Power move: Building a HEALTHY false ego to change people’s vos

Yes, I understand! The idea of a healthy false ego is a contradiction in terms! It’s similar to terms like consensual rape or giving a guilty plea while maintaining innocence. Yet, sometimes, contradictions can work as a beautiful combination of things that shouldn’t exist in the same room, like pink and green.

Building a healthy false ego means that you build an image for yourself that you KNOW you can fill up when your time comes. It’s like lending money knowing you will be good for it.

In reality, it’s about building an image, which means that your ego is aware that you are putting it on, but others may be fooled by it.

Tony Robbins demonstrated this

Tony Robbins went around business conferences and the like promoting himself as the best (first?!) business coach on the scene, while still driving a clunker and owning one decent suit. He said he had to park the car somewhere far from the venue, as it would have given away his true status. Yet, he knew (or at least hoped) that in the end, he’d make good on his promise and, in fact, wound up giving the seasoned veteran business people tips that made them significantly improve their profits. (Can’t say I remember figures.)

This was creating a healthy false image while having a good, realistic hunch that you’re up to the task when you are presented with it.

We all know ourselves quite well

Everyone of us is locked into the company of only one person in this world: Yourself. You are with you the entire way from cot to grave, and it is ABSOLUTELY unrealistic to think someone else would know you better than you know yourself… At least not to the point where they can point out something that you feel strongly isn’t true, but they just insist on it. You’re there in your head, they’re not.

Therefore, whenever I point out things about other people to them, no matter how good I am at it (and I am very, very fukken good) if they say “nope, doesn’t apply”, I don’t push it too much, because they’re there, I’m on the outside. Even so, there are people who are so unaware of another person’s mind, that they believe that “if a person isn’t talking, a person isn’t thinking!”

The point being, that the final judge of whatever it is that you are is always you. Now, you may FAIL to demonstrate what you are to the effect that others can’t see it in you. Sometimes you CHOOSE not to demonstrate things because you don’t WANT TO make people aware of certain things about you… Such as making your sweet darling of a grandmother aware of your love of BDSM. (Is there anyone who doesn’t love a bit of BDSM? :p)

Now, sometimes you’ll have to build the exterior just so others know what it is that you MEAN TO BECOME

Recreating yourself is always a bit of a problem. A lot of people like the “certainty” of knowing who you are, yet, everyone is always surprised when they hear the serial killer was the nice quiet type! I mean, the SURPRISE OF IT! The absolute amazement to realize that a person who likes to kill other people doesn’t go around talking about it. “Oh, today, I killed this woman…” (Although I know of a murderer who talked about “wanting to kill a bitch” the whole evening leading to it. Nobody took him seriously because they “knew him”. Sure enough, that night he killed a woman, and the way I found out about it was that I happen to live in the apartment that he used to live in before going to prison to spend a life in it, so some of his mail still comes here! Nice. That’s the clunker I’m hiding. :p Druggies and would-be murderers used to squat in my current apartment. :p Anyway.)

Anyway, just like the exterior of this house, you may have to recreate the scene of who you are so that people dare to approach. Then again, you don’t want to build an image you cannot or don’t WANT TO live up to. For instance, for me, I will absolutely REFUSE to be your standardized life coach… You know, the overly-energetic, overly enthusiastic, pump-the-air business personality… As my idol Tony Robbins. 😛 (I love the man but just looking at him at times makes me tired. The amount of energy he burns by simply being him, I mean wow. He’s not good for the planet with that energy consumption! :D) Where was I?

Oh yes. That said, I also don’t want to hide my sexuality too much, as if gay men and women are allowed to parade through Sydney in scantily clad outfits shouting out declarations of their sexuality without fearing to lose their jobs or social status, then fuck me I’ve got the same right even if I am a heterosexual slutty female. Given how big of a deal our sexuality is in terms of our mental health, it would be not only hypocritical of me to hide my sexuality, but also counter-productive in terms of what I want to achieve in this world. A public secret, you know? You ought to know what I’m doing without necessarily taking a direct part in it.

The pressure to keep lying is enormous

Sometimes the display of what isn’t yet true but you want to make true is often met with criticism from the people who know you. Sometimes they keep on spreading the old truth trying to convince people that you haven’t changed, simply to protect their favorite idolized version who they think you should be. (Such as modest, just like everyone else, still lovable, and nice.)

I remember at 14, I started to listen to heavy metal. At the age of 13, I started school in a baby pink baseball jacket and blue jeans, and a year later, I wanted a black leather fringe jacket, cowboy boots, and black stretch jeans, according to where my head was at. Not depressed, mind you, but over-blown with excitement upon discovery of the genius of the band Extreme. I wanted to declare it to the world I love love love this band and I’m not a hopeless nerd after all. (Phew!)

At the age of 43, I think some of my family and friends from 13 STILL believe that the “authentic me” is the girl in a pink baseball coat. I never liked myself then. I was wearing whatever was handed to me, and I didn’t really care what it all meant. What I thought of myself was “boring” and “a nerd”, in the most negative sense of the word. A goody-two-shoe. Scaredycat. I wasn’t fond of myself, because a person like myself likes bold, exciting, fun people.

Still, once I figured out I loved heavy rock, I couldn’t just expect to waltz back to school looking like I just walked off stage at the Marquee club in London. People would have been like “who the fuck do you think you are?” Therefore, I gradually changed how I dress, to avoid the sudden shock of going from baby pink to black overnight. I went unapologetically rock ONLY AFTER I changed schools at 16. I was full-blown rock n’ roll, after the people to whom it was but a childish phase had already toned it down.

New crowd, new public persona

It is easier to be your true, authentic persona when you enter a new crowd of people who haven’t got a preconception about who you are or were or who you were supposed to be. Then, they can choose not to like you or to like you as they feel fit. You’ll pick the ones who get it.

When people who think they know you see your new persona, they may feel like “they’ve lost you” or “you’re faking it”. They have an opinion, an idea of who you are, a vos. (Ego being Latin for I, and “vos” being Latin for you.) Therefore, when you try and alter their idea of who YOU are, they may fight it more than what they would fight when you try and change their idea of who THEY are.

A lot of the time, a person can link the vos they have for another person into their own ego, their own idea of who they are. Therefore their ego is linked to their vos of you. When you try and change the way the world perceives you, you are also forcing them to change the way they view themselves. This is PARTICULARLY true for our parents and perhaps grandparents. Much, much more so than other people. The last people to get to know the real you are probably your own parents if they ever will.

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