#27: How to Unhook From Your Ego

Hi, I'm Sy Wakeman, and you're listening to Know Ego, a podcast where we teach you how to ditch the drama, end entitlement, and drive big results in your workplace and your world place. Welcome, listeners, all of you out there who are working to ditch the drama and move beyond ego. I've got a great episode for you today. We're going to answer the question that I'm hearing from a lot of people working to practice no ego leadership. And the question is, how do I know when I'm getting hooked? Like, how do I know? How can I identify early when I'm getting hooked into my ego, when I'm operating out of ego rather than beyond ego? And how can I identify it so I can catch it and really make the shift? So before I get into giving you some great ideas on how to catch yourself early and how to make that shift quickly, I just want to let you know that I'm coming to you today from Tulum, Mexico. Mexico, another one of my favorite places on earth. And I have been having kind of a first-world problem in a third-world or second-world country. What I mean by that is in recording this podcast, I've had to work really hard to find a place that is quiet, not because of human noise, but because everywhere I go you can hear the incredible waves crashing. You can hear the ocean. And while that sounds amazing to me because I'm here in person, what that sounds like to those of you listening, is a really irritating whirring noise. So I hope I found a place. I'm in a yoga mat closet locked away in a yoga studio. There may be some ambient noise that you hear, but I trust my great engineers at VaynerTalents will take that away. And I hope you can still enjoy this podcast. I'm working to prove that you can work from anywhere and mix a whole lot of work and pleasure, and that work-life balance is a verb, not a noun. Back to the question at hand. As I work with people and they have those times that they're beyond ego and they really have these no-ego moments where they're able to call their team up to greatness and they're able to use the tools of reality-based leadership or pose the right question for self-reflection, just be their best selves, they're loving it. And so they're getting more and more interested in how do I grow my awareness of when I'm in ego? How do I catch myself and something else for myself and my team? And as we've talked a lot on this podcast about the ego and the ego condition. We are played by our ego often, and our ego's out to play often, and we're not even aware of it. So as you grow in awareness, as you start to wake up, you're going to wake up to how often you're in ego. But the more you wake up, the more you're going to realize that you're in ego even more than you ever dreamt. So the more you become conscious, the more you see how unconscious you really are. And it really takes a practice, because what we're trying to do here, folks, is not get rid of our human condition. We are always going to have, I think, this human condition. That leadership isn't about never being in ego, but it's about overcoming our human condition of having this ego at play in our lives and and in our mind often. So what I like to do as I'm coaching with people is start helping them understand that at any given moment they own a toggle switch because we really are binary in our being, in our ability to be in this world. And I imagine a toggle switch between my low self and my high self. So my low self is when I'm in ego, my perspective. is narrow. I'm very much into an I know mindset. I am very sure about how this is going to play out in the future. I'm very sure about my version of the past. I'm pretty sure I'm surrounded by jerks and idiots. I start the judging and my world closes in, and I get frustrated. I get helpless. I see myself as a victim. I quit seeing any options that exist out there. It's really that low self place. And then there's this high self, this toggle switch that You can move beyond your ego. You can get into a no-ego place. And that really is the place that your world opens up. You're in self-reflection. You're identifying many, many possibilities. You are not in an I know mind. You're in a confident place that you can bring some things to the table. But you're really in a how could I know mind. And you're really focusing on coming together. And as Einstein said, together we're genius. And so how do you, on a regular basis, catch yourself quickly when You're in this ego place and move yourself first and then your team beyond ego. I really encourage you to get in touch with, with what I call the temple bell going off inside of you. Like, what is your bell tone? What's your alarm clock? What is the feeling or the physical movement or the set of thoughts that really are that little bell going off to tell you that you have moved out of neutral, that you have moved into hooking of your ego. And once your ego's hooked, you become a little bit of a nutcase. And there's a word that a Buddhist teacher taught me, and I think the word was shepa, and it really means literally the casing of a nut, like a coconut outer casing. And when your ego's hooked, it's that sense of getting hooked in right before you become kind of that nutcase. It's the same word, ego hook and nutcase, in her particular language. The first thing is really just really grow your awareness. And as you become aware, the second step is just simply acknowledge where you're at and then move yourself into self-reflection and get yourself neutral, stop judging, and then start helping, take action. So the way to do this is to start getting in touch with and pay attention to what are your signs. It can be