wear yourself lightly

Too much me, me, me and you can’t see clearly. Too little and you lose an essential source of motivation.

Hey all, it’s been a while. A few updates from my world before we jump into this week’s post:

🦍 Check out our new website for Still Ape
🐺 Listen to my guest spot on The One You Feed
✨ Hear me speak alongside Mingyur Rinpoche, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Richie Davidson, Tara Brach and more at Flourish (Mar 17th - 21st, free + online)
⚙️ Read a review of Reclaim Your Mind from the IEEE (scroll down)
🎨 Meditate in the Gallery IRL with me at Modern Fuel in Kingston this Friday

Now you’re all caught up! -JV

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Ego is a word that people tend to see as a negative thing. If someone’s considered egotistical, that’s not exactly a compliment, right? But the reality is that ego is also a very powerful source of motivation. It’s not a mistake to invest your ego into a project, a relationship, even a child, as long as you don’t take it too far.

Spiritual teachers talk about not identifying with your experience, which I know is a powerful skill. At the same time, identifying with your experience can also be a kind of wellspring of energy and drive. Sometimes I need some of that fire to actually show up for the things that matter.

This feels like an essential clarification for anyone interested in being grounded yet also taking action in the world. Too much ego can get in the way of engaging mindfully with the world, but abandoning it can make it harder to show up fully for the people and projects in your life.

It’s a tightrope walk. Too much me, me, me and you can’t see clearly. Too little and you lose an essential source of motivation. A healthy relationship with your ego can help you sidestep obsessive self-reverence without losing your energy for skillful action.

Let’s walk through three examples:

1. Startup Founders

A founder has to be ego-invested in their work, because otherwise a startup would be an absolutely crazy thing to do. The hours, the risk, the rejection, you need to believe that what you’re building matters, and honestly, you need to believe that you matter to the people you’re building for.

At the same time, founders often struggle to hit the balance point. Being invested enough to be highly motivated, but not so invested that you’re unable to see clearly, unable to trust others, unable to expand and share the responsibility. Unable to see the flaws with your approach and pivot, unable to take feedback, unable to give your team the space and time to do their best work.

I’ve watched founders and their startups self-destruct from a rigor-mortis-death-grip on ego. I’ve also witnessed founders get so detached that the fire went out. The path between is narrow, and founders who walk it are as rare as successful startups.

2. Creative Teams

Creative work is another place this pattern shows up. In every band I’ve played in and on every design team I’ve worked with, I see the same thing: you get motivated if you take pride in what you create.

But if the album you’re recording or the design you’re shipping becomes the be-all and end-all of who you are, if you stake your self-worth on it, you get sticky and temperamental. You lose the ability to collaborate openly or question your own assumptions.

This is one of the reasons I’ve fallen in love with research-driven design. We study analytics and invite members of our audience into the process to co-design and check our ideas. This brings everyone to a level footing. It becomes less about who’s got the coolest idea and more about what’s actually resonating with people.

Yet even with a source of external input, it is still possible to be so ego-identified with the work that we ignore powerful insights to defend our own preferences. The most effective collaborators are the ones who’ve found that tightrope—caring deeply about the work without becoming unable to hear the feedback.

3. Parents

A child is not a project, but parenting just might be an even more powerful example.

We obviously want parents to be ego-invested in their children. We want kids to be raised by parents who were physically and emotionally present. Parents who were motivated to do what’s right for their kids. It’s hard to deny that seeing your kid as a part of yourself is a huge part of where that motivation comes from.

It’s on you to make sure they’re developing skills, meeting challenges, growing up and maturing in a healthy way. But if you’re overly ego-invested in your child, all kinds of strange, problematic patterns can arise. You overemphasize their achievement and downplay their challenges because you attach them to your own self-worth.

Over-identified parents often approach their kids in ways that line up with with their own wounds rather than their child’s natural curiosities.

If I were to aggressively push my son into music, that would be a clear sign that I’m getting a little too ego-invested. Music is something I love, something I’ve always wanted to do more of, and at times in my life I’ve definitely felt frustrated by my lack of worldly progress with it. If I channel all of that into my son until he’s chasing ghosts, well, that’s my shit, not his.

At the same time, if I were to just disconnect completely and say I don’t care what he gets into, I’d miss so many opportunities to introduce him to the wider world and his own potential.

I’ve exposed him to a lot of music, but it’s clearly not a passion at this stage of his development. At the same time, I exposed him to chess a few years ago and saw a spark. I’m not very good at the game, but I’ve been dusting off my skills and trying to teach him over the past 3 years.

He’s gone from refusing, to curious, to resisting, to playing, to studying, and yesterday he went to a chess club and played against another kid for the first time.

Despite his love for the game, I had to thread a few needles to get him to go. I wouldn’t have been able to do it if I were completely detached. I showed up because I cared enough. When he refused to play and made a scene in front of everyone, the fact that I wasn’t too attached to how we were being perceived helped me take a gentle-but-firm approach and help him overcome his fear.

Many tell us we should abandon the ego completely, and find motivation in deeper ways. …Sink into the interdependent, impermanent ground of being, and allow *that* to help you get your startup funded and take your kids to practice.

Love the idea, but it feels pretty impractical when you’re trying to find the energy to show up for big responsibilities. Or even for simpler things: over-identifying with your physical appearance brings mental health concerns. But if there’s a lot on your plate, taking pride in your body can help you get to the gym.

There’s a lot of jargon in contemplative circles about whether there’s no self or a true self or a cosmic self or a noble self. I personally love thinking about a healthy ego as a loose sense of self. It’s a practical way to capture this balance point between too much ego and not enough.

You do want a sense of self. But it’s important that you hold it loosely. You want to see it clearly for what it is: an identity you wear. Just like your clothes, your ego isn’t who you are, but it isn’t useless either.

Maybe that’s the real practice: not killing the ego or inflating it, but learning to wear it lightly. Maintaining our relationships and passions without submerging into self-obsession. Enough investment to care deeply, enough awareness to notice when caring becomes clinging.