1 quick trick to understand yourself better (and like yourself more)
Here’s a quick trick to understand yourself and others better (and to like yourself and others more)—
Replace the word “ego” with “protective mechanism”
Let’s see how this goes with a few famous quotes about ego.
In each of the quotes below, I’ve replaced the word “ego” with “protective mechanism.”
Notice how this shifts your understanding of yourself.
“The first half of life is devoted to forming healthy [protective mechanisms], the second half is going inward and letting go of them.”
—Carl Jung
“Whenever you feel superior or inferior to anyone, that’s the [protective mechanism] in you.”
—Eckharte Tolle
“Perfectionism is [our protective mechanism’s]…demand. It denies us the pleasure of process.
Instead, we are told by [our protective mechanism] that we must have instantaneous success — and our perfectionism believes it, lock, stock and barrel.”
—Julia Cameron
“So whenever that brittle voice of dissatisfaction emerges within me, I can say ‘Ah, my [protective mechanism]! There you are, old friend!’
It’s the same thing when I’m being criticized and I notice myself reaching with outrage, heartache, or defensiveness. It’s just my [protective mechanism], flaring up and testing its power.
In such circumstances, I have learned to watch my heated emotions carefully, but I try not to take them too seriously, because I know that it’s merely my [protective mechanism] that has been wounded—never my soul.
It is merely my [protective mechanism] that wants revenge, or to win the biggest prize.
It is merely my [protective mechanism] that wants to start a Twitter war against a hater, or to sulk at an insult or to quit in righteous indignation because I didn’t get the outcome I wanted.”
—Elizabeth Gilbert
“Imagine what we would accomplish together if we left our [protective mechanisms] at the door.”
—Robert M. Drake
“[Protective mechanisms] aren’t wrong, they are just unconscious. When you observe [protective mechanisms] in yourself, you are beginning to go beyond them.
Don’t take the [protective mechanisms] too seriously...
Above all, know that the [protective mechanisms] aren’t personal.
They aren’t who you are.”
—Eckharte Tolle
“Our job, as souls on this mortal journey, is to shift the seat of our identity from [protective mechanisms] to the Self. That’s it.”
—Steven Pressfield
Here’s why I love this word-swap.
“Ego” is a pretty loaded word.
If you have an “ego,” that’s assumed to be a bad thing in some way.
And when you describe a part of yourself with a loaded negative word, you unintentionally villainize a part of yourself.
“Protective mechanism” is not nearly so loaded as a term.
A protective mechanism seems like a valid, normal, understandable thing.
You can easily see how a protective mechanism is just doing its best to protect you…
AND you can simultaneously see that it might have become outdated or no longer make sense in your current circumstances.
And when you see a part of yourself as honestly doing its best and just needing a little updating…
It’s way easier to change that part of you than when you’re villainizing it.
The first step to having less stress and more flow in your life…
Is NOT villainizing the parts of yourself that are currently creating your stress.
Every part of you is good.
Every part of you makes sense.
Every part of you is just doing its absolute best to keep you safe and happy, in its own incredibly sincere way.
You don’t need to change yourself.
You only need to befriend yourself.
All the change you want will unfold – naturally and spontaneously – from there.
Can you make a seed sprout by breaking it open and forcibly yanking the plant out of the seed?
No — that’s insane.
You make a seed sprout by creating the necessary conditions for its organic flowering.
You don’t really “do” anything to do the seed itself.
You just plant it in the right soil and give it enough light and water and fertilizer if it needs it…
And the seed takes care of the sprouting all by itself.
That’s exactly what you’ll learn how to do with yourself through coaching.
Coaching with me teaches you a simple, repeatable, step-by-step process to cultivate an internal condition of self-friendship.
That’s the soil and water and light you need.
It takes a few reps to figure out how to do this consistently.
And don’t worry, I’ll be right there with you, holding your hand as you’re learning how to do this…
But once you learn how to create those internal conditions of self-friendship for yourself, again and again, on a repeatable basis…
Everything else flowers spontaneously.
And you’ll spend a lot less time feeling stressed and a lot more time in flow :)
So I want you to come talk to me today.
This is THE critical toolkit for living the life you actually want to live, and I don’t want you to go even one day without it.
Come get a free sample of coaching right now.
Or come talk to me about working together and really gaining mastery over this skillset.
What my clients have to say…
“I was worried about the cost. But every single session was well worth it.
Coaching with Pooja is the best investment I made last year, by far.
And I made a lot of investments last year — we spend a lot of money on a lot of different things to try to improve our life.
And if I had to go back and redo last year, I would have invested in coaching sooner.”
—Client | Head of Business Development at MedTech Company
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