I have a feeling there is a word missing in our world, a spare word for EGO.
Once I was invited to an office with a note posted on the entrance door saying, “Leave your EGO here”. Should we do it?
True. Sometimes our EGO might be destructive, demanding, irritating, irrational, nasty. Especially for others.
But have you ever met an athlete without a fair dose of EGO? A General or a Prime Minister without it? Our EGO helps us create boundaries, compete, and win. Our EGO is at the core of our ambition to be more and achieve more. And what about the concept of dignity? What stands behind it? Same answer. Only this time we call it “HEALTY EGO,” as if the other one is “sick.”
To many professional coaches like me, the EGO (of a person) is a great driver and a source of dedication. There are different nuances of the EGO, and we lack a word to genuinely separate the commonly used interpretation of EGO from the HEALTHY EGO. Maybe it’s time to come up with a better narrative. Do you have any suggestions?
Notes:
EGO is one of the three constructs in Sigmund Freud’s structural model of the psyche.
Egoism is an ethical theory that treats self-interest as the foundation of morality.
Egocentrism is the inability to differentiate between self and other.
