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Oversized Ego: Biggest barrier in entrepreneurship journey

Egonever accepts the truth!  Its an old Chinese saying, this holds a huge message, especially for the budding entrepreneurs who are going to face the world and learn new sills from, whosoever. A persons self esteem or self importance is often over exaggerated or often get confused to swell larger in his/her own world and we start to accept and use the term “Tom Dick and Harry” for those who we do not care about, we do not give any importance or those we deliberately want to demean in our comparison, all because of misunderstanding of our personal identity. When we are comfortably at home in our young ages, it often goes unnoticed or ignored because we stays with in our families of friend circles, but the reality check happens when we start to interact with strangers and get into a newer settings.

This is still not corrected and finally when we get to the work desk, it starts to hurt ourselves more than anyone else, this creates stress and pressure within, we tries to break the discipline and create further barriers around us stopping people to come closer and have a conversation.

This all happens in our subconscious mind, we evolve from a child  with Id to a man with Ego and a evolved human being with Superego, all three are important but in right proportions, the objective is to reach from unconscious mind to conscious and further evolution to a mental conscience where we were crying for milk unless we are fed in the beginning to sharing the milk with our brothers to understanding the morality of our behaviour and giving away our own milk and submission to other’s need.

Real problem arises when we collaborate, as an entrepreneur.

For an entrepreneur, the day starts with collaboration and also ends with the same, with people coming from varied backgrounds, different states, different skin colors, speaking different languages, having different mindset to see the things around, talks at varied pitches and also behave very differently. 

As entrepreneurs we are supposed to talk, connect, convince, sell and share, all have different persons to deal with, all situations are different and requires to learn different skillsets to deal with. Unless we do away with our ego completely, the learning process will not complete and without completing the learning process we cannot (and must not) start to perform.

 

A bad day for your ego is a great day for your soul.

Someone righty said that “If someone corrects you and you feel offended, its your ego problem” in the war of egos the loser always wins, loosing it is far better than splitting yourself wide open to your team and partners. If their confidence breaks, nobody can bring them back, if they stay on your side, you can win many more bigger battles.

Caring helps

The first ingredient of being a good entrepreneur is to develop a deep caring emotion for your team, partners, business and customers, a deep rooted care in your heart will never let the ego take over your brain. This is why none of the parents stand with their ego facing therir children, for them it is love and care for them that pushes the parents to get angry, for the child’s long term benefit. Same goes true for the business, partnership, team and customers as well. Difference of opinion for a good argument and a result oriented discussion makes the organization stronger then ever at teh same time the ego of the boss demean the staff, turn down the deal and break the teams.

What is supposed to be done in a professional setting for an entrepreneur in all situations of ego clashes and conflicts pushing the ego ?

Use Defense

Scientists have worked on this personality trait worldwide and researchers have suggested to use some defense mechanisms in such situations until you learn to deal with these situations completely.

These defense mechanisms are mental processes those developed since childhood, although few of them are often lead to a personality disorder as well, so watch yourself carefully if you find it difficult to handle a particular type of situation for long.

The defense mechanism helps reduce stress and are mostly healthy and natural and can be used without long term complication of issues.

  1. Anticipation: understanding that the exam is near and the kid starts to study, this is anticipation of a situation and our mind guides us to prepare ourself for the exam.
  2. Compensation: Devoting more time on one and avoid the other area where they feel some inadequacy.
  3. Displacement: Lashing out office’ anger at home, means avoiding one situation but fall to lesser problematic one.
  4. Humor: Fighting a negativity with humor, a joke or a smile also can do wonder.
  5. Intellectualization: or over thinking or over assessment creates a distance.
  6. Isolation: or bypassing the negative emotion associated with an idea of event.
  7. Rationalization: Self explanation, means you steal from someone and explain yourself that you need it more than him.
  8. Reaction formation: It is found in someone who is extremely kind to someone whom he dislike.
  9. Sexualization: or associating sexual identification to something conventionally not sexual.
  10. Sublimation: Pushing yourself into more demanding as well as rewarding activities like sports, forgetting your anxieties and fear indulging into an activity that drains out physical as well as mental strength.
  11. Suppression: or blocking the ideas that you dont like.

But as mentioned earlier as well, if the defenses are really powerful and not letting you take decision, talk to friends and family and worst case talk to the doctor for guidance.

Your business needs more of your positive self and least of your issues, so get over them if any, start with EGO.

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