Ego.

"Don’t be too sure about anything, except your desire to find peace inside, and a quiet confidence. As a young man I would have laughed at myself for writing this. He was in a much different place then. But I never gave up searching for something better inside. And I read a library trying to get here."

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Well, that is one smooth intro. Welcome to my podcast with the train from Airdrie Station, episode number 15. This episode is called Ego. The podcast is based on some writing that I did last year and to this year. It was going to be a book. It might still be a book. I don't know. It's the history of me, the addiction that I came through after 30 years of alcohol addiction and a lot of depression and dark times. It's a happy story. It's a sad story. It's a story just like your story. Everybody has a story that has darkness and light in it. We came here in the mid-60s from small town Scotland to big city Toronto. And the dynamic in our family changed coming here. I don't know whether that dynamic was exposed by the change or was made more pronounced by the change itself. But Groucho Marx once said, I would never want to belong to a club that would have me as a member. Despite a lifetime of doubting myself and working on self-esteem and confidence, it became clear in the journey, in my journey, that my ego was also a problem. As I marked down ideas and thoughts in notes and journals and yellow pads and reviewed, a common theme has emerged. The pushback that I pushed back came from a previously unrecognized source. My pride took a bruising and my ego rebelled. How many times did I let my belief that I need to be right? I need to be right. And proving so, how often did it interfere with a better result? My defeats and setbacks self-inflicted. I could not get out of my own way, and I did not recognize this behavior until quite recently. Was I creating a wall to protect my fragile core, to be right at all costs, and yet to lose the battle. I live by this mantra now. Do you want to be good or do you want to be right? I began with that premise. A big part in solving a problem, of course, is understanding that you have one, that you do indeed have some control over it, and then getting to work. My ego would reveal itself at the most inappropriate times and proceed to run the tables. A bull in a china shop. It's like having a sweet snack. This dopamine hit only feels good for a very little very short while. The ego can be a bully, and when the bully is insecure, his actions are coming from an irresponsible place. Ego coming from a place of insecurity. The best defense is a good offense. Not only will people not want to work with you again, hang out with you again, etc., others will learn from your tactics and they'll keep a distance. To examine past behavior in personal and professional circumstances can be painful, very painful, and cringy. Oh you got a little mad when someone with less information or knowledge challenged your position. You got a little short when someone did not do their work properly, out of incompetence or laziness. It doesn't matter if you're right. Your ego is in the way of a solution. Ego only hurts you in the end. Now this doesn't mean to roll over, but attack or push is detrimental. There is a sweet spot, a line, fine line between standing for yourself and deferring to another opinion. If that doesn't work, you can always walk away. Walk away is a good tactic. It's a good solution. It is better to walk away sometimes, but when that is not possible, ask yourself this. Am I doing the right thing for the best result right now, or is my ego in the way? How can I get to a place of quiet confidence? You seldom have to be right in this world. Life goes on despite you or me. Besides, some people, sometimes the people who side with you are the people you shouldn't want on your side. I have learned to recognize my ego in play most of the time. If I get a feeling of resentment or anger in a situation, I had one yesterday over a stupid Instagram reel that I put up and I didn't like a comment someone made. I now ask, is that my pride getting in the way? And most of the time it is. Once my ego is in check, I will make a better decision. I have learned to make decisions when I am flat. I take emotion out of play as much as is possible and wait for the mud to settle at the bottom of the puddle. I don't need to be right, but I want to get the best result. I admit it is not always possible to be flat and ego-free. However, as I put in the work here, it is becoming more the norm than the exception. Repetition and practice is the way to become a good musician. That's how I became a good musician. I use that same discipline, when possible, to train my mind and to think in a new and different way. I have an affirmation journal I refer to most days, containing thoughts and ideas on achievement and positive reinforcement. Your mind does what you tell it to do, but it takes work to rewire old negative thinking habits into positive. Just say that again. It takes work to rewire old negative thinking habits into positive. If you are surrounded by negative people at work or at home or elsewhere out in the public, change will be harder. Try to associate only with colleagues and friends and family who bring the right attitude to your mission. And that's hard to create boundaries. Like attracts like. As you become more balanced and less edgy, you'll attract similar folks, both personally and professionally. I'm gonna pause here. I normally have a sip of coffee, but I'm recording this podcast uh in the evening, so I'm having lemonade. Any lemonade sponsors out there, I could use your help. Very good. Maintain a cordial, yet distant relationship, if at all possible, with say clients who tax your soul. It's not always possible, of course. I'm learning