Tag: ego

God thoughts

5:52pm. Returned from Orange County. I didn’t stop in palm desert so no check in there. Talking with my daughter about creativity. Dreaming of being the chaplain. Listening to Camus’s The Stranger And Pirsig’s Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance on the drive. All that together led to existential pondering…The concept of god is who ever validates our thoughts and hopes. The belief in god exists on the plain of thinking about the past and the future. I remember the past because it brings me joy. I use it in the present to being me peace. Same with a hopes for future. Not because it is real or even achievable but because it brings happiness. Some concept of returning to the past is feasible. Some concept of obtaining a dream future is feasible. Finding god in some form of the ideal is feasible.

Mental gymnastics

8:49am I do mental gymnastics when work isn’t going well. I have to do an honest assessment of my performance. I have to compare it to previous experiences. I have to get better while protecting my ego. I am the only me I have. I have to make alternate plans if the situation ends. I have to turn it around. I have to identify and overcome barriers. The assessing, fixing and protecting are exhaustive.

Ego

The ego will roar to be fed. Achieving the objective seldom happens on the first effort. Failure leads to assessment of what went wrong. We don’t know what went wrong so we take the “facts” of what happened and determine an alternate course. Maybe the first two or three times we remain confident.

Then it happens again and again. The objective isn’t achieved. We start to doubt ability.

We can give up and not try but it is still new so we don’t do that. But we look for patterns. We see shortcomings and others don’t fix. Blame them. Blame situation. And since they have been identified we are hyper aware of them. We see failure, we see the perceived reason. We associate them.

The situation runs out, we give up or we are removed.

I worked sales on business consulting. Completed training, did ride along, practiced my pitch. I was raring to go. They sent me five leads. I failed. They sent me five more. Nothing. Four. Four. Five. It my last one had a good talk. Got farther than I ever had. I felt I was figuring it out.

Come Monday I didn’t get any leads. They said sorry. Next day sent me two. I didn’t make a sale. No leads. No leads. Complained. 2 leads. Nothing. Next Monday nothing. Tuesday nothing. Wednesday I get an email I won’t get any more leads. I didn’t produce.

I had a week where they really fed me.

Then just a couple more. Why waste the leads?

So you know what I did? I started cold calling to make my own leads.

Protecting my ego

Sometimes I lose focus when I exercise.

I begin full of enthusiasm but as I tire I think about quitting or easing up.

I fixate on the time I have left. I ask myself why am I training so hard? I think I should pace myself or quit early.

The same is true with my career objectives. I start full of enthusiasm but when it becomes difficult I begin to pull back.

My mind wanders. I day dream about winning the lottery, catalog excuses for failure or wonder if I should look for a new job.

The fear I can’t achieve my objective, initially or consistently makes me fall back on my default objective, protecting my ego. It is seductively easy to accept failure and find an excuse. Staying focused and on task is not simple or immediate. It is a choice made every day, every minute, often multiple times a day.

Break past limitations

A good coach, boss, leader, trainer drill Sargent, etc is someone that pushes you to break past the limitations you believe exist. There is an alchemy that occurs when you are at the point of breaking but choose to go forward instead. You find a gear, a new expanse of existence. Like the example in a previous post, you start to see the circles.

And like the circles you don’t see them at first. Someone tells you to keep looking. You might not know they are there. Then they disappear. Then your mind starts to see them. Being objective focused is the circles. The squares are emotions, ego, politics, games, excuses, accepting and rationalizing not achieving the objective.