Living Between Ego and Self

Guest writer Roxana Jones — founder of HealThruWords.com

“The problem is that we have allowed our egos, the part of us which believes that we are separate from God and separate from each other, to dominate our lives.” ~ Wayne Dyer

A few days ago, a lady seating next to me with whom I chatted while I was on an airplane, asked me what would I say to someone interested in one single piece of advice to be used in making a major life transformation. For a few seconds, my memories went to revisit my past and without hesitation, I knew this was what I would like to say to anyone ready to make a positive life transformation:

“Learn the difference between your ego and your true self; connect with the latter and live according to its voice, not the ego’s voice.”

You see, from what I have experienced through many difficult, almost impossible lessons that now seem so far away, to acknowledge and humbly accept we are constantly living between our ego and our true self is what allows us to find and see the light at the end of the tunnel. The recognition of this duality is not to say this is a negative characteristic. This is simply the way we humans have been designed and both, ego and self serve us in many amazing ways. Once we learn to differentiate ego from true self, we are then able to understand more clearly how to play the mental game of these two voices that will accompany us until the day we die.

I remember when I started trying to learn how to control my ego and how nothing I would try, worked. It used to frustrate me deeply to see how my ego would take me for ride almost every day of that unhappy, fearful and limited life I had back then. Thankfully, the day came when I decided to stop resisting my ego. Instead of fighting all the tricks I began recognizing from it – disguising itself as my true self was the trick that took me longer to identify – I decided to change my tactic and start forgiving and loving it, after all, my ego was a part of me and I knew I had to love myself fully and completely. I began to embrace it so intensely, that soon my ego stopped having control over me. This is how I discovered my sovereign being for the first time. As my ego shrank, my true self began to grow more and more. It was a miraculous process; a metamorphosis I observed for several long years, as I have to admit, mine was a difficult case of “chronic overgrown ego.”

Here are ten ways to distinguish between your ego and your true self:

1. Your ego is fearful; your true self is loving.
2. Your ego is usually negative and it loves “okay” and “status quo”; your true self is always positive and adventurous.
3. Your ego keeps you in the comfort zone; your true self makes you grow out of it.
4. Your ego is addictive; your true self is detached and free.
5. Your ego will want you to focus on the external and material; your true self will prefer you to stay focused on the ontological and your inner wellbeing.
6. Your ego encourages you to lose time in what was and what will be; your true self shows you the now moment as the only reality there is.
7. Your ego is a procrastinator; your true self makes things happen for you.
8. Your ego will teach you how to prefer quantity over quality; your true self will show you how to prefer quality and from there create quantity.
9. Your ego discourages you to speak your truth, it teaches conformity and mediocrity; your true self encourages you to sing your truth out loud, it teaches you to shine your unique light far and wide.
10. Your ego always needs you to prove things, it teaches you to see in order to believe; your true self acts in faith, it teaches you how to believe in order to see.

Roxana Jones has helped thousands of people across the world through her books, articles, HealThruWords® spiritual healing programs and inspirational quotes that are shared daily through her online community of 100K+ members.

Roxana became a best-selling author in the spirituality and personal development categories after she was ready to share what she had learned as the result of thirty years of thorough study of many different cultures, schools of thought, and traditions that offered the framework to understand her life purpose: to serve others by offering transformational leadership and spiritual healing through the words she writes. The first twenty years of this path were dedicated to the academic world where she earned a B.S in Anthropology in 1990, that was later complemented with a Master’s Degree in Political Science in 2003 and a Master’s Degree in International Relations in 2006.At the same time she continued searching for answers through higher education, a twelve-year abusive marriage that led her to addiction, depression and a suicide attempt, ended in divorce in 1999. At 33, Roxana found herself confronted to an uncomfortable truth: she was still looking for something she didn’t know where, or how to find. Her emptiness was so unsettling that she decided to surrender to that which was keeping her alive and search for what was still missing.