Episode 39: I Don’t Want My Ego Making My Decisions

Today, this episode will be airing on Thanksgiving week. And this week comes with so many highs and so many lows, sometimes because of family dynamics, our personal situation, the things we're feeling stresses we may have, as well as all the things about family that we love, and all of the things that holidays bring where we can connect and feel good. But something sometimes gets in our way of taking in what we're actually receiving. And that is our ego. And I didn't know a lot about ego until I started doing my work.

So I've been learning about it over the years in different contexts. But I learned some more things this week. And I felt like you guys need to know these things, too, because it's kind of life changing when I learned something that adds a new dimension, or makes it bigger than it was before. And the ego just shows me so many things, of how I can change my thought patterns, where I put my energy and my focus, and how I can be a healthy individual in my own thoughts and feelings as well as in my relationships. So with the ego, our ego is there.

It's not just like I thought when I was growing up that ego means you have a lot of pride that you think you're so great, or you think you're so cool. That's not what ego is, yeah, there is a side of that, that our pride can get too high. But ego is something that is created way back when we're little. And it's there for a reason it is created by us to protect us that's its main function is protection. So when we're using our ego, to manage our life, we're listening to the wrong voice. So first of all, let's just kind of start way back at the beginning.

And I learned this in a YouTube video that I just watched, and I'm going to talk to you about it, so you will know where to go to look at it. But when she was talking about the ego, she was saying how when you think back when you were a younger child, and maybe you were interested in something, maybe you were doing something around the house, like maybe you were dancing around the house, and you thought you were doing all of these great spins, and turns and, and you were just so proud of yourself and, and you were singing or, or whatever you were doing.

And you're waiting for your primary caregiver, your primary person, so most likely one of your parents to notice you to say something to you. Well, the thing is, is that sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. So let's just say in this moment, when you're kind of having this passion well up inside of you, and you're sharing with the world, your world, your small little world, this talent that you have, or this whatever story is going on in your mind, and you're just creating it and you're waiting for validation. And our primary caregiver does not do it.

Meaning, if it goes something like this, you're dancing around the house, and you're looking at your parent, you're waiting for them to notice you and they keep not noticing in that moment whether they notice you and don't say anything, whether they say say stop doing that stop doing that You're distracting me, whether they say you're being too loud, somebody's sleeping, whatever it is that feels like they didn't see you. Your ego starts growing. And it will say something like, oh, when we do this, nobody thinks it's great like I do.

Nobody can see me, and so our ego starts protecting us. And it creates this story around what other people think about us or what we do. The reason this is even on my mind right now is because I had an appointment with my energy worker this last week, and I was discussing things with her about how some certain things aren't working. They're not coming together and I feel like I'm doing everything I can. And I feel like I'm listening to God and I'm truly striving to do what he wants me to do. And things are not working the way I want them to work or the way I thought that they should be or the way I thought he was going to make them work, direct it to fix it or to do something and she mentioned Ego.

And she said, Well, let's check your ego. And she said, Oh, my your egos too high. And I'm like, it's too high. And I'm thinking, Okay, I am humble, I am striving to do good things. How is it too high. And so she was talking to me a little bit about how when we either have trauma, whether we have something that doesn't work out the right way, whether we feel stressed about the unknown, that ego kicks in, and it starts doing what it needs to do to protect us. So what happens when our ego is too high is we start feeling the effects of it.

Maybe I'm overwhelmed, I'm feeling like oh, my gosh, I don't know how to do this, or this isn't this isn't working, we start becoming angry at outside sources. For me, I started becoming angry that God was not hearing me. Or he wasn't answering my prayer or keeping his end of the bargain. Like you told me to do this, God, I'm doing it, but you haven't done this. So that kind of feeling starts feeling this little resentment will up or this, this fear, panic? What am I doing?

Am I doing it right? Did I do something wrong? All the different thoughts, that's at least what my mind does. The ego is creating a story around these feelings and these thoughts. And that's where we start getting ourselves in trouble. That's where we start building up these walls, we become stubborn, we don't want to listen anymore, we don't think we are being told the truth, or whatever it is that in it will start living our lives based on our ego versus what our core person is.

So as I was learning these things, she was teaching me how to make sure my ego was in check. And she was talking about the way she does it, as she talks about in numbers. So she rates the ego in numbers, I don't know how the rest of the world does it, it could be this way. I didn't look it up. But she says basically, a normal ego would be at the range of 500.

