A friendly way to eliminate your ego

Happy New Year Smart Human!

Today is the last day of our Christmas holidays.

It was a holiday-in-lockdown here in the Netherlands, so I spent a lot of time reading and meditating -there's only so much great food you can eat and Poirot episodes you can watch in a day.

I particularly enjoyed two books by Zen Buddhist Anam Thubten: 'No Self, No Problem' and 'The Magic of Awareness'.

Thubten has a refreshing perspective on Buddhism and awakening - and it is actually very similar to my school of coaching.

The bottom line?

Suffering is caused by the mind and to end it we must, in a way die.

We have to let go of our (old) identity, our ego.

Now if you have tried this you know: that shit is hard.

Your ego does not want to die.

It wants to stay not only alive, but very much in charge of everything you do.

It will fight you every step of the way.

But what if there is a way of killing the ego without fighting it?

That's what I came up with this Christmas Holiday.

A friendly way to eliminate the ego.

No blood or sword fights necessary.

All you need to do is remove all the first person pronouns from your thoughts.

Whenever you notice yourself thinking:

'I'm not worthy'
'I'm not capable'
'I'm not good enough'

or similar deep seated beliefs which are very hard to to change, try this.

Remove the 'I'.

All you're left with is:

not worthy
not capable
not good enough

But what does that even mean when there is no 'I'?

Sit with that question for a while and notice what comes up.

When there is no 'I', what can it possibly mean to not be capable?

This opens up so much room for curiosity and insight into how meaningless a thought like 'I'm not worthy' actually is that it can be very freeing.

This weekend, give it a go.

Kill your ego in a kindly, linguistic manner.

Whenever you notice yourself thinking

'I am X' or 'I am not Y' remove the 'I' and observe what happens.

Have a wonderful, possible even ego-free weekend!

Else