My Ego and Men

The speaker reflects on their relationships with women and men, noting that they have an easier time connecting with women. They believe this may be related to their father and the need to compete with him. They discuss feeling uncomfortable in social and work situations, which triggers a fight or flight response. The flight response leads them to withdraw and not be their authentic self, while the fight response causes them to challenge authority. They recognize that both responses are unhealthy. The speaker believes that becoming more comfortable with their true self will help them navigate challenging situations. They suggest acknowledging the discomfort, reminding themselves of their worthiness, and participating in conversations without the need to fight or withdraw. The goal is to grow from feeling nervous and trying to fit in to being authentic and relaxed. I find that throughout my life, I haven't actually, well my adult life at least, I haven't actually had too many problems with women. I tend to naturally get on with women and have an affinity with women, whereas with men who aren't my other family members or aren't my friends, I tend to probably have more difficulties. I've had some extraordinary relationships with men, but also sometimes have difficulty, certainly never been just one of the boys. I think it probably relates back to my father and sort of dealing with him as a child and also perhaps even competing with him to a certain extent. So I find that I've never truly understood this in myself until this insight and understanding how the ego works. When I'm in a situation with others, I say men, but it can be with any others, and typically this is in a work context, because that's the context where you often get put in the trickiest social situations, or work situations, and you know, so I'll feel myself be uncomfortable in the situation, which probably reflects an ego message of, I'm not worthy, I have to prove myself, I've got to compete, and so there's that emotion I suppose of feeling threatened, and feeling uncomfortable. And so I typically respond to that in either one of two ways, which is just classic fight or flight response. So my flight response, so I remember in my first couple of years as a junior I had to be at these big dinners with partners and whatever else, and I would have a flight response, I'd kind of go into myself and not really be authentically me, not be comfortable, be kind of shy, and that's really, you've got your ego telling you you're not worthy, so you've got that danger, even though there shouldn't be any danger. And then you've got the fight or flight response, and the flight response is to, you know, just withdraw into yourself. Occasionally I'll have the fight response, where I'll want to challenge authority, or dominate a conversation, or that kind of thing, and both are unhealthy, so I suppose there's two levels to this. The first one is you shouldn't feel uncomfortable in the first place. I think once you come into your true authenticity, and this is something that will happen over years and years, but once you come into your true authenticity, you'll be a lot more comfortable in other challenging situations. The range of situations that you feel at ease with will probably grow, so you'd hope that if you're comfortable in your authenticity and who you are, that that range, that comfort zone will probably expand, but let's say there's always going to be some situations where you might have that initial uncomfortableness, and you just can't help it because the ego, that voice is always with you, so you're going to feel uncomfortable at times, and I think, you know, you've just got to be aware of that emotion. Turn in your feelings, say, I don't feel uncomfortable, but then fight and say, this is silly, I'm an intelligent, mature, sensitive guy, it doesn't matter what the circumstance is, this is human beings involved, I'm worthy to be sitting at the table, I'm participating and sharing my thoughts and feelings and experiences, and once you tell yourself that, you can just relax and ease into the conversation, not with any agenda of fight or flight, but just to participate and to appreciate and enjoy the company of those around you. So that's the challenge, how we grow from being sort of nervous, 23 year old sitting at a table with people in expensive suits and trying to fit in, to just this authentic guy, ego will still be there, you'll hear that voice, you'll be a bit uncomfortable, and then just relaxing into it and responding authentically, not in a fight or flight mode.