How do you change someone else's ego?

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Ego is a tricky pickle. It’s best thought of as a set of patterned responses, on a different level than base perception. Sure, if you see something that looks like a chair, you’re going to think it’s a chair, that’s not ego.

Ego is seeing a pattern of behavior in someone else and automatically making a judgment as to their character. And then the defensive mechanism that will cause you to believe that the judgment wasn’t actually a judgment even though it was. And then the resulting fragility that comes from not being willing to examine this behavior and doing literally anything to just shut down anyone talking about it.

You see, ego isn’t just one response to one thing, it’s a whole host of cascading perceptions, reactions, and eventual outcomes. Ego is why your fifth relationship fails for the same reason your first did.

So how is ego changed? Not easily. Essentially, the person has to get to the root of the pattern and realize that they were wrong about it. In many cases, the person just isn’t capable of thinking that deeply. A friend of mine recently had an ego reaction around his spouse trying to get him to consider the concept of love languages, which triggered his instinctive beliefs around women and the things they believe. It’s all very predictable, very silly, and a little maddening. After spending a little bit of time fighting it I just stopped talking to him for a few days.

It’s just not worth trying in most cases honestly. The person just isn’t going to be capable of seeing their own ego. The person whose ego you can best affect is yours. If you can change your thoughts, you can change your world. So it’s worth it, just difficult. Just think more deeply and harder than you’ve ever thought before about why you think the way you do. Simple right? Simple things aren’t easy, and easy things aren’t simple. Best of luck.