Self-improvement: The past does not equal the future October 10, 2012
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Ego Management, Overcoming Fear.Tags: achieving goals, ego management, focus on the present, managing the ego, self-improvement, Tony Robbins
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In managing our ego or our mindset towards ongoing improvement in our life circumstances, what you do now and in the future is more important than what you did or did not do in the past.
Tony Robbins makes an important point in his book Notes to a Friend, when he comments, “What you did in the past does not determine what you will do in the future.”
Robbins is not saying that what we have done in the past has absolutely no effect on the future, because it does. What he is saying is that we can change how we take actions today; and the actions of today can be different than how we acted in the past.
It’s an important distinction because the ego’s tendency is to focus on the past and the unknown, rather than on the reality of today.
If we are constantly revisiting the past with all of its mistakes and omissions, or worrying about possible problems in the future, it is difficult to focus on positive actions we can take today.
It’s worth remembering that there are second chances in life.
Personal development goals can be frustrated by the ego February 23, 2012
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Ego Management.Tags: Eckhart Tolle, ego management, focus on the present, personal development, The Power of Now, the role of the ego
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In our quest to understand personal development and thereby improve ourselves through reading and general research, the ego and its role within our personality patterns is something that constantly surfaces.
The more we read about the psychology of self-improvement, self-help and personal development in general, the more definitions and explanations of the ego we will uncover.
Some of the explanations of the role the ego plays in personality and human behaviour are quite complex and technical. Whatever the explanation, however, we know that the ego is a force to be dealt with and our research often leads to us look for answers in how to manage the ego, how to control anger with the ego, in general, how to deal with the ego and its influence on us. We seem to realize intuitively that the ego is a somewhat independent force living within us.
One of the interesting views of the ego is that of Eckhart Tolle, who (and this is a very simplified paraphrasing) regards the ego as the constantly chattering voice in our heads that will not shut up no matter how hard we try to focus and “stay in the moment.” For Tolle, the ego does not like being satisfied, with, or just accepting the present moment, but rather tends to focus on the future or the past.
The ego in this view tends to look at what should be and what should have been, rather than on dealing maturely and objectively with what is.
In his book, The Power of Now, Tolle makes the following observation: “The basic ego patterns are designed to combat its deep-seated fear and sense of lack. They are resistance, control, power, greed, defense, attack. Some of the ego’s strategies are extremely clever, yet they never truly solve any of its problems, simply because the ego itself is the problem.”
In Tolle’s view the ego’s tendency to focus on the past and the future, and to avoid dealing with the present moment, makes us slaves to time with the result that: “The more you are focussed on time – past and future – the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.”
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