your breath where you start to notice either you stop breathing or you start breathing more shallow or you start sighing or you start taking deep breaths, your shoulders come to your ears. Some people find physically they lean in or they literally engage by putting both elbows on the table if they're in a meeting, or they're leaning into their desk. I know for me, one of the things that happens for me is I do lean in and I get real aggressive with my body language in subtle, subtle ways. Notice at times maybe you lean out, you disengage, you move away from the group, or you get into a blank stare. Stare, or you get very still in your body language. Whatever it is for you, notice that movement of when you move out of neutral and into, I'm about to force this, control this, take action, make this thing happen. I also think if you think about your breath and your physicalness, you can start to think about some other signs. Are there times where you get into a sense of urgency, where you move out of, we've got a moment to understand, to This is panic situation. It needs to be done. We need to drive forth. And you start to use language in your mind or in your words about direction, like we need to, we have to, we have no choice. Those types of words and that type of urgency could be a sign. Another thing that happens is we get tempted to start to interpret. I know where this is going. I've been here a thousand times before. Here's how this has always played out. And the interpretation gets more and more extreme when you're in ego and you start to use things like always, never. We start to believe we can predict the future. In fact, anytime that you're out into the future or back in the past, you're bringing things up from the past and believing that today is just like it was in years gone by, or you're out into the future imagining what a disaster this will be and all the dangers there are. That is another sign that you're interpreting the world through this distorted view of ego. So when you think this is doomed for failure, that's ego, because you've given up your accountability and how you could impact it and shape it and use your resources and those of the people around you to ensure that it's not failure. I want you to just start to play with this first, getting aware and just acknowledging when you've moved away from Neutral. Now, one of the key signs in moving away from neutral is that you'll begin judging, and you'll start to tell yourself a story. And that's a key place where it's I know best, others don't know, I'm a victim, they're the villains, or I'm the savior, or I'm the only one. Whenever you start to use the word I in a way that paints you better than other people or done wrong by other people, it's out of accountability. So when you're judging. You'll start to notice signs. If you don't notice it in the moment, you'll notice when your ego gets hooked by what you're thinking long after the interaction. Are you driving home revisiting in your mind things that already happened? Are you over and over again ruminating on conversations or what other people said? Are you focused on what they might think of you or what they're thinking now or ways to make them see or ways to make them pay? These are all things that are ways in which you can tell in the moment or afterwards that your ego is hooked. It's because you really haven't left behind things that happen. So if you're carrying something long after the moment, that's another sign. So first, pay attention. What is that alarm clock going off? And then secondly, once you realize that you're in ego, Before you can just unhook, you probably are going to need to self-reflect and to find some ways to unhook and to really then begin again to get unhooked and get neutral, to stop judging, start helping, and then re-enter and reconnect with people so that you can reset the tone, reopen the space, call others after you get yourself beyond ego to their greatness and really move forward. And of course, I believe self-reflection is such an amazing, powerful tool to start asking yourself questions. If I were great, what would that look like right now? If I were acting as someone I admire, what would that look like? And some of the self-reflection really is questioning what you've come to believe is true. So some of my favorite self-reflection techniques actually come from Byron Katie. Katie, and she's out there at thework.com. But when I feel myself hooked— and by the way, here's an easy way to know if you're hooked: are you feeling any stress? The universe is benevolent. Everything happens in your favor. So if you're hooked, the way to know that is if you're feeling any stress at all, because these jobs aren't difficult, these interactions aren't difficult, work isn't difficult, reality isn't stressful, but our stories that we make up about reality. are really the source of our stress. So if you want no stress, just learn to drop the story. So when I'm feeling stressed, I use the work of Byron Katie, and she has some great questions. And the first question is, take a look at what I'm believing and ask myself, is it true? Can I absolutely know that it's true? And I follow that with, when I believe this, who am I? How do I act? How do I respond? Another question is, if I drop that story, okay, who would I be without that story? Gives me a nice comparison to see how quickly I have moved into acting out of my story and then getting results that aren't what we're capable of. So who would I be without that story? And then I get mentally flexible and start to really play with it in that what's the opposite, and could that be as Equally true. So for