Ego Can Steal Your Money

Recently I was on a morning run and having one of those days.  I was low energy, my legs had no pep, and I just felt blah.  I was determined to push through, but my pace was way off my normal and I accepted that.

Then I saw a group of people by the trail ahead just sitting and talking.  It looked like they were people watching and just enjoying the morning, some had coffee cups.  Most of them were young women. 

As I approached something took over and I sped up, a lot.  I passed them and said hello and about 20 seconds later I noticed I was breathing really hard and had to slow back down.

Ego is a powerful thing.

 

I Bet You Think This Post Is About You

What is ego?  The basic definition is “a person’s sense of self-esteem or self-importance.”  Sounds simple and accurate enough, but the word is used in many contexts and with a lot of nuance. 

The Oxford dictionary defines it within the realm of psychoanalysis as:

the part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and is responsible for reality testing and a sense of personal identity.

I bolded that last part because I think it gets to the meat of the matter.  A sense of identity is a powerful thing.  One could be a lawyer, a father, a son, a cancer survivor, and an athlete.  Those things create the ego, and each of those identities can have a separate ego.

In America it seems our strongest sense of identity is with our careers.  When you meet someone at a party it’s very normal to hear “So what do you do?” as the first question.  It’s as if our jobs are the main thing that define us as people. 

I would love to say that I was immune from this basic human emotion during my career, but I’d be lying.

 

The Young Hustling Ego

I’m not going to lie, I used to have a decent sized ego at my job.  Especially in the years when I was front loading and giving it my all with long weeks and overtime. 

I posted about how I went through a period where I was making less than others in the same job role, while training them how to do their jobs. 

When you do something like that it’s hard not to have an ego, a chip on your shoulder.  I wasn’t one of those over the top a-holes that wore my ego and showed it, but I definitely had one. 

Heck, I was really good at my job and I knew it, and so did my agency.  I moved up very quickly through the ranks.  I cared.

 

Don’t B.S. The Ego

And then around 2104 – 2015 that started to change.  As I moved up the management chain my daily tasks became more bureaucratic, and often just flat-out inane.  I didn’t realize it on a daily or even weekly basis but the ego I had built around my job and competence with it started shrinking. 

I had a big office, a huge budget, and lots of people working for me.  But in our dysfunctional government system I was kind of a figure head, I was what we used to call “one of them”. 

One day I woke up the poster child for what David Graeber called Bullshit Jobs (<– affiliate link).  Just because I support the Department of Defense and our brave soldiers, sailors, and airmen doesn’t mean there aren’t useless B.S. jobs within that massive machine.  They’re plentiful.

How could I have an ego at doing what anyone can see is stupid useless bureaucracy? 

It was only when I lost most of my ego with my job and career that I knew it was time to make a change, time to go part time and start the glide path to retirement. 

What I did for a living and the 25+ year career I had built wasn’t my main identity anymore.  All along I had been building other identities, such as being an athlete, a graphic artist, and a musician. 

These identities now have egos all to themselves.

 

New Identities, New Egos

My behavior on that morning run made me realize I now have a bigger ego regarding my identity as an athlete than I do with my job. 

I’m fit and having the best year of my life at an age that should see me declining.  Because of this success, my ego regarding these activities – this identity as an athlete – is growing.  It matters to me more than it used to. 

It only makes sense.  When you’re new at something or learning a new skill, you realize your place as a novice.  But as you build competence and achievements, the ego creeps in.  Within that lies pride, and the need or want of recognition.

 

Ego Can Steal Your Money

In his best selling book A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (<– affiliate link) Eckhart Tolle goes on and on, sometimes with frustrating repetition, about how the key to happiness and peace in life is to be able to squash the ego. 

While I do agree with him, freeing yourself from the grips of ego is much easier said than done.  Tolle sadly doesn’t offer much in the way of advice as to how to do it. 

I’m pretty darn rich and semi-retired.  Having some ego in my career helped me move up.  But not having much of an ego about status or material things was a huge factor in my achieving wealth. 

Because the opposite leads to a life of debt and needless accumulation in a race to keep up with others.  Too many people see their material possessions as a proxy for their worth or value to the world. 

I’m sure you know some folks like that, I sure do. 

We all have egos.  In my experience the key to saving and building wealth is to avoid having a big ego around material possessions and the perceived status they bring. 

But an ego as a middle aged weekend warrior athlete?  That’s something I can identify with.

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