24: Is Your Ego Really Sabotaging You? - Or Have You Misunderstood it All Along

Is your ego really sabotaging you? Or have we just been taught to misunderstand one of the most powerful parts of the human mind?

In this episode of Expand with Gabrielle, I dismantle the old spiritual myth that the ego is your enemy — and reveal what’s actually happening beneath the surface through the lens of subconscious mind, paradigm work, and frequency. You’ll learn how to stop fighting your ego, release confusion, and start working with your mind as a creative superpower.

We’ll explore:
 ✨ What the ego really is — and why it’s not out to sabotage you.
 ✨ How your subconscious programming and stored data create the results you see in your life.
✨ The link between limiting beliefs, frequency, and the paradigm that’s shaping your reality.
✨ Why clarity (not shadow work or ego death) is the key to transformation and manifestation.

If you’ve ever felt frustrated by the idea that your ego is something to “kill” or “transcend,” this conversation will feel like a breath of fresh air. You’ll walk away understanding how to consciously reprogram your subconscious, evolve your paradigm, and create lasting change with ease, clarity, and empowerment.

Want to go deeper? Apply for The School of Expansion - www.gabriellemartorana.com/TSOE

Send me a DM & let me know you tuned into the episode, I would love to hear from you - www.instagram.com/expandwithgabrielle

Transcript

Gabrielle Martorana (00:08.835)
Hello, hello. Today we're going to dive into the ego and all of this confusion around what the ego is, if it's something you have to fight against, if it's sabotaging you, if it's this, I don't know, difficult, evil thing that's just like part of your shadow self or something. So I'm reading this amazing book. I want to shout it out. It is called The Achievement Habit by Bernard Roth.

and he is a professor at D school at Stanford. So I'm doing this little self study course that I've made up because I love learning about design thinking, about creating a reality, about the subconscious mind. And so this book is great. I mean, I'm only 10 pages in, but so far I like it. But I was reading this one piece that just really lit me up.

And whenever this happens, I always like to sit down and record hot in the moment because this is something I've heard over and over and over again. And it's something that I think needs to be clarified because it is wrong. is is confusion and it creates more confusion. And we're all about clarity here because with clarity we can create, we can expand, we can evolve. With confusion, there's this spiraling, overwhelmed energy, this kind of stuck energy. So

My job is to create clarity out of confusion. So there's this quote in here that says, the mind is trickier than we think. And it's always working with our egos to sabotage our best intentions. That's the human condition.

Gabrielle Martorana (01:48.526)
So there's a lot I want to unpack there. The first thing is, is that the mind is tricky in the sense that there's confusion. But when you have clarity and you understand what's going on, it's actually not tricky. It's actually very simple, very beautiful what is going on. And it's just having the rules to the game to know how to play the game. If you don't have the rules to the game, of course you're going to lose. And of course you're going to be confused and wander around the Catan board not knowing what to do, right? I don't know if you play Catan, big Catan fan.

The other piece of this, says, is always working with our egos to sabotage our best intentions. When I read that, what I hear is that this ego, this elusive, kind of evil, shadowy ego, is a part of me, whether I like it or not. And it's there trying to hurt me, to sabotage my best intentions. Why is there a piece of me?

This innate piece of me that kind of seems like I can't do anything about, like it's there, whether I want it to be there or not, is intentionally trying to sabotage my best interests. This gives me this energy of, I don't know, these old religious ideas that talk about how humans are innately born flawed, how like you're born with sin and you need to wash it away. There's this like evil, bad part of you. That's a feeling that I get when I read stuff like this.

Your ego is working to sabotage your best interest. Like what the heck is the ego and why would it be just naturally in my body trying to sabotage me? That doesn't even make any sense. It makes me feel irritated. It makes me feel like almost this victim-y energy of like, there's this entity, this thing, because it seems like it has a mind of its own, right? It's like they're intentionally trying to sabotage my best interest. Like it thinks for itself. What?

I can't control it, it's controlling me, like who has the upper hand here? Like that is something that feels very much in this victim energy. And so I want to address this because I hear this all the time. Like you need to fight the ego, you need to attack the ego, like it's the ego that's coming out, oh I acted that way like out of ego and it's like no, that's actually not what's happening. What's happening is so much more structured, clear and beautiful.

