Ego and Education

"You can be right, or you can be better." -Enrique

        Today I will be sharing a vital formula for living that has helped me achieve many things in my life and the lives of many others. One of the barriers to becoming better and learning is believing that you know it all or that every piece of advice that doesn't come from you is wrong. Now, before I go any further, know that there are times where you must be deaf, I will talk more about that toward the end.

        Let's start with knowing it all. If you knew it all, then you would be living the exact life you would want to be living, every second of every day. In other words, since you would know everything, you would know how to get what you want all the time with no lag; this is impossible. And because this is impossible, it is unworkable. Doing something that doesn't work won't just get you no results, it will set you back as well. So this is out of the picture; don't bother doing or believing that you know it all.

       Next, believing that you are always right. Your ego does not want to be told that it is wrong because it does not like losing and it shouldn't like losing. What good would it be to have an ego, if it was okay with losing? The purpose of our ego is for it to push and pull us toward a greater survival. The reason I am going over this is because I want to make it clear to you that there is nothing wrong with you for wanting to be right. You should be right, because if you aren't right then you aren't surviving very well and if you can't survive well, then you won't make it in life.

        Okay, so far we know that this barrier is set up by our ego and we know that our ego wants to be right because it wants to win. So how can we work with this and still solve our problem of being open to being educated. Simple, even if the data being given to you, proves or makes you wrong, your ego will still be willing to take it, as long as you believe the data leads to some greater victory. Let's say Jordan told you that there was a particular way to hold a ball that would guarantee you made every shot. And it turns out that while he's teaching you, you realize, that your way is completely wrong. Here you are left with two options, you can stay right and continue being a mediocre player; small victory. Or you can be wrong but be better and become a great player; major victory. As I mentioned earlier your ego wants to win, it likes winning. The trick with this situation and most situations is to take a second to determine how valid the source point is. Ask yourself “Is Jordan credible in this field?” If Jordan is making you wrong, by giving you data that will make you better, are you really losing here? Of course you're not. And you need to tell your mind this, especially when you are receiving information from someone in an area that they know more about than you do.

        This brings me into who you should and shouldn't take advice or data from. I will keep it simple and straight to the point(probably going to write an article on this later). Don't take advice from people who aren't masters or experts in the field or subject they are communicating to you about. If you have read this far into the article and if you have understood the earlier points I discussed, it should be fairly easy to understand why this is.

-Enrique the Great