instance, I'm interacting perhaps with my colleague and I see my colleague as incredibly gossipy and I just find that she's always digging on someone. Well, to self-reflect, I take one thought and I put it out on paper away from my ego. Katie says all war belongs on paper. And I look at that, she's always gossiping, and I ask myself, is Is that true? And if I meditate on that, I know that that's not true. She's not always gossiping. There are times she's bragging about her grandkids. There's times she's adding great input into work. And so I just loosen that a bit. It's not true. But when I believe that story, she's always gossiping, how do I respond? Oh my gosh, I get very short with her. I get very judgmental of her. I tend to gossip about her to other people so they know that she's always gossiping. I exclude her. I do all kinds of things that really aren't my best self. Who would I be without that story, she's always gossiping? I would be a colleague who is noticing that my colleague is frustrated with the situation, and I would most likely, knowing me, be asking, what could I do to help? And then I play with it to loosen this mind up. She's always gossiping. What's the opposite? She's not always gossiping. Can I find ways that's true? Another opposite is I'm always gossiping. Not her, but me. You know, I do gossip a lot, especially about her. Now, this isn't about blame. It's just about playing with your mind enough to shake you into some neutrality. So that you can get back on track to stop judging and start helping. Self-reflection can be a number of assignments you give yourself, but what's most important is that you get to the place where you unhook from the limited view of the world that the ego has you believing, so that you can, one, get yourself back to neutral and toggle up to your highest self, So that you can add value and then see your situation differently and then act in a way that actually might be helpful and call other people up to greatness. Now, this is so important because I get so many questions for my shows and online. And right now we have a new Facebook Watch show out called Life's Messy, Live Happy. If you haven't connected in and subscribed to that show, if you haven't followed it, please Please do. I want your questions, but I would tell you most of my questions come in and they are, I judge my colleague or my boss, now what do I do to change them? They start with a narrow view of the world, judgment, and then ask me how to change reality. My boss is a micromanager, how do I get them to follow your philosophy? And if you are self-reflecting, you're going to start to see the flaw in logic behind these questions. A better question would be, my boss is detail-focused, especially on my projects. What could I do to be helpful? But that's not always the question. And so once you are self-reflecting and finding ways for you to try things on for size, to expand how things could be true— Another way I love to self-reflect is if I got feedback or if something happened in a meeting that felt pointed at me where I'm defending— and defense, friends, is the first act of war— but when I'm defending, instead of my ego being hooked and finding out all the ways that isn't true, I try and unhook from my ego because I'm feeling stressed around it, and instead find all the ways that could be true, or that is true about me sometimes, or that has been true about me in the past, and be true about me in the future. I really want you to focus when your ego's hooked on finding that neutral place. And here's what neutral looks like. It is all about having an open mind and an open heart. And in my book, No Ego, I wrote a little bit about an exercise. It's a self-reflection exercise, a tool to get us beyond ego, an ego bypass tool we call them. And it's called Open Mind, Open Heart. And when I start to feel stressed, I check inside to see what just shut down, what closed. Was it my mind or my heart? And sometimes, unfortunately, it's both. But they feel different if you tune in. When you close your mind, you've decided that you're right and you've gotten righteous and you've stopped learning. You've decided the other person is wrong or they're to blame or the circumstances are at fault. You shut your mind down and you're not seeking to understand. Understands. When you shut your heart down, it feels a little different. It is more about the compassion part of you where you may understand where another person is coming from, but you just really quit caring, or you're unconcerned, or you just can't find empathy for that person, or you're disconnecting and you're just saying, I don't want to be part of this, even if it's to help and call people to greatness. And so get aware of what is shutting down. Now, if it's your mind that that shut down, you'll find it's hard to open that mind back up. If your heart shuts down, it's hard to open your heart back up. But here's a trick: if your heart shuts down, don't go directly to open the heart up and feel compassion. Go to the mind and start to get more open-minded about it, and that will lead to your heart opening. They're connected. If it's my mind that shut down, I'm closed-minded about something, I go to my heart and try and find compassion And see if I can't open that heart up, which opens my mind up. So let's say I may not agree with you or your political perspective, let's say, and my mind is shutting down. What I can do is open my heart up by asking about you and your life and what some of your challenges are and what some of the hopes and dreams are that you have for your family or your future. And I can find that compassionate connection and then