to respond internally with the thought this moment will pass and I can control my own response. This moment will pass, I can control my own response. Great. Does it always work? No. I'm human. I can get caught up in negativity like anyone else. I was raised in negativity. So it's in me. But the bounce back to level, to being level, happens quickly now, quicker now. I can control that. You know, I used to laugh at the idea of positive thinking. I mistakenly believed that positive thinking was a gimmick, a way to sell books and courses. I didn't understand the true premise then. Rewiring your thought processes will not prevent tragedy in your life, and it will not make you a billionaire. So get that out of the way. But positive thinking is a tool, a way to deal with life, all of it, to make better decisions, better choices, and recover faster when possible, whatever happens in your day. It helps to understand that most people don't view the world the same way as you do, or as I do, or most anyone else. People are just trying to get through the week. It's not personal, although it feels that way. That's your ego. That's your ego. It helps to appreciate that most people have their own motives, their own agenda. They are rarely thinking about you. People aren't thinking about you, and your sense of being right is not the same as theirs. In my day job, until recently, I had this day job in sales, I provide and provided a service working with contracts, schedules, and clauses, et cetera, in real estate. Contracts are binding agreements and need to be followed to the letter. If you're an agency, the job is to make sure the contract is structured properly and easily understood. If you're the agent, the job is to make sure your client is aware of what it means and how it binds. Negotiating is important, of course, but both sides of an agreement need to come to terms with the result. The win is a firm deal and a closed transaction. So my point here is human nature to get emotional at times, especially when love or money or business is involved. No one wants to feel. No one wants to feel used or taken advantage of personally or professionally. No one. The best results, and they'll remember it too if you take advantage of them, they'll never forget. The best results come from a place where the contract is understood and signed without emotion. Look, I recognize this is far easier said than done. And I'm really new at this, and it's often my biggest challenge. Getting uh, say getting a client past their own emotions and accepting the best possible result is really difficult sometimes. Often they will resent you for it, and there is no way around this fact. People look back and they cherry pick parts of, say, the transaction or your interaction or your relationship, and they believe that they could have done better. There's not much you can do there, and you respond without attitude, personally or professionally. You've done your best with, you know, a little care, a little skill, some knowledge, and you try to let it go. I used to make notes of any interactions, sorry, any interactions with difficult clients or any clients really, just in case down the road they would come back at me with something. I protect your professional self. Everyone has a different ladder of ethics, and where that where on that ladder she sits, I just say everyone has a different ladder of ethics and where on that ladder he or she sits. To assume the focus of another person is to make a mistake. Everyone looks at the circumstance from their own unique lens. Don't assume everyone has the same set of expectations or want what you want. Everyone has an agenda. Occasionally you work with people who are, frankly, and this is personal too, family, friends, colleagues who are stubborn and stupid. You can't fix stubborn and stupid. Your ego will be most challenged here. Park your ego. Man, this is so hard for me to get to this point. Park your ego, let them win. Trying to convince stupid will exhaust you. I have a note on my fridge that reads, Is your ego getting in the way? Whenever I feel emotional about an interaction with a colleague or a client, I look at the note and I think, why am I upset? You know, or a family member or a friend, why am I upset? So you'll need to find, I find a place inside where that trigger is. For me, for me, I can easily track the events in my life where I had no leverage, no power, and no support. These events as a young man shaped me for a long time, and my response was often digging in my heels, not letting go, and defending myself at the slightest provocation, at the slightest provocation. Once I understood, and listen, I'm still a very much a work in progress, I was able to let the emotion fade more quickly and get flat in order to make the best decision. I live an examined life. I think we should have a sip of lemonade. I live an examined life. So the biggest obstacle, as an example, that I faced when starting a sales career, I was in middle age, after a life in a world of music and writing was inside, was inside me. Getting through courses and passing exams took some work, obviously. I'd been out of school for a very long time. Competing in a sales environment with thousands of other realtors and salespeople, brokerages, all prospecting for a limited amount of business was a challenge too. But I faced an internal battle, one of addiction, a feeling of loss. My ego was all about being an artist for 30 plus years, and I had not yet come to terms with my mental health and depression. Getting up every morning and out the door was a victory some days. What I needed to learn was a strategy to park my fragile ego. Like a dog getting kicked regularly as a puppy, I was hypersensitive to any slight or challenge. I did not like, well, I did not feel like I could compete with accomplished salespeople, for