Gabrielle Martorana (04:13.208)
What's happening is that there is a part of our mind that operates out of habit. this, the part that makes the ego scary is it's like, when is it working? When is it not working? When is it in control? Like, when am I operating out of ego and I don't even realize it, right? It's this feeling of out of control or not knowing when it's even happening. There's a shred of truth in there. That's what makes misconceptions like this so, I don't want to say dangerous because

that makes it seem like this was intentionally spread. I don't necessarily think that's the case. What makes them stick for so long and what makes them so confusing is there are beads of truth woven in there. And that's why pieces of it might feel right to you. But the thing is, is that that's not the whole truth. Because the pieces of truth are that there are times when you are operating out of a state of unawareness. We call this the subconscious mind. You're operating out of your subconscious who are not.

necessarily present and activated in the present moment, making decisions. Decisions are being made out of stored information. When you are operating out of your subconscious mind, you are making decisions and taking actions out of stored, previously stored information. So it is not this elusive evil ego. It is not this entity trying to sabotage you.

All that we need to ask ourselves is when you are taking actions that feel like self-sabotage, because that's a real thing too, and you are finding yourself essentially, what stored information is in your subconscious mind, in your body?

that is working against what you are telling yourself that you consciously want. That's the truth. There is no entity called the ego. There is no thing that's trying to chronically sabotage you. There is simply information stored in your subconscious mind, which is running the show 95 % of the day. And if that information is not in alignment,

Gabrielle Martorana (06:28.226)
with what you desire, it will feel like sabotage because you will be trying to do something and trying to move over here to point A and you feel like you're being pulled over here to point B. But the thing is, is there is nothing evil or shadowy or creepy about what is pulling you over there. It is simply the belief systems, the habits, the paradigm that is stored in the subconscious mind that is dictating your thoughts and actions and creating the results that are an alarm.

an alignment with option B. Let's say option B is that you're 50 pounds overweight. Option A is that you are thin and fit and sexy. And you're trying to move over here to option A and you feel like you keep getting pulled back over here to option B. And it's not that the ego is sabotaging you. It is just that there are parameters and paradigms stored in your subconscious mind that are in alignment with option B. And that could be an array of

and trauma and core belief systems and your lineage and all sorts of things that we can dive into. But it is not this entity, this ego that is sabotaging your best interests. It's not something that you don't have control over. It's not something that runs you and you can't change. It is simply a piece of you that is stored old data. It's just old data and it could not even be yours.

It could be information stored from your mom or your mom's mom. From generations of core belief systems that are so deeply hardwired that you don't even think to challenge them, to change them, but you do see the results. So you see that you're over here on option B and you don't wanna be there anymore, you see the results. And then it's a matter of diving deeper and deciphering, okay, where are those results coming from? What's the root? What's the root? And the root...

is the data, the information stored in your subconscious mind that is dictating your thoughts, which are dictating your feelings, which are dictating your actions, which are dictating your results. And it's literally that simple. I don't like it when spirituality over complicates things, when it makes it seem like it's outside of your control or it's this very like spiritual woo thing that like nobody really understands. It's actually so alarmingly simple. And that's the fun part.

Gabrielle Martorana (08:56.576)
is that you can sit here, can contemplate this, can embody this, and then you can start to make shifts because ultimately you are your own God or goddess in this way. You create your reality, you get to decide if there's any aspects of your life that you don't like, you get to change it. And it's simple, simple, not easy, but simple as changing what's stored in your subconscious mind, what's stored in the paradigm, the old data.

because the old data is what is dictating the results.

So I really want to make that clear that it's not this elusive ego that you chronically need to fight. That's not it. It's not sins of your past. It's not karma. It's just stored information in the body that has a specific frequency and a specific outcome. And if you're not liking your outcomes, then you just have to change the frequency. The frequency is all dictated by the stored thoughts. And then the thoughts turn into belief systems and energy stored in the physical body.

So if you wanna learn how to do that, come on in, that is what we do here. But I want you to know that it's possible and it is simple and simple doesn't equal easy. Doesn't mean it's not gonna be uncomfortable. Doesn't mean that you're not gonna come across some emotions or fears or things, but it does mean that you can do it. And it does mean that you can understand what you're doing and understanding is clarity.

And with clarity, you can make decisions and with decisions, you can take action. If you're spiraling over here in confusion because of all these weird, freaky, kind of like evil, I don't know ways that people are talking about this weird thing called the ego, then you're not going to be able to change anything. We need clarity, crystalline, crystalline energy, clarity, structure, understanding of how these energies work around how our body works, our mind works.

Gabrielle Martorana (10:57.73)
the human experience. So that's my little takeaway on this. I would love to hear what comes up for you. To be fair, Bernard Roth, I don't know when you wrote this book and I don't know if you changed your mind on the ideas of the ego, but I do have to clarify that because I think it's very, very important. So if you love this episode or if there's any takeaways from here that really resonated with you, I would love to hear it.

If you want to message me, I am ExpandWithGabrielle on Instagram and I will see you next time.