start to open my mind back up. If my heart closes, because I feel like you attacked me based on the story I made up about you, I might open my mind up by saying, how could this feedback be true? So you really have 2 places to focus on getting back into neutral, and that is opening your mind up through kind of mental flexibility and opening your heart up through compassion and empathy. And these are really 2 places I want you to just start to practice Now, you have this human condition. So do I. And what I want you to know is that I screw this up, but only daily. I am practicing this right along with you. And so please keep the mantra with you that it's progress, not perfection. In fact, I'm here at a yoga retreat, and during meditation, I'm reminded often of a saying called favor the mantra. So I meditate with a mantra, and And as is my human condition, my mind will wander. And I can be pretty perfectionistic, so I tend to sometimes get kind of violent mentally. I go, dang it! And I want to come back to that mantra with some force. And what I find is that starts this bouncing like a ping-pong ball, and it gets very uncomfortable in my head. So what I like to do instead is follow the advice I've heard, which is called favor the mantra. It's a very gentle thing. When I drift off, I just work to come back to that mantra and center. And anytime I wander, just work to come back to it. And so here's what I know that will happen for you is that you'll screw this up, and probably daily. And I really want for you to have some pre-thought-out ways for you to really favor the mantra. And for me, I've just gotten good at apologizing and making amends. So there are times when I'm in a meeting and maybe I disengage, or I get into ego, or I get close-minded or close-hearted, or I make up a story that you won't listen to my feedback, so I don't give it to you, or I talk more about you to HR than I talk directly to you, or I don't call you up to greatness when I know that's my role as a leader. When I'm just not in neutral and acting with accountability, anytime I vary from that. I've learned that it's okay to just claim a mulligan, a do-over, where I might come to you a day after our discussion and say, can I have a conversation with you? Yesterday when we spoke, I sympathized with you instead of empathized, and I believe I really left you in a victim mindset, and I misled you. I want to apologize. I wish I had led you differently. Can we begin again? If you disclose that you've self-reflected and that you would like to take the ongoing conversation and shape it more in the direction of accountability and focusing on how we could rather than why we couldn't, and perhaps focusing less on sympathizing about the circumstances and how they dictate our results and focus more on our energy being around how we we could— any of these things I teach you that you stray from, it's as simple as getting back to favoring the mantra and just helping yourself get to neutral and act. And then just reclaiming time with others to see if we can't get them to neutral and act in moving from ego, toggling up to that inner part of our brain that's so creative and collaborative and open-hearted and open-minded. And so it's really good as a leader to just self-disclose your own self-reflection, call yourself up, and then call others up. And in that way, we are consistently just managing the energy of our team and ourself from low self to high self, from ego to beyond ego. We're just toggling, ego bypassing, and we're getting really skilled at it. And the more you more you get aware of when you're hooked and the more you get skilled at the techniques that take you to a different place, the more peace you're going to have, but the more incredible the relationships and the results are that you're going to create. I had a great teacher that helped me with a really great ego bypass, and it helped me a lot in my interactions with others when I would start to judge them. And maybe I would be judging them because their mind was closed. And she helped me to notice that. And when I began that, when somebody's mind is closing, remembering that I'm the leader and I can't just go with them into closed mind, if I'm judging them for their mind closing, I can get back to neutral. Notice it, get aware of it, get back to neutral. And then if I think it's so easy to keep an open mind, why don't I go first? Why don't I show people how? Why don't I reflect? It's taking all that advice that you have for other people about what they should be doing, and you taking that advice and applying it to yourself first so that you can model for the world what skilled looks like. This is such a humbling, wonderful thing to do. In fact, if you're ever really frustrated with someone, write down everything you advise them to be doing or how they should be acting, and then take that list and use it for yourself. And the motto here is, if I think it's so easy, I'll go first. Another great way to look at it is, that which is missing in a moment is that which I'm not contributing. I can't control what other people do, but if there's something missing in this moment, if honestly is missing, how can I contribute honesty? If transparency is missing, how can I contribute transparency? This is the most empowering place for all of us to be. A lot of people who don't have formal leadership roles ask me about how they can really create change, how they can be empowered. I like to say to them, empowerment isn't about getting more power from the outside. It's really about stepping into the power that you already have. And part of that power is knowing that at any given moment, you