instance. These folks seemed to work effortlessly and could connect with others personally and professionally easily. I had to learn that. I had to learn to be engaged and detached at the same time and understand that while my colleagues were mostly friendly, well, mostly, we were also in competition, we were not buddies. Boy, it took me a while to figure that out in sales. My strategy took time to develop, but I would quit drinking when I was 59, and I would go deep inside my head to tackle the darkness there and accept the good and the bad and put this note on my fridge about my ego. Once you realize everyone is dealing with something, and that you can you can only play the cards you were dealt, it takes the pressure off a bit. Getting clean and sober took me years. Dealing with depression and the self-esteem issues that come with the darkness is an ongoing struggle. I have accepted a lot of what can't be changed. I've accepted my fate there. What has been lost, what has been lost. I take some medication sometimes, and although there were side effects, taking a med is better. You can't fight the inevitable. I began to write again, seriously, after I got sober. I wrote honestly, simply, one line at a time, critically, and some days it broke me a little. I lived in the what might have been world for a while. Can't live there. That is a dead end. But I had to walk down that alley for a bit. I wrote about how I got to such a sad place in my life, what my role in getting there was, and what if anything I could do about it now. You know, I learned a little about forgiveness. I learned that you can forgive people who have hurt you, but it is still better to stay away from them. Forgive people who have hurt you, but stay away from them. I made changes in my social life. It was around this time I fully realized that my ego was in the way, mostly due to the fact that my ego was not healthy. I drank to bury the damage and numb the feelings. I did not know me anymore. Maybe I never did, but I think I do now. As I work with other human beings, I do my best to appreciate their perspective. My pride needs to be parked at the door. We are there to provide a service. Example in sales. When I have a gig, I'm there to provide entertainment as an example. The job is to obtain in sales the best possible result in a transaction. Competition does not come naturally to me. And prospecting for clients is a form of competition. A client is looking for representation. I know I do do good work, but my ego once was easily bruised. Losing out to other salespeople for the contract, not anymore. You can't make someone choose you. You can't. I won't overpromise or bend the truth to fool someone into working with me. Some do. I sleep bad enough as it is. You put in the work, you know the job, and what needs to be done. Some folks are just more skilled at prospecting. I park my ego there if I have done my best. My thoughts on ego are mine alone, of course, and personal, but I have put time into examining how my mind works and how it used to work and why it made certain decisions, why we made certain decisions, and how it can serve me better in the future. A life of quiet confidence, humility, and a healthy ego. Work is not our life. Life is our life. Of course, it's important to have pride in yourself and your work and the life you lead. It's essential to have a healthy ego, a healthy ego, and we can debate what that is. In order to keep balanced and not let the outer world run your life. We all need quiet times, quiet space. Oh, I crave quiet times and peace and being alone a lot. A lot. Ask my friends how much time I like to be alone. I like the ability to take time to think think things through. Think things through. I swear there's nothing in that lemonade. If you react as I once did, quickly and without concern for the consequences, results will not be good. You may be right, but you've lost the room. Life is unfair. So what? Control your response. Control is what is in your power. I believe a healthy sense of pride, self-esteem can be developed no matter what has happened to you in the past, whatever trauma, abuse, or neglect you have lived. It takes work, though. As you write or think about life, it's important you always say, This could be wrong. I could be wrong. Don't be too sure about anything except your desire to find peace inside and a quiet confidence. As a young man, I've said this before, I would have laughed at myself for writing this. He was in a much different place then. But I never gave up searching for something better inside. And I read a library trying to get here. So that was episode number 15 of my podcast series, The Train from Airdrie Station. Episode 15 called Ego. Thank you for listening. I hope you uh have a great week, and I'll be back next week with another episode. I'm gonna leave you now with the song I wrote, recorded some years ago, called Untouchable. It's a little bit about adultery, it's a little bit about what the heart wants, and it's a little about life. Who knows? Maybe it'll strike a chord with you. Strike a chord. See what I did there.

SPEAKER_00 19:55

I'm crusty and unlovable. I know that you will bring a line that we won't cross. I watch for you and online. Busy with my work and oh how you make me say a thing that we can't say. You may take my call late at night when the coast is clear and the planet is right. We both know where that might be. So we talk around possibilities. Every day life, every day life. For dinner parties on Friday night. There is someone you just got to meet, smiling talk on stage. I put us in this place. But you respond every time in this coffee joint, just you every day live, every day live. Let's say we meet again someday. Boulevard and old cafe. One look from your small eyes. I know you're untouchable. I'm crusty and unlovable. I know that you ever cross.