And anything over that our ego is too high, it's hard for us to hear direction fully, it's hard for us to navigate from our Healthy Brain side of things, our core self, and we are making decisions based on our ego side, we can also become as low as 40 in our ego, which means we are really calm and we surrender everything and we are not taking anything on and our ego doesn't direct our lives. Anything higher, though, is is too high. So she taught me and told me how to do muscle testing.

Now you'll have to look this up how to do it, you can look up the one that she told me which, surprisingly, I had already been familiar with this from years ago. But this is where you put your thumb and your middle finger together and make a circle on both hands. And you you ring them together. So you interlock them together. And as you ask your body, how high is my ego and you start at 500. If your fingers pull through the one side, if you pull the circle, have your right hand through the left hand, and it locks and your fingers stay closed, then, okay, you're for sure at 500.

And then you go higher, my 600 700 800. And when your fingers come through, the circle pulls through and they unlock you're not that high. She was saying start at 500. So I start at 500 kids still locked started, I asked for 600 it's still locked As for 700, and it comes through, then the last one where it was locked with 600. So that's my ego, you can look up how to do that. So you can have a visual, it helps to be able to navigate where you're coming from. So it all it is is an awareness. So when I feel myself getting heightened, I can go Okay, is this something that is truly my core?

Or is my ego talking, and I can do this simple muscle test to see. So when I was talking with her on the phone, and she was giving me some of these things, and telling me telling me that some of my thought patterns and my belief systems and the way I was feeling towards this particular area in my life and the way God was handling things for me. I didn't like it. And she checked my ego and it was 1200. And I could feel it like I could feel it there I could feel the overwhelm.

And as we were talking and she was telling me different things, my ego shot up, it got even higher. And I was like see now that stuff is making me crazy, especially like right and your ego just shut up. I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is crazy. But so the next few days after that I really was working on this and thinking about this and it was really causing me a lot of harm. I had a lot of tears, a lot of emotion, a lot of resentment and anger. But I had to keep looking at it with this new idea in mind. So even though I might be saying, okay, God, I'm not happy with this. I feel like you did not keep your side of the deal on this.

But I'm going to be open to the fact that this could be my ego talking and maybe I don't know the whole picture and maybe I don't have all of the information. Maybe I'm only seeing one side and you're seeing all this other stuff. And you're realizing why would give that to you. But people have their agency and I can't make someone do something. So there's so much to it, right? So when I started asking those questions, I started to learn new things. And I started to open up. And when I got off the phone with her that day, my ego was back at 500.

And I was at a normal range, but I will watch my body, my mind and my heart. And I kept testing myself, Oh, my gosh, I'm at 1000. Again, okay, what is going on, and then I got myself back down to 350. And, and I started navigating through it. The reason this is important is because so you can make decisions based on a healthy way. And also, so you can see where you are having the issue, because when our ego is talking, we're looking outwardly to blame someone else for our pain, or why something's not working. And that doesn't help us. It doesn't change anything, it doesn't fix, it doesn't make our lives better or easier or something come together.

So it's our job to figure out what it is in us. It goes back to, you know, other things like we cannot change someone else. And so we can only change ourselves. So when we can look at ourselves, we actually see the truth. Interestingly enough, I had a business call, I belong to this business group. It's called bold heart business. And I have this group of people that I meet with, and we talk about things and they kind of right in alignment with me. They think a lot about energy and the way our mind works, and our heart works and coming from a place of love, and it just resonates with me.

So I'm in this group, and we're we're having this q&a and someone's leading the q&a. And somebody asks this question, she says, yesterday, I had the best day like, I got these new clients and and my website was doing this and I had, she just kept going off like on I could not believe at the end of the day, I just was like in Awh, going, Oh, this is the best day ever. Like, I cannot believe all of these good things happened. And she said, then what happened was the next morning, which happened to be that morning, we were talking, I was a wreck.

I was depressed, I was crying, I couldn't get on my bed. And I thought I can't do this. There's no way I can do this, like I who do I think I am? And how am I going to give these clients and these people what they want? How am I going to just everything, she just started spiraling. And the person that was doing the q&a that day, she she said, Okay, stop right there, I know exactly what's happening. And this has to do with ego. And so we're going to try to do this, I'm going to try to have you imagine what it was that she taught us. But she drew a line on a paper horizontal across the page. And that line represents the ego's baseline.

And then on the above that line towards the left, she made it go up, she did a plus one, a plus two, a plus three going up like graph. And then underneath the line on that same left side, she did negative one, negative two, negative three down the page. And she said, what happens is we're going along and our ego basically lives in a plus one, negative one, and it kind of hovers over our baseline, and we can handle it, we manage it. But when we have something that shoots up, like, in this particular case, this woman with all the awesome stuff that happened in business, she shot up to a plus three, on her on her graph.

