My Ego Prevented Me From Embracing the Ego of Greatness
Big egos used to bother me. Or was it people with big egos who used to bother me. Arrogance disguised as confidence was off-putting. It seemed to go against everything that I was taught from an early age. We before me. Be a gracious loser and a gracious winner. Sportsmanship. Act like you’ve been there before. Be respectful of others. Don’t draw attention to yourself. For a long time I wanted to and tried to believe that those were the ways.
As much as I couldn’t stand braggadocious behavior I’ve been accused many times of having a big ego. I don’t know what the formal or scientific definition of ego is but everyone who accused me of having a big one was correct. My smug, dismissive, unimpressed, nonplussed looks, gestures, and words came from my big ego. And it upset people in my personal and professional life. Perhaps I was just too cold or too stone and not demonstrative enough during times when people needed affirmation. Which seems to be all the time now. It’s fun to sit around and shit on everything and everyone. It makes us feel like we’re greater than everything and everyone. For some folks not being impressed by anything seems to be the default and permanent state of being. Like it’s a lifestyle.
It takes a lot to give it up, to clap, to acknowledge that someone did it greater than you could ever have or be greater than you could ever be. When I read, hear, see, or watch something that blows me away, that gives me pause, I am humbled. I don’t even know if I’m using that word correctly anymore. But yeah I feel like, damn, why am I even going to attempt to do this thing when this person is so much better at it than me? That’s my ego talking too. It’s hurt. It shrunk. I’m conceding to the greatness. One day I want someone to feel that way about something I created.
Only if my ego would let me. I’ve had several conversations about ego lately with different sets of people. My belief now is that you need a great ego. You need arrogance. It’s the fuel to be great. And when we see other people express it, it makes us uncomfortable. As soon as someone claims to be great, acts like they’re great, thinks like they’re great, we’re ready to shoot our arrows of insecurity through their armor. Sometimes it feels like we enjoy tearing down more than we enjoy building up. Why does someone else’s confidence bother us so much? How does Kanye’s Tweets about himself affect my life? Don’t we want our heroes and icons to be audacious? Why do we have this need to be able to relate to the greats? Is it so that we don’t feel as bad about our lack of comparative greatness? Why do we want our superstar athletes who are the best at what they do, some who are the best to ever do it, to act humble? I know a lot of cocky folks who aren’t good at anything. Can you imagine if you were considered to be one of the greatest to do whatever it is that you do? How would you carry yourself?
Those who create real change, like the type of change that affect culture, they have massive egos. I’m convinced. I don’t have the stats and studies to back it up. Zuckerberg, Miles, Jobs, Tyson, Jordan, Prince, Musk, Ali, Branson, and every rapper you’ve ever quoted. Every startupreneur claims to be changing the world or revolutionizing an industry. Self-appointed visionaries and trailblazers. And let’s get this out of the way, claiming to be humble, especially on social media, is not humble, it’s arrogant. The humble brag is worse than outright bragging. At least the person proclaiming to be great has the guts to let it hang instead of the coward bragger who does something so that others will tell them they’re great. When you’re loud and cocky they will hate. But history will be kind to you. The longer you stay with it. The older you get. The people will look back and praise you for the same thing they hated on. Especially sports. Look at Ali, Deion, and we’re all seeing it with Kobe now.
I don’t want to bring anyone down to my level. I can proclaim that someone is great. Watching a cocky celebrity who is great at what they do fall apart doesn’t bring me any of their greatness. It’s not like there’s a greatness piñata and when they crack we can scramble to grab some. When Ronda Roussey got destroyed people were overjoyed, felt that she needed to be humbled since she was acting too cocky. Too cocky? One of the most dominating MMA fighters ever. The best female fighter of all time. The biggest star of MMA. And we wanted her to act like Mother Theresa. Not going to get into the gender thing here but clearly we have a bigger issue with women expressing their greatness than we do with men. Hi Serena.
Keep your head down, focus on the work, and the attention will come. I just want the work to speak for itself. We want to believe that. And maybe in other cultures that works. But not here in America. Especially not in a big, crowded, bursting with talent city like New York. We tell others to be humble for our own sense of comfort. Greatness is uncomfortable. It’s abrasive. It’s loud. It’s disruptive. It’s not quiet, it’s not sitting in the corner, it’s not well-behaved. It’s polarizing. You either hate it or love it. It forces you to feel something.
Like I said, I didn’t always think this way. I used to hate Mayweather. Then I started thinking about why I hated him. And why I hated other brash people. And like so many things it was due to my own insecurities. If I could put down other people and their work so easily why was someone who was actually great at something proclaiming that they were great bother me so much? I don’t blame social media for all of society’s ills. It’s just enhanced a lot of our own personal weaknesses. And it encourages us to judge others. Liking via tapping a screen or clicking a mouse is a gesture rooted in judgement. But that’s another topic for another day. Now if someone is claiming to be great and their work truly sucks, well, then it is our duty to call them out on it. Who knows, maybe it will make them greater? Or perhaps we need to take a second and think about why we think their work sucks. Cause maybe it’s us. Not them.
Which of course is a little egotistical.
