Are You in Control of your Life?
The Ego knows no lack or inequality other than what it has been taught, or which information you fill your subconscious container with.
Have you ever had a moment where everything you thought you were… just slipped?
Maybe it was after losing a job. A breakup. A diagnosis.
Maybe it was something subtle — like realizing you weren’t excited by your own success.
I remember staring at myself in the mirror once, title in hand, recognitions on the wall… and still feeling hollow.
Who am I when I’m not performing?
Who am I when no one’s watching?
We all carry a story about who we think we are. But what happens when that story starts to crack?
For me, the unraveling came in waves.
I quit my C-suite corporate job. Sold everything I owned and moved across the world to start a school that felt like my soul’s calling.
And then I met someone special, someone I was no longer looking for, and my dream unraveled again. Once more, I moved, this time to the other side of the world. A new beginning, again.
This time, I had no title. No plan. No certainty. Just me — raw, uncertain, and face to face with the parts I had mistaken for my identity.
It’s in these moments that the ego panics.
It tightens its grip. Tries to rebuild the story. Cling to anything that feels solid.
It craves shape, definition, safety. It wants to know who we are and where we’re headed.
When life reshuffles the pieces, the ego scrambles to hold the old picture together. We confuse our story with our Self. We confuse form with essence.
And if we don’t see it for what it is, we start believing we are the roles, the successes, the labels. But what if the ego wasn’t the enemy — just a misunderstood part of us trying to help?
When I look back, I can see how desperately I wanted something solid to hold onto — a role, a purpose, a clear path that made sense. I had left everything behind, moved across the world, and poured my energy into building a dream. I thought if I followed the plan — worked really hard, owned my business, lived the vision — I would finally feel whole.
But beneath the surface, I was still performing. Not for an audience, but for an identity I didn’t know I was clinging to.
It turns out, the identity I was performing wasn’t born from truth — it was built from stories I had unconsciously absorbed since childhood. Stories that equated success with achievement, worth with external validation, safety with control.
The ego, in its cleverness, had built a “me” out of what I had, what I did, what I had survived. Titles, dreams, roles, even failures — all woven together into a narrative that seemed so convincing… until it cracked.
This is the paradoxical nature of the ego: it was never meant to be a villain — only a tool. A way for consciousness to experience form. A helpful narrator, not the author of our story.
When we forget that, the ego starts collecting identities like armor: our job title, our looks, our successes, our wounds. But everything the ego builds its identity on is temporary. Titles shift. Roles dissolve. Even our beliefs evolve. And when those things fall away, so does the story.
That’s where mindfulness comes in — not to destroy the ego, but to bring it into balance. To recognize when it’s narrating our worth based on someone else’s rules. To pause and ask:
Is this who I really am — or just who I learned to be?
The ego is loudest when it’s filtering through a fearful belief. Sometimes it hides in self-doubt. In the urge to compare. In the fear of being invisible. Or disguised as wisdom.
But underneath every fear is a desire to belong, to feel safe, to be seen. When we meet the ego with presence — not shame — we begin to unravel the conditioning that kept us performing.
We stop confusing performance with purpose.
And in that pause, something powerful happens: we remember we are not our roles. Not our thoughts. Not our labels.
We are the awareness beneath them.
That’s where freedom lives — not in fighting the ego, but in seeing through it. Not in perfection, but in presence. Not in clinging to who we’ve been told we are… but in choosing who we get to become.
Want to keep exploring?
Watch the full episode:
If you’re new here, welcome! This is part of the Emotional Wellbeing Series, where we learn how to build a relationship to ourselves to live more consciously. So far, we’ve been exploring the foundations of emotional intelligence — and now, we’re diving into the next layer of self-awareness, mindfulness.
👉 Whenever you are ready, you can start from the beginning here.
How do you typically respond when your sense of control or certainty is challenged? What fears or feelings would surface if your roles, titles, or achievements were to fall away? And how might the protective part of you — the one trying to manage everything — actually be keeping you from the connection you long for?