And what happens is the ego can only handle small changes. So when we have a huge reaction, when something happens, then it tends to crash the next day. And this is just because of the ego. The ego is used to keeping us safe. By keeping things the same. That's what it wants to do keep it the same. It doesn't matter if we don't like that. It thinks it's it's helping us by keeping it the same.

So she said the way we help it is, every time we have something big, we change the energy shift in our mind, when our ego starts freaking out a little bit, we have to say to ourselves, that we're not going to give any energy to the big thing, meaning we can be happy that happened. But we're going to look at it more like instead of going oh my gosh, this big thing happened. Our ego needs to hear Okay, it's no big deal. This is my new normal. It's my new normal to have these great things happen. We have to slowly stretch the ego up so that we don't get the pullback. So how does this relate in our healing?

We do the same thing. We either have a super high because of something we learned something we went through something we achieved or even in our relationship, something that has to do with our partners recovery, something that shoots us up like oh my goodness, this was the best day ever. I got everything I needed and wanted out of my relationship. Out of my recovery or my husband's recovery, and we are on fire, and then the next day, we're at disaster.

And we can't hold on to those good feelings. And that's because we get the pullback, it's the same. If we have something super negative, we have a D day where we find something out that was so shocking, and we plummet down to the negative three. It's the same, our ego can't handle it. So it doesn't know what to do. And it wants us to stay safe, and it tries to keep us there. So again, what we're going to be doing is teaching our ego to stretch.

So when something big happens in our healing, when we do something that is good when we finally grasp something that we've learned in therapy, and we're like, I just did that I just held that boundary, we're going to say in our insights to our ego, this big thing, it's no big deal. It's not a big deal. It's my new normal, my new normal, is these cool things happening, it is normal for me to achieve these things from therapy, and start helping the ego not to fluctuate so much.

Now, when this happened, I thought, wow, I don't think there's coincidence. I honestly believe that God places different things in our path. That person was struggling with that. And she felt that nudge to ask the question in the q&a, had she not had enough courage or felt vulnerable enough? She wouldn't have? And I probably wouldn't have heard that answer. But it was cool. Because I had been working on this, I just heard it from my energy worker, I am trying to learn about these things. And I'm trying to stay healthy myself.

And then this is what comes up. So later on, I ended up looking up how to work on ego, like doing ego work. And I did that because I was having issues with this particular thing. I couldn't get totally past it. And I couldn't get my ego to stay down at 500. Well, my energy person was telling me was that God talks to us so much easier when we're at the normal level, because we're dealing with an open heart and mind, he can give us all of the feedback and inspiration and direction that we can handle and that we want when we can keep our ego low.

But when we start running out of place of fear, it doesn't work that way. And I kept running from this place of I cannot believe this isn't working, or I cannot believe you have not answered this prayer or whatever. And I started going back to thinking about all the times in the past that I have really been striving to do the right thing and listen, and trying to show God like are you kidding? Like, have I not done everything I can have I not have everything you asked?

I'm doing all of it. And yet here we are. And I am not functioning very well. Right. And so I'm sure you get that right. Have you ever do that? Do you ever feel like I am doing what I can? And I cannot believe it's not enough? And are you serious? That's not enough? That's where I was. And I kept thinking to myself, Kay, no, I know, this is enough. And I would tell God, I knew it was enough. I know what I'm doing. I am right on track. So I'm not understanding what I'm not getting here, I'm clearly not seeing the right perspective. I'm only looking through the my lens, and I need to see yours.

And so as I was doing this, I was like, Okay, I did some of the work to try to get my ego down to a 500. So I could hear but I looked up, I need help, I need to know how to do ego work. And this is what I found. So let me tell you what the video is so that you can look it up yourself. The title is "how to do ego work". And it is by the holistic psychologist. It's six minutes and 36 seconds. And when you go on it she has like a whiteboard that she has some stuff written on it, there's a background of a brick wall, she has dark hair, wearing a white shirt and a and a beanie on her head.

So I'm just telling you that so you can find it but it's how to do ego work. And I decided to watch her video. And so she first explains what the ego is, like we talked about the beginning part of our self identity is the ego. It has been something that we have lived with. And it's it's used our past experiences to grow and it protects us that's the whole goal is to protect us. So then she says ego work so we have to practice observing the ego as a separate thing from our authentic self. So she said how do you begin you have to name the ego.

So I thought this is so funny. I think her name was Nicole. She named her ego Tiffany and in my mind I thought okay, well what's my egos name? And immediately the name Sonia popped in. I'm like, Sonia, my my egos name is Sonia. And that fell, right. So I'm like, okay, that's so interesting. And it was so funny because when I was telling my husband about this, I asked him what his his ego name was and immediately, I heard his egos name in my head. And then he's told me what his egos name was. I'm like, Kay, seriously, that's crazy.

Because you, I just felt that in my head. So your body will tell you your body is so fascinating. But it'll tell you what your name is so mine, Sonia. I don't know why, but it is. So she says, you name it. And the reason you do this is because then you can see it as someone individual, apart from your authentic self, and that helps you to navigate it. So then you name it. And then you say, my ego is telling me a story that and the story, right? So my story was, the ego is telling me a story that I'm not worth getting the blessings that God said he would give me, I'm not valuable enough to do this work, something like that.

So you name it like that, then you say, when I believe this story, I react by, so I thought of myself, I react by withdrawing, feeling angry, feeling resentment, I cancel things. I don't want to finish something because I don't feel valuable, or I don't feel like my questions are being answered. Then she says, when I release the story, I can make room for and choose to, so I had to think, okay, when I release this as a story, like this is not my authentic self, I have a choice to and all of a sudden, it's like your body shifts.

And it's like, ah, I totally know I'm doing the right plan for me, I completely can hear the direction, what I'm supposed to do. I know my work has been relevant. I know that God has been helping me, I know that he's been directing me for years and years and years. I know that my efforts, in the years past everything that I did, and healing work and with my first husband was accepted, and I'm a valuable person to him. And all of a sudden, it's like it, lets go. And there's no more fist being clenched of, I'm not getting what I want, the entitlement isn't there anymore.

And the feelings of neglect aren't there. And I've been abandoned. That's not there. None of it's there. And my authentic self comes out. And all of a sudden, I feel peace. I feel happy. I started smiling. And I'm like, Okay, seriously, God, you are so amazing. You are just trying to show me where I still am being hindered. And that's what the ego sometimes the ego wants to protect me from being hurt. It wants to show me that. I don't need to do things that are hard, because then it causes me pain, when that's not even true.

At all. None of it is. And so when you go look this up, you can help yourself by when you start feeling these thoughts and feelings like I have felt, you can be aware and the awareness changes, everything changes everything. My husband was asking me Well, what have you done now? How is this helped you? And I said, it's just made me become so aware. Like, like, when I started thinking, these stories, these negative sad things were my energy was being pulled to this direction. I could catch myself and say, Okay, wait a second. Is that my authentic self?

Or is it my ego. And as I asked and did this little exercise and follow through, I could see that it was the ego, and then I can let it go. And then I can realize Sonia is having an issue with the outcome and not being able to control a situation. But my authentic self is right on the right track, and we're doing fine. So we don't need to place energy on her. We don't, we don't need to swirl in that and stay in that place. It also got me thinking about how the ego has worked in my life for so many years, and how I might think I'm coming from a place of inspiration that I've prayed about this. And this is what I was inspired to do.

And that's true. However, if I look at where I'm at, emotionally and the work I've done, I can also now see more clearly why I needed that to be the answer. And it was because I needed to feel right. I needed to feel like I was on the right track so that I wasn't wrong. So in the case of I was getting divorced back in 2015. And the options were, I should probably sell my house. My husband moved out and I was getting alimony and child support. And I should sell my house because financially that would be better.

But I was really feeling like inspiration was telling me that I should stay in the house because then my kids wouldn't have so many changes they could keep their friends and keep the neighbors And keep our church and all the different things. And that felt right, it felt good and right. But now knowing what I know, I realized that part of that decision was a couple different things. One was codependency, I did not want to cause any pain to my children that they then they already had been going through.

The other was fear of the unknown of what it would look like to move, and how that would affect everybody. So the fear of what that looked like the fear of starting over, felt scary. And so my ego says, No, the best decision is to stay, even though financially, it put me behind quite a bit of money every month. So I was trying to protect my family and my children from having to go through change, from having to experience hard things. That's not my role.

My job is not to protect them from going through hard things. My job is to walk alongside them as they go through the hard things so that I can show them how to navigate it, how to learn and grow and turn to God. Instead, I took that from them. I didn't want them to have to make new friends. I didn't want them to have to start over. I didn't want them to feel what divorce feels like. But you know what's so interesting also is two years later, I finally did sell my house, and I moved into my first rental.

And that house, it was so cute, such a cute house, it was so much smaller than the house that we were in before. But that one of my daughter, she was like, This is my favorite house, I love this house, she loved her room, she loved the feel of it, all of it was fine. And I prevented that from happening for two years. Because my ego because of fear. Because my ego wanted to make it tidy in a box like we've got this figured out. The ego wants to make sure it all lines up, that we're doing it right where I could have just let go and do what I needed to do regardless of what the outcome was going to be. And if my kids were going to have a hard time, then that's okay.

That's their experience. And then I was there to help them. But instead, I tried to control it. So as I look back, I can see where I'm listening to inspiration, and I'm getting different things. But I'm also if I'm in my own way, going to make decisions from that place. So learning how to navigate the ego and recognize when our ego is showing up, will actually help you in moving forward in holding boundaries, in healing in seeing clearly what's wrong in you the things the weaknesses that you're holding on to when I found out that I was running from a place of ego.

I was making decisions from that place. It's shocking sometimes like, Wow, I didn't realize I was making that decision from that place. I thought I was being awesome. And look how healthy I am making this decision and staying in the house anyway, right. And it's so funny because we could judge ourselves. We don't need to, we don't need to judge ourselves. We just need to learn. There's not any punishment and doing it the wrong way. It's just how fast are we learning? When do we want to learn that particular thing. And I've been learning about ego for years now.

But this particular thing right now it started with my energy worker, she brought to my attention, obviously, my body was ready. Let's do things and navigate from a different place, when things aren't working quite the way you think. Let's now learn how to manage the ego. And that's what I did in these two things. Like the fact that it kind of all kind of came together this week, with the energy worker, the business discussion, and then finding this video.

And within a couple of days, I had everything is sorted out, I feel back to myself, I feel like Wow, now I know how to do things in the future. So now as I'm trying to do things, either for my children or for me personally or in my work, and trying to figure out what the plan is. Now I can notice when the plan is going and then my ego kicks in, and then I can test it. And I can decide and see. Okay, what am I running from a place of my authentic self. If I'm not, then I don't want to take action on this just yet. I don't want to enforce this boundary just yet.

I don't want to talk to my kids just yet. I don't want to implement this new business thing just yet. Let's see after I get back to my authentic self if this still feels right. And then I'll not only feel good on a daily basis, but things will run more smoothly and I'll be able to let them go and I won't have remember the graph with the plus one plus two plus three. I won't have the spikes, and then the pull backs from the ego because I'll be stretching it. I'll be at see? This is our new normal.

This is our new normal to be aware of our ego. When I start feeling the little swirl and the anxiety in my stomach, my heart, my head, where I start feeling panicked, or why isn't something working, whatever those thoughts and feelings are that you come up with, you can now say, hey, wait, I'm going to check and see if it's my ego. So I'm excited for you guys to try this, I really want you to go to that YouTube video and look it up.

And practice for yourself, name your ego, and see because it will change your life. It will help you in your healing, it will help you let go of outcomes of what your family's doing, what your children are doing, what your spouse is doing. And it turns back to you and becoming your total authentic self, so that you can navigate. And it really releases you from the clutches of chaos and trauma.

It takes that away from you so that it's almost like your eyes open into the clear, the rain is gone, that clouds part, the sky is blue. And you're like feeling all that warmth. As the sun hits your face. It's that kind of feeling like Oh, Okay, I get it. I see. This is way better to live like this, it is fully aware and there's no punishment on it. You don't have to shame yourself because you don't know what you're doing. Or because you did it wrong.

It's not even about that you can feel it, you can feel that the ego is the one that wants to tell you, you're wrong. But your authentic self is like this is so cool, that we just learned something because it's going to help us every single day working on you and your healing is the only thing you can do. That will change your life. You cannot change anybody else. And you can't make anybody else do their work. But when you do it and you keep seeing you and the authentic you and what truth is all around you, you will make super healthy decisions that will better your life and the life of your family members.

It has to start somewhere the change has to start somewhere somebody has to make the decision to change what's always been done, or the way we've always thought. We have to open up and we have to take off those blinders to see the truth. That's where the healing is. That's where the happiness is. That's where your ego can be back in check and stay at that normal baseline. So you don't have the highs and the lows. I know you can do it. You just have to do the work. You have to commit to doing the work and it will change your life. I'm so glad you were here with me this week. You guys have a wonderful Thanksgiving and we'll see you next time.

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