Episode 31: Using your ego in a healthy way!

You ever fall off the bandwagon of good habits because your ego suddenly got a hold of the wheel? This episode explores healthy ways to use your ego, so you have just enough confidence to stay motivated but not so much that you take on more than possible or act entitled. Listen to learn how you can make your ego work for you and bring you fulfillment! 

Connect with the host, Brittany Drake:

• On LinkedIn @copywritingbritt
• Visit Momhomie.com to read the blog for more WFH Mom realities
• Email any inquiries to momhomie@copywritingbritt.com

Thanks for listening, and you're doing great, mama!


Note: Looking for the WFH Survival Guide?... Well, I've been ashamed to admit this, but it's not done yet. However, I am ready to confess because if Netflix can fail hard on their live stream of Love is Blind Reunion (with a whole production team and crew) and ask for forgiveness, so can lil' ol' me.  Thank you for your patience, and it will be done very soon! 

Transcript

Brittany 0:00

Hey, and welcome to Mom Homie, a podcast that advocates for work from home moms who want to balance their careers with their little one in the mix. I'm your host, writer, fellow mom and family woman, Brittany Drake. Every two weeks I share my experience, what I've learned, and ideas and hopes of easing and affirming feelings about the work from home, mom life. In this month, we are talking about ego and transformation and the threshold you are trying to surpass. as some of you might know, I pushed the release of the work from Home Survival Guide to a soft release on March 16th, and then an official release on my birthday April 6th. At first I was mad at myself for not working harder to get it done, and then I was also mad at myself for not planning my time properly, and then I was sad that I didn't pace myself and resentful that I got caught up in other projects over mine. Then I started asking myself, what the rush was. Wouldn't I rather create something valuable and give my audience something that they can actually use instead of just checking off a goal that I've wanted to have? Absolutely. And so I said, let me give myself some grace because I'm literally doing it all by myself and this is exactly the sort of relatable conversations that I want to continue with my fellow moms who are also in similar positions. I realized that my ego was telling me I was a superhero and the exception to human capacity, but that led me to feeling burned out and disconnected from people even while I was still being social. Once I examined these things, it took a lot of pressure off of me. Now it's been easier to move through my assignments, despite my workload being just as heavy as it was in February. And let me tell y'all, I do not remember much of anything that happened in February because it was a whirlwind. Yes, it's a shorter month, but I was like saying yes to everything and getting anxious about, oh, is this that moment where I'm about to get on the other side? And just, you know, really getting into my head and overthinking everything instead of trusting what I've already been doing and knowing that it's going to get me there. So something that helped me realize that it was my ego that was getting in the way was the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. I randomly picked it up in the middle of last month and I read the first few pages and I was hooked. I was like, oh, okay, like I wanna know more about this. And the way he hooked me was just his story, and I was very invested in how has he gotten from where he was, which. Injured and almost dead to being able to recoup from that and not just recoup physically, but recoup mentally into what he used to be before his accident happened. And he said that he started just examining his habits more, and I was realizing that I had habits that were working for me and that I was destroying those habits that were working for me because I was replacing them with different habits or systems as he calls them, that weren't working for me. So I wasn't stopping myself from working past a certain time. I wasn't getting to bed on time. I was still waking up early, but I was exhausted and irritable. All in all, I was letting go of the systems that worked for me and I was thinking that I was superhuman and that I could reach this threshold, which I don't even know if it was actually there based off of new systems that I also didn't know if they were gonna work for me or not, and just generally exhausting myself. So I had to take a step back and get real with myself and say, look, you need to sleep. you need to eat at a decent hour. You need to bond with your family. You need to take a break. Like I had to remind myself that I'm not in a rush, that there's nothing dire happening and that I need to. be realistic with myself, and that I need to stick with the systems that work for me. And so in today's episode, I wanna explore how to use your ego in a healthy way, because I don't think your ego is inherently good or inherently bad. I think that depends on what you do with it, and that you need just enough to keep you motivated and to believe in yourself, but you don't want too much that you think you're superhuman and then you're burning yourself out. But before we dive into that, let's do our affirmation. I am in control of my ego. My ego is not in control of me. I am in control of my ego. My ego is not in control of me. Let that sink in and we'll be