Carl Jung: Develop a Powerful Ego
What Modern Culture Gets Wrong
Modern culture has come to regard the Ego as evil. Just some impediment on the path to Enlightenment. You hear it these phrases all the time. My Ego got in the way. He has a massive Ego. The search for an Ego Death.
But where have these notions left us (especially our youth)?
Stagnant, indecisive, insecure, anxious, depressed. The majority of people today don’t suffer from overdeveloped Egos, but underdeveloped Egos. And even worse, this modern philosophy has us condemning our own self confidence, killing our own desire to improve. Confidence has become arrogance and ambition has become oppressive.
This modern philosophy is completely counterproductive.
Why?
Because it’s fundamentally misguided. It completely misrepresents the Ego.
The Ego, as Jung defined, is merely the conscious aspect of the self. In other words, the Ego is all you think and feel and experience. It controls your self-perceptions, your actions, your character, guiding your journey through life. But most importantly, the Ego mediates your unconscious and the world. How you experience and how you feel, determining the quality of your life.
So how did its true definition get corrupted?
Because many people with large Egos posses unhealthy Egos, a self-concept that exceeds the individual’s capabilities and character. Because these bombastic examples are so loud and obnoxious, a big Ego became synonymous with an unhealthy Ego. And just like an obese body, our prescription for a bloated Ego was to shrink it.
We extrapolated that one-size-fits-all approach to the Ego as a whole. But most of our Egos are weak and underfed. Would you recommend weight loss to someone starving? Hell no. They should be strengthened and nourished!
Carl Jung suggested that we should instead focus on developing a healthy Ego. And modern people are searching for this cultivation. Just ask yourself, what fictional characters do you enjoy? What stories dominate the culture? Just think of the popularity of the Marvel heroes or the Ryan Gosling antiheroes, all characters with massive Egos.
The awe response is our unconscious’s desire to imitate. Just as you get inspired to work out watching Rocky, there is something within you shouting at you to build your Ego when you see a personality you admire.
So what should we strive for? What makes a healthy Ego?
Like building muscle, we should work to build MASSIVE Egos. So we have the confidence to pursue our own interests, to defend ourselves and people we love, to experience the world in the way we choose. Ones that are functional, ones that think of ourselves neither too highly or too lowly.
An accurate representation of the self, with a healthy Ego, is absolutely crucial to self development, because you need an honest assessment to know what you should improve. To know your strengths and weaknesses to have a starting point. To have the courage and foresight to aim for higher goals. And to have discipline and the ambition to actually commit to a pathway and change your bad ways and aspire toward something great.
We should abandon these notions keeping us weak and afraid. Instead, we should chase a bigger Ego to become more virtuous, more admirable, stronger, smarter, and create the life we most want. And hopefully, we ourselves can evoke that awe response in someone else an inspire that upward spiral.
I’ll be posting ways to develop this healthy Ego. Subscribe for more.
Thanks.