Who is your biggest enemy? Take a moment to ponder this question until a person emerges in front of your inner eye before reading on.

Your fiercest enemy is your ego. It is also the single most important obstacle that you have to overcome on your journey to reconnect to your inner genius potential. Today and in two weeks, let me explain the difference between your ego and your self, why taming your ego is so fundamentally important for reconnecting to your inner creativity, and the implications of this for business leaders in the creative economy.

What exactly is your ego?

Your ego is your false self. It is the fake image that you’re projecting toward other people, the role you’re playing, the social mask that you’re wearing. Your ego is very critical, always judging yourself and others. That’s why it is also always concerned about your reputation, and of what other people think of you. Your ego craves the approval of others, because it judges you and others by your achievements, titles, possessions, and money in the bank. Your ego is never satisfied and always wants to have more. This greed for more is grounded in the fear of losing power and control over others.

Ego is in all of us, but only a few master it because the majority of people don’t realize its negative, destructive nature. Your ego enslaves your true self if you don’t make a conscious effort to fight and overcome it. The first step to master your ego is to become aware of it, and to realize that your ego is not who you really are. Think about it: If you were supposed to wear a mask, then probably you would have been created with one, true to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s observation: “If God had wanted me otherwise, he would have created me otherwise.”

The problems of ego-centeredness

When you live under the dictatorship of your ego, sooner or later there will come the day when other people will see your mask, will notice that you’re just playing a role. Abraham Lincoln reminds us: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” Once people realize that you’re only playing a role and have less to offer than you pretend to have, they will abandon you. Ego-based power is only temporary and based on fear, so your influence and control ceases with your title, money, and position. Then, you may ponder Erich Fromm’s question: “If I am what I have and if I lose what I have, who then am I?” The main problem with giving in to the demands of your ego, however, is that it prevents you from realizing your full potential by closing down the pathway to your inner genius and your original source.

Why is an overinflated ego so negative for creativity?

When your thoughts are controlled by your ego, you constantly criticize and judge yourself and other people, including the ideas of others and yourself. Your mind is closed and non-receptive. You’ve shut off the access to your subconscious mind and — in particular — to what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious, where game-changing ideas and breakthrough ideas reside. Most creative geniuses related that they passively received a breakthrough idea from the depth of their subconscious in a “Eureka!” moment when their conscious mind was not actively working on the issue. But do you think that you can receive breakthrough ideas while your thoughts are concerned with your reputation, your power, on keeping control, on having more things? Do you think you are open and receptive when you’re criticizing anything and anyone?

“We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own or to other people’s models, learn to be ourselves, and allow our natural channel to open,” notes Shakti Gawain. You will only be able to realize your full creative potential if you tame your ego and start being true to your real self. This is easier said than done: “To conquer oneself is a greater task than conquering others,” noted Lord Buddha in this context.

How can you start taking control over your ego?

In his excellent book The Power of Intention, Wayne Dyer offers a number of suggestions on how to free yourself from the destructive, limiting power of your ego:

• First of all, love and respect yourself and every other being.

• Stop being offended by others and by everything that doesn’t work out to your liking.

• Let go of your need to win. Let go of your need to be right by asking yourself: “Do I want to be right or be happy?”

• Let go of your need to be superior to others, by realizing that we are living in a cooperative world full of abundance rather than in a competitive world characterized by scarcity.

• Let go of your need to have more, more, and more by realizing that the way to gaining happiness is related to providing service to others in an area that we enjoy doing.

• Let go of identifying yourself on the basis of your achievements.

• Let go of your reputation and focus on refining your character instead.

• And most importantly, let go of your need to be so important, and to take yourself so seriously all the time.

Outlook: “Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them,” noted Richard Buckminster Fuller. In two weeks, we will discuss what it means to be yourself, why resting in yourself is so important to produce outstanding creative work, and why fostering individuality is the key to unlocking the dormant creative potential of Asian businesses.

© Dr. Detlef Reis 2011. This article was published in parallel in the Bangkok Post under the same title on 26 May 2011.