right back. Hey, Brittany here. This is not a commercial. It's a moment for you mama to take a break and go pee, grab a snack or take a breath. So go ahead, put me on pause. I'll wait. Okay, so we are jumping right back in. And so the first thing I have on here in terms of things that we can do so we can balance our egos and use 'em in a healthy way. is to let your ego motivate you to take small steps every day. This is exactly the philosophy that James Clear is talking about in Atomic Habits, and so I do recommend that you pick that book up for yourself. And you may not have to read it cover to cover, but I'm only, I'd say like 40 pages in and I'm finding a lot of value already. So take a look at that. But some of the things that he says is to only focus on the small habits because those small habits will compound into really big changes. And so instead of looking at the goal of your habits, look at them in a granular way. So if you're someone who is trying to lose weight, and this is the easiest way to explain this, you may say, Hey, I'm gonna work out twice a week instead of saying, I'm gonna work out until I gain this much muscle or lose this much weight, or look this certain way. Because when you do that, you're setting up an expectation of what you imagine you're going to look like and what you're going to feel like versus setting up ways to get there. And so if you're not setting up ways to get there, you're gonna get frustrated because you end up in a space where maybe you're not seeing a lot of change, and so you're doubting yourself and saying, why am I even doing this? It's not working. Versus trusting the system that you put into place and saying, okay, I've been doing this for a week now. I don't see anything yet, but, let me do it for another two weeks, three weeks, and okay, how do I feel now? Maybe my skin's a little clearer. Maybe my diet has naturally changed a little bit. Maybe my, um, appetite is, you know, better. Like, I'm not hungry all the time. Or maybe your muscles are your, they feel better. They don't feel super achey like when you first started working out. So look at small habit changes versus. just the big picture. And he talks about that too. He says, you know, obviously you do wanna have goals, but if you only focus on the goal, once you hit it, then you're not gonna necessarily recognize it as a win. And you may say, okay, what's the next goal? Versus having this feeling of accomplishment all the way throughout. And also thinking of, you know, your ego and letting it motivate you, you can also use it to hold you accountable to being consistent in a sustainable way. So for example, for me with mom homie, I started writing weekly blogs around this time last year. And I remember when I started it, I didn't really have any strong expectations for it. I was sort of like, let me do it and we'll see what happens. And. I can say confidently. From then, up until now, I've become a better writer. I'm learning how to write faster sentence structure is a lot better. I am just more confident. And now writing a weekly blog isn't something that. Feels daunting to me is especially because I write other things. So it's been helping my creativity, it's been helping my communication. It has done a lot for me just to say, I'm gonna do this consistently. again, small habit changes, compound to really big things. Number two, for letting your ego. guide you in a healthy way is to allow your ego to be your hype man and affirm your hard work. So if you're ever feeling like, oh, I don't know if this is doing what good for me, or if I, you know, feel confident in my abilities, or having a little bit of imposter syndrome. go ahead and use your ego as your hype man. You want to approach things with, yes, I can, but steer clear of believing that you should do it all right now, or that you should be pushing yourself harder and then overlooking the value. So with the Work from Home Survival Guide, for example, I. Was like, yeah, I can do it. But then I got to a point where I was like, I can do it in just a few days, and then it became, I can do it in just a few hours, and then it became, I'm mad that I can't do it today. I'm mad that I can't do it in a few hours, and I overlooked the value of wanting to do it in the first place. So don't let your ego make you prideful. Make it work for you to motivate you and always keep your values aligned as you go along with it. Some real life examples of people using their ego in a healthy way would be Michael Phelps, for example. He would visualize every race before he jumped into the water at the Beijing Olympics, and he actually, um, won a race with his goggles filled with water. It was a butterfly, and he ended up not only getting the gold medal, but he also broke a world record. So because he visualized that happening for him and sort of, and visualizing a way of like, what's the worst that can happen? Not so much visualizing in a, this is my goal sort of way. He was able to see the worst and believe in himself to say, yes, I can overcome it. So instead of his goggles filling water and panicking his goggles fill with water, and he said, you know what? Yes, I can do this because I've done this many times before I came prepared. One of my systems was to visualize it and I visualize this exact scenario and I was still able to overcome it. Another example is Issa Rae. I've talked about this before, but she gives herself a pep talk in the mirror every morning and you