How the ego stops a person from achieving what they think should be easy

I learned to write HTML with no effort at all in 1998 and 1999. I had no expectations on it whatsoever. I got a little excited about the Internet, and as I was enthusing about it, my then boyfriend handed me a book and said: “Learn that”. I thought I might as well learn a few tricks as I had nothing but time. I had no grander goals than to write some text on the internet, just text: “Hello, world”. Before I knew it, I had a fully functioning website that got bigger and bigger and bigger, and more complicated over time.

But when I started to think this is easy for me, and that I can learn this stuff super fast and there is no effort, things started to get difficult. I wanted to learn too many things at the same time, namely, in coding php. 20 years on, I still “tinker”.

Someone who is convinced that gaining muscle is super difficult and achievable to some special group of people alone is going to have a very different attitude going into weight training than someone who thinks they might just improve here and there. “Not a biggy, I’ll just see how it goes. No need to reach the top…” But as soon as the idea rises that I SHOULD be able to WIN this thing easily (like a bodybuilding competition) the going will get A LOT tougher for no other reason but an attitude sifts. His ego, his idea of self, has changed.

Next, the masterpiece!

Sticking to my favorite examples, when someone releases their first album that goes big, they start believing themselves to be able to write another hit or two. Their idea of self changes, and they think the next one should be just as easy, but it won’t be. They’ll try to achieve too many things at the same time… To conquer the world of music with a masterpiece. Nobody, I think, has ever written a masterpiece with the intention of writing a masterpiece… Definitely not when they have to raise their bar to get there: “I wrote a hit, but next, I’ll write a masterpiece!”

People also tend to have an ego that says they have to prove to be better than others in their field. “I won’t be one of THOSE people…” And yet, it may well be, that what THOSE people are is exactly what we WANT to be, even if we know there are people who hate that kind of people. This causes another wall to climb over.

Raise your goals and calm down

When the goal becomes too big, everything comes at you at once. That way, it is difficult to get a handle on things. That is not to say lower your goals, but to calm down. You know what you want to achieve, that’s enough. Now, take things one thing at a time as they come. Try hard not to walk uphill before you come to the root of it… That is to say don’t get ahead of yourself. Take your time, but keep a good pace. If you try and achieve everything at once, you’ll just wind up spinning wheels…

Either schedule or relax

Scheduling… Either you schedule things and make things organized for yourself. Some people thrive under a schedule, where others hate it. People who hate schedules (like me) need to learn to NOT TRY to do things all at once and perhaps learn to use to-do lists instead. Not to do those things NOW, but to remind themselves of all the ideas you had along the way. Then, use that list to fill up the times that you feel you’ve got more energy and time than what you can think of to do with.

And don’t get me wrong. I know all too well how to be in such a hurry to go to places that I go absolutely nowhere.

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