can step up and offer that which is missing. You can stop judging and start helping. And stopping judging is getting to neutral, and starting helping is really taking action that will change not just for me, my experience, but will change it for everyone. That which is Which is missing is that which I'm not giving. Just wanted you to start to get aware of when you get hooked, have a few things you can do to back out of that. And I want to end with a concept I call the 3 lanes. In our lives, there are 3 lanes. There's my lane, that's my business, what I'm doing with my time and energy, whether I'm in neutral, whether I'm in the best part of myself or the lowest part of myself. That's lane 1. All these things I have so much impact over. Lane 2 is other people's businesses. What my boss is doing, what senior leadership is doing, what my colleagues are doing, anyone's doing. Now, if I'm a supervisor, I have some informed consent to give a little feedback over people that work for me. I'm their main conduit for that. But the rest of the world, lane 2 is everybody else's business. Lane 3 is what I call reality. We don't have a lot of impact over it, the quicker we can love it, the quicker we'll be in a position to help it. Lane 3 is circumstances, or if you're faith-based, it could be like God's world or reality's world. It's hurricanes, floods, things far beyond our immediate control. Now, the reason I talk about 3 lanes is for you to know if you're stressed, I guarantee you you're outside your own lane. There is no stress in your lane. It's when you get outside your lane and you're judging others or Lane 2, you're judging others. Lane 3, you're arguing with reality. When you're doing that, you're gonna be incredibly stressed. If you're gonna get out of your own lane, you need to do it helping, not judging. If I'm gonna get into other people's lane, I need to go out and say, what can I do to help? Rather than go out judging, critiquing, and hoping they will change. I'm going out to see what I can contribute. Ego goes out judging. Here's what I know to be true and what you need to do. I think that's a great analogy. to do different. You're the problem. Helping goes out there beyond ego and just says, what can I add to this situation? Or how can I call us up? Or how can I help us view this differently? If you get out of your lane into other people's business, you need to do it helping, not judging. If you get out of your lane into reality, go out there not condemning what is, but loving what is and seeing what you could add that may bring comfort or compassion to others or prevent the same thing from happening in the future. This 3-lane image helps me a lot when I'm working with other people because they'll come to me very frustrated with a question, sigh, how can I, and then it usually is change the situation or another. And I often ask them, whose lane are you in? And oftentimes it's not their lane. And then I'll say, if you're out of your lane, let's get back to what could you be doing to help. And what I have found out is if I leave my lane, it's really good to be helpful, but many times if I'm out of my lane, I've created a situation that's not at all helpful. See, when I'm over-responsible for your behavior in lane 2, or I'm over-responsible— I know how the world should work, so now I'm king of the world in lane 3— that I'm under-responsible for what is. my contributions. So whenever I get out of my lane, I now am under-responsible for the work that was given to me and over-responsible for the work that really is that of others. And I ask myself at that point, whose crime is bigger? I let my contribution go. I stepped down in lane 1 to come out and be a know-it-all in lane 2. It's very interesting to me as I start to manage my energy and put it as much as possible in lane 1, what is really cool that happens is as I'm stepping up and I'm being that change that I wish to see in the world, it seems as though I change the seeming frequency that I'm resonating at, and that by definition changes the frequency everyone's resonating at. So where I thought I needed to go out and change others in the world, my changing myself Really changes the mix and the formula. It changes a lot. And this is where I can feel the difference. When I'm in ego, it feels like I'm swimming through mud some days. When I'm in my own lane and I'm beyond ego and I'm into neutral and self-reflection and I'm unhooked, it doesn't feel like I'm swimming through mud. It feels like I'm walking through air. And the same job with the same people goes from really tough To almost effortless. And the only change was how I managed my energy, my focus, my contribution. I share this with you and let you in on some of the wacky kind of inner workings of my brain. A lot of you ask me how I stay neutral, how I move through the world, and I hope through these podcasts every once in a while to give you a little glimpse of that. I also have some amazing guests coming up in the next few months. That are going to blow your minds. And so I hope you're loving this podcast. We're honored. We just got it put on Spotify, so the podcast is really growing thanks to you. If you love this podcast, leave a great review. If you know somebody who needs this podcast, make sure and invite them in a very helpful, non-judgmental way. Until next time, I hope you enjoy finding out your own little sign that your ego Unhooking, self-reflecting, getting neutral, and helping a ton. Have a great one. Thank you so much for joining the episode today. If you're loving this podcast, just make sure that you check me out on Facebook and Instagram, and especially YouTube.