Dancing with wisdom - chapter 4

When we talk of someone having an ego, we’re more than just stating a fact and we’re certainly not offering them a compliment.

The truth is that we all have an ego. But what do we mean by the word ego and, on our quest for wisdom, why can it cause such great problems in our own lives and the lives of others? Is there such a thing as a healthy amount of ego? If so, we will need much wisdom to get that balance right!

All of us struggle with the problem of ego. When I use the word ego, I am not necessarily saying that it is all bad and unhealthy. In the right portion, our ego is inherently positive and provides a healthy level of confidence and ambition. When ego works well, it drives out insecurity, fear, sloth and apathy. But left unchecked, it can spiral out of control and grow easily into arrogance. When that happens, it becomes destructive by attacking our talents and abilities. This destruction is either through overconfidence and giving the false illusion that we’re better than we actually are by robbing us of confidence to the extent that we lose trust in our ability to use those talents to capacity,

At one extreme, the tendency of ego to make us think too little of ourselves pushes us into the trap of not valuing who we are and the contribution we can make. At the other extreme, we find the obvious problem of thinking more highly of ourselves than is appropriate. That can lead to making foolish decisions and trampling insensitively over the feelings, plans or ideas of others, There are more occasions than I feel comfortable to admit when I have allowed pride to influence decisions which I later regretted, More close to home, when my wife has tried lovingly to challenge me I have often been too proud to listen.

Football manager Jose Mourinho is known for being disarmingly honest. He illustrates the danger of pride with his comments on a Spanish radio station in 2011 when asked what he felt God thought of him:

Before we pass judgement on Mourinho, let’s pause and reflect for a moment. For all of us it is very easy to fall into Mourinho’s way of thinking when things go well in life. We attribute what we have to our own inherent goodness or ability, putting ourselves at the centre and therefore somehow worthy of God’s attention and love. At the same time, it is worth pondering, as Mourinho admits, that God must have a high opinion of us if he allows us to continue existing in a world where there is also such a high level of sorrow and negativity.

Somewhere around the mid-point between thinking too highly and too little of oneself there is humility that keeps our ego balanced between these two extremes.

John Newton (1725-1807) was a slave trader who lived a life of gambling, drinking and a reckless disregard for other people. He experienced a spiritual awakening which led to a radical change in the direction of his life and eventually to him writing the famous hymn 'Amazing Grace'. A favourite saying of his captures living with humility while keeping one’s ego in check: "By the grace of God, I am what I am. I am not what I want to be, but thank God I am not what I once was."

What is liberating about this perspective is the tension between accepting who he is with all his failures and struggles while at the same time acknowledging there is a long way to go. The key that holds this tension together for us is being grateful for how far we have already come. William Law, back in the 18th century, said 'Every good thought that we have, and every good action that we perform, lays us open to pride and thus exposes us to the various assaults of vanity and self-satisfaction'. Those words hold as true today as they were then. In these ten contrasting statements, what tendencies do you see in yourself?

All of us are guilty of falling into any of these extremes at one time or another. We can be so preoccupied with ourselves that even the good that we do leads to a sense of superiority or aloofness to others. However subtle they are, the seeds and roots are in all of us. If allowed to germinate and grow in our hearts, they can cause great damage to the lives of us and those around us. It’s helpful to tease out the connection between ego and pride.

The word 'ego' comes from Latin, where it means 'I, myself'. Psychologists talk of the ego as the conscious part of the mind that sits between the id (the primitive part of the mind preoccupied with immediate gratification) and the super-ego (our internal moral policeman telling us what is right and wrong). So ego is an inflated sense of self-importance but it’s also closely linked to self-confidence. That implies ego can also have a positive meaning. While there is a risk of being a deep liability it can also be a valuable asset. Jim Collins, one of the most prolific business authors of the last sixty years, talks about this in his book Good to Great with the concept of Level 5 Leadership.

In his research, Collins found that two-thirds of the companies that don’t make the leap from 'Good' to 'Great' were weighed down by what he described as 'the presence of gargantuan personal ego that contributed to the demise or continued mediocrity of the company'. For the eleven companies that made the leap from good to great, Collins described two unique traits of their leaders:

There is something intensely powerful about combining these two apparently contrasting qualities of fierce determination and a distinct lack of self-absorption. "Humility in the true sense is not thinking less of oneself, but simply thinking of oneself less". That is a radical thought and worth reading again!

When we talk about someone having an ego, we mean that person is so self-absorbed that they cannot see anything else. It gets more complicated than that! The dictionary definition of ego talks about 'a person’s sense of self-esteem or self-importance'.'" Another way of describing that is pride. In terms of what pride is, the dictionary describes 'a feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one’s own achievements, the achievements of one’s close associates, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired'. As with ego, there is both a negative and a positive side to pride.

If we start with the negative aspect, there are stark warnings. In one of his books, C. S. Lewis devotes a whole chapter to describing pride as "The Great Sin'.

This is the fragile over-inflated ego that is preoccupied with self and how we come across to others. It is a constant unwavering self-absorption that puts us at the center of the universe. Everything that happens in the world is brought back to ourself and how it makes us feel or where we stand in relation to others. This kind of pride is always looking down on others and seeks to find ways to feel superior of better.

There is an alternative way of looking at things.