know, says, yes you can. And you know, yes girl and all that stuff. And I've tried that myself. It does feel a little funny at first but I do recommend it just because it's something that. Uh, super attainable, super relatable. And so, um, that's another way to use your ego in a healthy way as your hype man. And then the third thing was, uh, Lewis Hamilton, the Formula one racer, he balances his stress with reward. So he's using his ego in a way of saying, you know what, yes, I've had all this stress happening in the race but I'm gonna reward myself. And that's his way of, of telling himself like, you're doing a good job. Keep it going, keep it moving. And yeah. And this is how you get to know and hear about stories of people who are able to push past that threshold and push past the challenges and, you know, again, keep it moving. The third thing I have on here is to use your ego to explore and live out your values. What I mean by this is, and bear with me. This was a definition I found on Oxford Languages Dictionary on Google, but it says that your ego is the part of your mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious, and is responsible for reality testing and a sense of personal identity. So what I took that to mean was that your ego is where you basically put pen to paper. So if you have an idea about something and you wanna test it out and see if it works in your reality, then that's where your ego is because your ego is saying that, although maybe we've never encountered this before, we're not familiar with it, we're gonna try it out because you can do it. So with that said, your values make up who you are and you carry them everywhere you go. So if you're testing the reality with your values, you're testing your capacity, and you're testing your capacity in a way that is going to let you know, is that realistic or not? To put this into perspective, humans cannot fly. So it would be dangerous for someone to jump off of a building hoping they can fly because their ego led them to this extreme, but very wrong conclusion. However, ego has driven innovation for humans to fly with the assistance of planes, parachutes, and paragliders. So yes, sometimes, you know, in terms of innovation, we do have to believe in the impossible, but we also have to make sure that we're balancing what we're capable of when we are testing those innovation. So now that I've given you this, you know, kind of grandiose example of, you know, ego and reality testing, I wanna bring it down a little bit more to something that's more digestible. Like the value to treat others how you wanna be treated. Take this and. Establish this as a non-negotiable with your loved ones, your clients, your employers, your church, you know, wherever you spend your time and let go of relationships that don't align with that value or are disrespectful. That's another way of reality testing that value in saying, okay, this is how I'm gonna live out this reality of treat others how you want to be treated, because I'm going to keep people or institutions that also agree with this value and let go of the ones that don't. And the fourth and final thing I have on here is to let your ego bring you to new hobbies. Having something outside of your passion is often the break that you need to get out of your own head and come up with fresh ideas and to rest your mind and to break up feelings of dependency of what you already. So, for example, you hear stories about athletes with devastating injuries and how they cannot return to their respective sport. There are musicians who lose their hearing and singers who develop nodes, and while you know you adore their passion and you adore their commitment to their craft, there has to be more to them because things can go in an instant. And so if you let your ego get you into other hobbies, if you lose the thing that has been the most important to you, it won't feel as devastating if you have other things to fall back on and not even necessarily fall back on as a new profession or as a new lifestyle, but more so, as just something to mentally stimulate you. Moms, do you have something to say or add about the work from home mom life? I'm looking for a diverse array of guests who want to share their experience, knowledge, and support to offer solutions that make work from home mom life easier. If this sounds like something you want to be a part of, contact me using the info in the show notes. Thanks. Now back to the show. Okay, so to wrap up this episode, your ego is neither good nor bad. Rather it is reality testing what could go wrong if you try to defy the rules that apply to everyone. However ,No one is superhuman. I hope you feel encouraged by today's podcast to continue in your work from home journey and the road to possibilities you have visualized for yourself and your loved ones. And I hope that you also understand that your ego is there to be used in a healthy way and to help you get to the next step, even when you feel like it's not going anywhere. thank you so much for listening today. I look forward for the soft release of the Work from Home Survival Guide, which I will let you know more about on LinkedIn. That is on March 16th for early access. If you want to just take a look at it and provide some feedback, and then when you are ready to actually dive in and work your way through it, it will be available for you on April 6th, which also happens to be my birthday. Thank you again and have a wonderful day.