bad ideas, negative skepticism allows good ones to flourish.

Positive skepticism goes beyond the removal of false claims. The Greek word ‘skeptikos’ means “thoughtful.” While the need for closure is a reaction in the heat of the moment, being skeptical is less impulsive. It requires inquiring and reflecting.

Positive skepticism fuels critical thinking— it encourages you to get a deeper understanding of events or things.

Instead of taking the truth for granted, you question it first.

The truth will set you free

“The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.” — Jim Davis

Our need for certainty might overshadow facts.

People who are certain of an opinion are more likely to act on it. The elections are a great example. When people are confidently in favor of candidate X, they are more likely to vote for that candidate than someone who is uncertain even though they support the same candidate.

The surer someone believes he/ she is right; the harder is to persuade that person that he/she might be wrong. When people feel sure, it’s harder to change their minds.

Certainty can get you stuck in a position; you shut down to new alternatives.

You have the freedom to choose. But the truth is not optional, right?

Neurologist Robert Burton argues that certainty is not a conscious choice, nor a thought process, but a sensation — it’s the ‘feeling of knowing.’ Like anger or fear, it doesn’t rely on a deep state of knowledge. The author explains how most times we are wrong even when we’re convinced we are right.

Ulric Neisser, the father of cognitive psychology, conducted the “Challenger study” to question what he called ‘flashbulb memories’ — how shocking, emotional events leave a vivid imprint on the mind.

Students were asked how they’d heard about the disaster, where they were, what they were doing at the time, etc. Neisser collected information the day following the incident. He repeated the experiment three years after. Students expressed high levels of confidence that their false memories of the explosion were more accurate than the descriptions they had written down one day after the explosion.

One student commented, “That’s my handwriting, but that’s not what happened.”

The autonomous rational mind is a myth. The answer, Burton argues, lies in accepting the limits of our ability to know and in “playing by the rules of scientific method.”

The concepts of the self and free will are innate useful fictions that allow us to function. As Samuel Johnson said, “All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience is for it.”

Modern neurophysiology tells us our decisions are made subconsciously before we are aware of deciding.

The way of the skeptical mind

“In order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life to doubt, as far as possible, of all things.” — René Descartes

Embrace positive skepticism

Turn challenging the truth into a habit. Once again, I’m not asking you to become a cynic and distrust everyone. Positive skepticism is about finding the other side of the story. To understand whether the sources and analysis are impartial.

Listen to both sides of a story. Look for heterogenous sources. Set your conclusions aside before read all the information. Ask: What if? to explore different hypothesis.

Avoid reacting as mobs do

Most crowds belong to an identifiable group — the collective beliefs dictate the crowd’s action. Fear and anxiety erase logic and rationality. All the mob cares is to find a scapegoat.

Beliefs blind individuals. When the mob is blind, the behaviors are even more damaging. Try to calm the mob before things go out of hand.

Be open to change your mind

It’s okay to believe something and then, after reviewing the facts, realize that either you were wrong or your memory was playing tricks. Like it happened to the participants of the “Challenger study.”

Changing your mind is wise. People who get stuck to what they believe is true, they stop learning.

Turn challenging truths into a healthy habit

Continually question the truth, especially yours. There is never a 100% guarantee that we are right. Burton suggests we use the words “I believe” instead of “I know.”

Admitting that ‘your truth’ is actually a belief set you free. It becomes easier to challenge your interpretation of real events.

Adopt a ‘maybe mindset’

The world is uncertain and continually mutating. What was right yesterday, will not be okay tomorrow. Scientists are constantly discovering new theories that debunk previous ones.

The same happens with life events — what seems positive today might unexpectedly turn into negative tomorrow. The truth is ‘provisional’ — adopt a ‘maybe mindset,’ as I explained here.

We don’t control life events.

Life is about discovery, not about being certain. Being skeptical will prevent you from taking things for granted — you will see life sharply.

It's fulfilling to lead an ordinary life

 We’re told that an ordinary life is a boring life. To live life fully, we need to do something different, something special. We need to stand out from the crowd and be someone memorable.

The problem with this way of thinking that, by definition, we can’t all be extraordinary. If we all did something extraordinary, it wouldn’t be extraordinary any more. Therefore the vast majority of us are “doomed” to live completely ordinary lives.

Well, I am here to tell you that it’s okay to be ordinary. Ordinary doesn’t have to mean dull, boring or unfulfilled. Read on to find out why you can stop worrying about doing anything amazing, because an ordinary life is all you need to be happy.

Why do we want to be extraordinary?

I think there are three main reasons why we think we need to live an extraordinary life.