Isak Dinesen teases this out positively by describing healthy pride as 'faith in the idea God had when he made us'. When we grasp that profound statement we incorporate the divine calling into all our strivings and aspirations. Our yearnings for success, significance and comfort have to include what God ultimately wants for us. What that leads to for the appropriately proud is, according to Dinesen:

A good way to think of a healthy level of pride and ego is that it is rather like thinking absent-mindedly about your fingers or toes! Tim Keller talks of this in terms of a 'gospel-humble person':

This is a delightful sense of self-forgetfulness, whereby you live, speak and behave as you are made to without feeling a need to prove or downplay ourself. "Healthy pride is faith in the idea God had when He made us".

I’ve often laughed at Theodore Roosevelt’s famous saying "If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month".' It takes an enormous amount of self-awareness, even courage, to recognise and acknowledge responsibility for our failings and mistakes. It is much easier to blame others or look for fault elsewhere.

Let me introduce a globally influential thinker on leadership. Marshall Goldsmith is arguably one of the most insightful and successful business coaches in the world. In a short, punchy and profound four-minute video available at drsunil.com/ego, he touches on the important subject of ego and how it can get in the way of us living truly satisfying and fulfilling lives.

His provocative point is that every day we make ego and pride (putting myself and my desires ahead of anyone or anything else) more important than our health, our safety and even the people we claim to love. Pride is the ultimate form of selfishness. That selfishness is the worst part of human nature. Tim Keller, referencing C, S, Lewis, vividly describes it as, 'A ruthless sleepless unsmiling concentration on the self'. This is no small or trivial issue, It often manifests itself through a blind spot that affects all of us in some way or another, Pride has destroyed countless individuals, families and even nations.

In the Marshall Goldsmith video at drsunil.com/ego, he uses the example of surgeons in operating theatres. A study by Atul Gawande found that not allowing nurses to ask a series of simple questions of the surgeons such as 'Did you wash your hands?' and simply failing to systematise such questions into a basic checklist has contributed to more deaths than the Vietnam War, Afghan War and Iraq War combined! That is a staggering claim.

The positive way forward advocated in the video is to appeal to enlightened self-interest. A pilot, for example, being asked by a junior simple questions from a checklist such a8 "How much fuel do you have?' is vital to prevent not just needless passenger deaths but also the death of the pilot himself. Similarly, but less dramatically, when we let our ego win not only us bur everyone else loses.

The vast majority of us are not surgeons or pilots. How can we better arm ourselves in our daily lives against the dangerous self-sabotaging effects of our egos? The best way is to recognise and be aware of the early warning signs before they cause irreparable and lasting damage. Warning signs include these four:

But what exactly is humility? The English word humility comes from the Latin humilitas and means 'from the earth'. It is about being appropriately grounded in oneself, thinking neither too highly nor too little of oneself.

One of the problems with the word is that it tends to be associated more with the negative than the positive. We are inclined to think of humility in terms of not being arrogant or boastful or not putting yourself above others. The best definition I have come across originated with Ralph Washington Sockman, who was a senior pastor of Christ Church in New York City:

To put it even more succinctly humility is not thinking less of oneself, but rather thinking of oneself less. Its polar opposite is pride, vividly and disturbingly defined by C. S. Lewis as 'a ruthless sleepless unsmiling concentration on the self'. That short, punchy phrase captures the terror of a pride that takes itself far too seriously and sees the whole universe as revolving around itself. A self-centredness that has to be protected at all costs, with no room for displaying weakness or vulnerability.

There is a temptation to think that the opposite of displaying too much ego is to be humble. 'The problem with too little ego is that we fail to value ourselves and the important contribution we can make on so many levels to those around us. There is a general lack of confidence in ourself and a loss of appropriate self-esteem. Striking the right level of ego involves a healthy tension between the following three areas:

According to the behavioural theory authors Marcum and Smith, the deepest level of humility is at the intersection of these three domains. The challenge is keeping all three in equilibrium. When we are around this centre our talents stay true to form and we are able to make our greatest contribution. However, we all have a natural tendency to wander from the equilibrium. As we move away from the centre we begin to lose the power of humility, and our apparent strengths then become weaknesses that masquerade as strengths.

If you have followed me thus far, you may be saying that this sounds all rather abstract to everyday life. C. S. Lewis’s description of what it looks like to meet a truly humble person makes these ideas more practical. He boils it down to two simple characteristics, Firstly, that they appear remarkably content and happy with themselves. They are not trying to prove anything to you, to anyone else or to themselves. They are content with being who they are. Secondly, you will notice that they are very interested in your concerns and your priorities in such a wa that they seem to practically forget about themselves.

Another way to talk about this is to refer to the fool. In our day and culture, the word fool is used as a dismissive insult. Ideas of what is a fool vary. In Western culture, a fool is often symbolised as a donkey while in India the symbol of a fool is an owl—an animal that is regarded as wise in the West! Foolishness, regardless of culture; is the opposite of wisdom.

When we call someone a fool we want to have nothing to do with them and their so-called foolish behaviour. The reality is we all act as fools at one time or another. I dare say that there are aspects of foolish thinking and behaviour in our lives right now that we are not even aware of!

There is much to be gained from unpacking what we actually mean by the word fool. The word doesn’t refer to someone with a lack of intelligence, a common misconception. It’s very possible to have a high IQ and still behave like a fool. More straightforwardly a fool is someone who is habitually out of touch with reality. They make life miserable for themselves and those around them. Putting their ego at the centre of their life they have a destructive self-centredness.

Humility, by contrast, takes the ego away from the centre and is able to put God with His plans and purposes at the centre.

This prayer beautifully illustrates true humility and living in wisdom: