How Ego Fuels Failure and Blocks Personal Growth

Ego is the enemy. I don't like work. No man does. But I like what is in the work: the chance to find yourself. Joseph Conrad. For a full 8 years, Winston Churchill stood more or less by himself against his short-sighted peers, against the rising threat of fascism even among the West. Welcome to the Big Show, folks! Sometimes that is what it takes. Sometimes we'll be forced to go it alone because we've alienated everyone around us. Sometimes it will be because what we believe or do is so new that there is no other choice. Other times adversity will be environmental, accidental, or just temporary. There is no way around it. We will experience difficulty. We will feel the touch of failure. All of us exist on this continuum. We transition fluidly along it at various points in our lives. Perhaps we're born into privilege and then aspire to something greater. Perhaps we're born into great difficulty or start off on the wrong foot and then begin to pick up the pieces. Or more commonly, we set out in life hoping to do great things, achieve success, undermine that success, and find ourselves learning important lessons as we seek to rebuild and recapture. But right now, we're at failure and it sucks. Whatever junction we're on, one plague dogs us. Ego. It makes all the steps hard, and it makes failure the hardest. It leads us to failure and then abandons us. We're afraid to lose and fail because we think it says something about us. It doesn't. Success didn't either. All that failure says is that there was a chance to improve and better understand yourself. What we need to see is that we are not failures. We're just experiencing failure. Where you go next or how long you'll be here, no one can say. If ego accompanies you, it will seek out failure like true north. It is its own worst enemy. It is your enemy. Ego is the enemy.