The habits that feed your ego, fuel anxiety, and keep you from your real priorities.
Which of your habits appease your ego, exacerbate anxiety and low self-esteem, and distract you from your main priorities? If you don’t know, this blog will get you started.
What You Don’t Want
First we determine what you don’t want. These are the emotions that pull you from peace, your ego driven needs and desires, and the activities that waste time.
As I always say, these examples will be unique to me. The goal of my blogs is to share my experiences in the hopes you’re inspired to dive into your own self-discovery.
Let’s start with the emotions that pull me away from peace. Anxiety – worrying about the future, dwelling on past choices, focusing so much on what I should say and do in the moment that I fail to live in the moment. Anxiety for me is a racing mind. My thoughts are going a mile a minute, I’m rushing around, actions are habitual not intentional, and I feel hot and tense. Anxiety doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel peaceful.
Now ego driven needs and desires. These are more complex and take some self-awareness and self-compassion to notice. Some desires of my ego are external validation, reassurance, and acknowledgment. My ego seeks validation through likes, shares, and comments. My ego wants reassurance from people when they go quiet, don’t respond immediately, or to know that comment I made didn’t have a negative impact. My ego craves acknowledgement of my effort, my commitment to efficiency and ease of others, and my consistent grounded nature.
Third, time wasters. We want to focus on one main priority at all times. Anything outside of that is pointless. We’ll dive into the habits that hinder your focus on the main priority in the next section. For now we’ll look at figuring out your main priority. I believe everyone’s number one priority is themselves. I’m not going to get into the weeds of “But what about my kids”, “My job takes priority so I can be secure”, and “I need to be there for my family and friends when they need me” – this is a topic for another blog. Your goals, your health, your well-being, your life is your priority.
Habits that Hinder
Now that we’ve established what we don’t want, we’ll dive into the habits that lead to anxiety, appease the ego, and hinder your main priorities.
This is when a lot of self awareness is needed if you’d like to make any progress. In order to limit the instances of these emotions being felt, the ego being stroked, and goals being postponed, we need to realize what we’re doing that leads to these things. This means being hyper aware of your present state and noticing your urges.
For me, this process goes like this: I notice when I feel anxious – my heart and mind are racing, I’m rushing things, and acting habitually. I stop myself, breathe intentionally, and ask my body how I can work towards calm. Once I’m thinking more rationally, I can then ask myself “What was I doing that lead to this feeling?” In the past few months I’ve discovered a few common activities – scrolling tik tok, running potential scenarios in my head, hanging out with certain people, and working habitually instead of intentionally.
With ego driven habits, the process is similar. Once you know which needs your ego is trying to achieve, you then notice how those play out. So when my ego needs validation, I get this urge to grab my phone and check all my socials for signs of people liking my content. When my ego craves reassurance, my instinct is to double text, reach out to ask if everything is ok, to fix things that don’t need fixing.
Time wasters – lets go more specific with priorities. I want to write a blog, that is the goal and priority. Any action I perform other than writing that blog is a waste of time. There is no reason for me to check my phone, look something up (other than a quote to add or definition of a word), answer a friend’s phone call, or check analytics. None of these things write the blog, they distract me from doing so.
Your number one priority is yourself, the habits you have, goals, and avenues towards peace will be unique to you. Figure these things out – make discovering them your priority, then do everything you can to prevent time wasters from interrupting your search.
Ok, Now What?
Now everyone’s favorite part of ETT’s blogs, the step-by-step guide, the answer to all you struggles. “Ok Bryce, I know what causes my unwanted emotions, I’ve determined the desires of my ego, and I know what distracts me from my main goal. Now what? How do I break these habits and improve my chances of not feeling these emotions so I can be at peace?”
Don’t do those habits.
It’s as simple as that and as complicated as that. This is not an easy solution, none of the things I write about are. Nothing worthwhile comes easy. It’s easy for me to tell myself not to do certain things – check my phone, turn on Do Not Disturb, delete social media, stay present at work, skip the gym, call or text back immediately… I know it would be beneficial to forego doing these things, but they happen. I don’t chase perfection, but progress.
Now that I’ve set the intention of working on these habits though, my mind is aware of them. I notice when I feel the urges, when I lose focus and mindlessly scroll, when I let habit rule with no bounds, and let anxiety guide my decisions. When I notice them, I make a choice – do it anyway or do things differently. That’s what it takes and that’s how it will always work. With time, patience, and intentional practice it gets easier, but it never goes away completely.
The Point
If you want to live a more intentional life, a life of focus, confidence, passion, and calm, consider the ideas I’ve described in this blog. I write these thoughts because doing these things has drastically changed my life. I will never write about anything I am not pursuing in my own life nor will I ever suggest habits I haven’t tried myself. Heck, I try to steer away from giving advice at all because I don’t know your unique situation or if what I discuss will work for you.
My goal is to share my thoughts and experiences. My hope is that my expedition to try will inspire you to start your own.
So with the ideas I’ve written above, my intention isn’t to say “Do X if you want Y”. My results won’t guarantee yours. I hope when I share what works for me, you feel that little spark inside you. A small flame that makes you think “I’m gonna try that”. Then if you try it and it works – hell yeah. If you try and don’t feel it’s the right fit, maybe you’ll be inspired to find your own way.
I hope this helped you and if you have any questions, please reach out.