1. We want to leave a legacy

There is an innate human desire to leave a “legacy” — some kind of mark to commemorate our existence and prove that we were really here. It’s one of the reasons many people have children, as a way of leaving a part of themselves behind. It’s also why people feel that they need to live an extraordinary life — they want to make sure that they are remembered after they’re gone.

2. We see other people being extraordinary

Social media means that we’re bombarded by images of other people’s “extraordinary lives.”

The prevalence of social media means that we spend a lot of time witnessing other people’s “extraordinary” lives. We see other people climbing mountains and jumping out of planes. We don’t see them driving to work or doing the washing up.

Human beings naturally compare themselves to others and being bombarded by these images makes us feel that our daily lives should be as exciting as everyone else’s highlight reel. 

3. We all think we’re special

It’s not just millennials who think they’re special. The last century has seen the rise of the “self” in most cultures and, these days, we are all rather obsessed with ourselves. We all want to stand out, to be seen and to be heard.

Somehow, we have started believing that we need to be special in order to be important. Unless we are extraordinary, we don’t matter.

Why we should stop trying to be extraordinary

So society and biology are encouraging us to strive for extraordinariness. Well, here are a few reasons why I think they’re both wrong:

Most people can’t name their 8 great-grandparents!

If you’re worrying about how you’ll be remembered, don’t. Most people can’t name their 8 great-grandparents. (Quick test: can you?) That means that, in a few short years after you die, it’s more than likely that nobody will remember you anyway.

Sorry if you find that depressing. It’s actually meant to be a liberating thought, to free you from the pressure to leave a legacy. There’s no need to waste your one precious life worrying about how you’ll be remembered. You can simply concentrate on living for now. Focus on how you can have a positive impact on the people you interact with now, rather than focussing on how an imaginary future generation will talk about you.

Ordinary doesn’t have to be boring

It’s the ordinary things that make us the happiest

Our culture frames ordinary as boring. We’re told that we shouldn’t want to live a life like everyone else, that we should strive for something different and better.

However, normal doesn’t have to be boring. In fact, the most “normal” things, like getting married or having a baby, can feel miraculous when they happen to you. Even the daily routine doesn’t have to be boring. The “9 to 5” is only mundane when we aren’t experiencing any growth or progression.

The irony of trying to live an extraordinary life is that it’s actually the ordinary things that make us happiest. If we find meaningful work, cultivate close relationships and develop our skills, this can create a deeply fulfilling life, even if it isn’t “special.” We don’t have to do something different to everyone else in order to have a good life.

An extraordinary life doesn’t stay extraordinary for long

If we try to have an extraordinary life, how do we keep it extraordinary? Human beings are incredibly good at adapting to new circumstances, which works against us when we seek novelty. Even the most exciting adventures soon become the new normal.

You might dream of “running away from it all” to open a hostel in the Space Station  or become a Block chain instructor , but how long would your idyllic dream stay idyllic for? Whatever you do, you’ll soon get used to it and it will no longer be extraordinary.

We don’t need to be special to find meaning

Feeling that your life has meaning is one of the most important components of happiness, and something I have written about a lot. You need to feel that you have a purpose, a reason for getting up in the morning.

However, I think many of us feel that a meaningful life has to be an extraordinary life. I know I used to think that. I thought that the only people living truly meaningful lives were those heroes who are setting up orphanages, curing diseases and saving the rainforest. I thought that you had to “make a difference” in order to find meaning.

Now, I have come to realise that meaning and ordinary are not mutually exclusive concepts. We do not have to do anything special to live a purposeful life. We need to feel that we are making a difference, but that difference doesn’t have to be on a grand scale. We can make a difference by being a caring employer, a diligent employee, a supportive friend.

We don’t need to be the best, we just need to get better

Continuous progress is important. Winning isn’t.

Closely linked to our desire to be special is our desire to be the best. We feel that we won’t be noticed or appreciated unless we are better than everyone else. Our culture encourages us to constantly pitch ourselves against others in a bid to “win” some competition or another. The truth is that we don’t need to be the best anything. We just need to always be getting better.

It is important to our well-being to work towards goals, to feel a sense of progress and growth. It is this constant and gradual growth that makes us happy, not the short-lived thrill of winning or achieving. We need to improve, but we don’t need to be extraordinarily good at anything to be happy.

To sum up…

Our culture teaches us that our lives need to be extraordinary in order to matter. This belief leads us to disappointment and frustration, because an extraordinary life is not only rare, but unsustainable. The truth is that an ordinary life does not have to be a boring life and that ordinariness is the most reliable route to fulfilment and happiness.

Don’t worry about leaving a legacy because nobody will remember you anyway

It’s the ordinary things that actually make you happy

Even extraordinary things become mundane after a while

You need a purpose, but it doesn’t have to be anything special

Being the best doesn’t matter, as long as you’re always getting better