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Ego Management: The story of the green wood man January 1, 2013

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Ego Management.
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In some ways, the concept of managing our egos in our personal growth program is often a matter of managing our personality characteristics.

And, personality appearances can be deceptive, particularly when viewing ego management as applied to other people. We can apply labels to the personality traits of people we know or are acquainted with. But, those labels might be wrong, and with that, our judgements about the egos of other people can be wrong.

Take the story of the green wood man, as related to me by a friend of mine.

This was a man who lived in the country, on a small farm near the woods. Every year, he would leave the chore of getting winter firewood for heating his home until the very last minute; until the cold weather and snow had already set in. This meant that my friend was usually hired by the man to go into the woods and fell trees, cut them up, and then split the logs into firewood for the winter weeks and months ahead.

This scenario repeated itself every year. The “problem” with this approach is that wood cut at that time of year will be green, and there will be no time for it to “season” or dry, because the man needed to burn it right away. Green wood is hard to light and keep burning in a fire.

So why did the man wait until only green wood was available?

Here we might assume the role of personal growth or ego management practitioner, be judgemental, and assume that the man was a hopeless procrastinator.

Or perhaps we should conclude that the man had his reasons, and simply preferred burning green wood, rather than seasoned wood, in his woodstove.

The role of action in overcoming fear and doubt November 27, 2012

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Fear and Anxiety.
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In our personal growth and development efforts we sometimes need to attack our ego’s tendency to fill our minds with fear and foreboding about starting a new project or embarking on a new path in our life journey.

In any new effort towards increasing our potential, our ego (the little voice in our heads) may have a tendency to throw up cautionary warnings about our planned or hoped-for course of action. It fact, it sometimes seems as if the ego considers its main job to be placing fears and doubts in the way of what we would like to do, particularly when it comes to taking steps to improve our lives.

Although we may try to block out this “voice of the ego”, it can be difficult to do so. When the ego cannot be ignored, one of the best approaches is to fight through the fears and doubts by taking action towards whatever we want to pursue or accomplish.

Here are a couple of quotations that I enjoy, and which may help you push through your fear by taking action.

The first is by the late writer Ray Bradbury discussing what you need to do in fearful situations:

“Stand at the top of the cliff; jump off; and then build your wings on the way down.”

The second quote I suggest you consider is by the late Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, a minister and influential writer on the concept of positive thinking.

“Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all.”