How does ego affect your everyday decisions and actions?

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I just let ego do what it wants to do. If it wants to do something silly or stupid, I’ll just do it. Inevitably I find out later that that was the right choice. Normally my ego doesn’t do ‘stupid’ things. But when it wants something, I listen.

My ego is like a little four year old child that, if you just ask it what it wants, it would say stuff like, “more Halloween candy!” I can safely ignore that crap. Even my ego knows, when you ask it why it wants endless candy, that the desire is stupid. But that doesn’t stop it from wanting it. If it wants it bad enough to short-circuit my longer-term planning centers, I’ll listen to it. Nothing my ego wants is ever too deleterious to planning.

Some people’s egos drive them to destroy months or weeks or years of planning. They’ll spend years building up a nest egg and then blow it all in 6 months on the stock market. Mine does not do this.

I’ve come to understand that catering to my ego is what we think of when we say “therapeutic.” When I am sick, I’ll turn my super-ego off and just go out to eat wherever I feel like, and just listen to my body and let that run my existence for awhile.

I have a girlfriend, and sometimes spending time with her is stressful. I want to drink to alleviate the stress. So I go to the bar. Drinking beer and a shot or two lets my ego ‘run’ my mind for awhile. The rest of my brain doesn’t shut off, it just recedes into the background and watches. A lot of times I’ll come to interesting insights while I’m at the bar feeding my ego.