Ego, the critic

As I begin writing this, I’m fighting the urge to contract into one, never-ending cringe. Not only did I spend most of my day listening to my own voice (eeek!), editing out the stuff that doesn’t belong in the recordings of my teleseminars (thinking probably no one really wants to listen to me punching the telephone keys to change conference muting modes, etc.), I’ve also spent time reading articles on an article distribution site I submit articles to. There sure are some wonderful writers out there, turning out brilliant work that is easy, entertaining, and inspiring to read, making me wish mine were more so. What both of those activities have done is make me want to immediately curtail all speaking and all writing! While I often find that I come up short when I compare myself to some other writers, I always find that I miss the mark when I compare my performance in speaking with my own ideas about what might have been!

How often is our experience dominated by the discrepancy between our expectations and what actually is? How often do we fail to acknowledge that which is of value because we are too busy finding fault and wishing we’d said things differently, more smoothly, more succinctly? How often do we allow our frequency to be lowered and our expression to be weakened because of the fear that we are going to “mess up”? How many times do we need to review the understanding that judging ourselves is undermining our abilities to be and do that which we’re here to be and do before we just give up and let things flow? And, exactly who is it—what part of us—is seeking to make these judgments? Well, just guess! Ego: the king of comparison. And judgment. And worry.

Will I actually let my ego stop me from my mission? Will I let my ego-need to be perceived as superlative keep me from sharing the messages I am inspired to share just because “I could have done better” or because my writer’s voice is not as lighthearted as some? Will I become so wrapped up in my ego stuff that I fall to lower frequency where ego’s voice is even louder? (Oh please, no!) Or will I honor the voice of God sounding within, and trust that all is as it is meant to be and that the work I do, in the manner that I do it, is right for those it is intended to help? Even with my ego stirred up, I am pretty sure that those teleseminars were exactly what the folks that listened in needed to hear--not because I was so pleased with them, but because the Law of Attraction makes it so--they were attracting my words every bit as much as I was. More importantly, those words transmitted exactly the energy that the listeners were ready to receive and interact with. It is true that most, if not all, the people in attendance were NOT listening to try and figure out what I left out or could have explained better—they were listening and responding to what was there!

I can tell you the answer to the preceding questions—no, I won’t let it stop me. I will continue in faith and turn the volume of my ego’s voice down by turning the volume up on the voice of my Spirit. Also, I will reassure my ego, in terms that my ego responds to, that people appreciate my writing and that they respond to my teaching—because they’ve told me so. I will persevere and keep on keeping on because that's what I am meant to do. Heck—during the writing of this blog entry, I had a great idea for a new article…