Does your ego drive your ideas?

Has someone ever said to you “just put that thought in your parking lot?” i.e. great idea, we'll get back to it later when there's more time, money, resources etc.

Or perhaps you might have had someone say to you “you’re such a great visionary” i.e. love the ideas, now how’re we going to do it?

Well I’ve heard it. Sometimes I have so many thoughts running through my head that my mental roadways start to get full of traffic jams. In those instances no “cars” get to move forward because everyone is stuck. I just need some parking lots.

Last month was a particularly traffic jammy type month. I think maybe because it was the start of a new year so I was so eager to jump ahead and get going with plans, new yoga workshop ideas, connections I wanted to make, and interesting people I hoped to meet.

Yet, by the end of the month I had little to show for it, except for a pair of baggy eyes, and an overbooked calendar.

My head was ready to explode.

In yoga and other energy healing modalities, they might say I wasn’t fully “grounded”. I was in my upper chakras of sight/vision and not my lower ones of manifestation, feeling, and creation. I wasn’t fully in my body, I was in my mind, living in the realm of ideas, and not really getting anywhere, just getting overwhelmed.

I had ODed on ideas.

I was paralyzed and didn’t know which way to go because everything seemed so interesting and important. I was in a major mental traffic jam.

Or if each idea/plan/vision were represented by a post-it note, I had no board to post them on. My mind was cluttered with beautiful, multi-coloured stickies, but no wall to stick them to!

With the help of a very dear healer of mine, we spent some time mind-mapping out all of my mental post-its, dumping them onto a table, noticing which were taking up lots of my energy, which I wished would take up more of my energy, what I could park/throw away, and highlighted what I needed to move forward.


Aside from helping me prioritize, this visually showed me something even more interesting…my ego!

My ego was at fault for creating this post-it insanity or this mental car pill up.

I had never really thought about it this way, but yes, all my ideas and eagerness to pursue them right now, was simply my ego taking over (not to be confused with being egotistical, or self-centered).

So I spent some time contemplating this ego.

What was happening in this state of un-groundedness, was I was allowing my ego to orchestrate the symphony of post-its up there. He/she/it was telling me “I want to do it all, I can do it all, I think everything is interesting and worth pursuing, do it…NOW!”.

The problem was, nowhere was my ego telling me what to do first or where to start, or reminding me that I had choice. Ego was not providing me with a bulletin board for support.

So I called in my good friends humility and patience. They helped me sort things out.

I realized that yes, while I find so many ideas interesting and often want to pursue them all, I need to be gentle and not expect my physical self to be able to keep up or make all the ideas into reality.

As soon as I saw it was my ego trying to make me do all of these things, it changed how I approached my list. Even though it wasn’t coming from a place of self-centeredness, it still meant that some inner part of me felt I needed to accomplish it all – that’s ego.

So I created a sort of separation from the ideas, allowed myself to step back, and to say, “who is really driving this urge to get it done? Who is telling me it’s all important?”

And so from now on, I hope to pause before getting overwhelmed with pursuing intriguing ideas and plans, take a look at the mental post-its and remember to always call in patience and humility for help.

What are the post-its that are floating in your head? How might you see them differently if you were to ask yourself “where are these coming from?” and “Who says I need to do them?”

What's your shadow side?

What’s your shadow side?

Can you think of someone who has really gotten under your skin lately and you don’t know why? Someone who has set you off for no logical reason?

Lately, I’ve been reflecting a lot about what my emotional triggers are and with who they come out. It all started because I went to a yoga class recently where my teacher talked about a thing called our “shadow side”.

Our shadow side or sides are the deep dark parts of ourselves, which we reject or try to ignore. Some examples might be our inability for self-expression, a lack of confidence, discomfort with our sexuality, a need for control, perfectionism, etc. etc. We judge ourselves for these qualities and deny them these within our identity. When this happens they get taken away from the spotlight of our consciousness.

But what happens when they get put back into the spotlight?

Without knowing it, we come face to face with our shadow sides more often than not because other people are true reflections of them.

What happens when someone who hates the perfectionist within, meets another perfectionist?

What happens when our shadow sides emerge out of the dark in our loved ones, our friends, our coworkers, or strangers? What emotions arise?

I, for example, have noticed that in the past I would get intensely frustrated and annoyed at people who were soft spoken or overly timid. I would look at them, and would feel my anger and irritation rising in my body. I almost couldn’t stand being around them. I didn’t have patience to deal with their shyness. Why couldn’t they just speak up? Why couldn’t they just say what was on their mind? Why didn’t they have the confidence to stand up for themselves?

Well, I now look back and realize, that’s exactly what I was working through at the time. That was my one of my shadows – my hesitation to speak my mind. I rejected the part of me that was trepidatious about being loud and more self-expressive. And so when it was reflected back to me in someone else, I rejected it in them too.

Another thought is that sometimes these are patterns that we learn from our family by osmosis. So when we lash out a parent or sibling (which happens more than any other people we know), perhaps it is because they are doing exactly what we refuse to accept about ourselves. Maybe we see them working too hard to please others and this annoys us. Maybe they don’t speak their mind in an argument, maybe have a strong work ethic and get stressed easily and this triggers us.

Whatever it is, it’s interesting to see what patterns are there, recognize them, and start to wonder, what is my reaction and why am I having it? And what do I want to do about it? Is there an alternative?

We have the power to change those reactions when we realize underneath, it’s just judgment about ourselves. Can we become compassionate toward them and therefore toward our own shadows?

Today, I notice that my shadows have changed, but they are still there and they come up in the workplace, in friendships, and even in intimate relationships.

I guess my resolution is to now come at it with a sense of curiosity and see it as an opportunity to reflect on myself. I’m interested to know, where is this coming from? WHY am I so annoyed at this person? And can I connect it back to something that I am refusing to accept about my current identity?

After all, I’ve gone from a child who was shy, soft spoken, and timid, to someone who is now writing a personal blog and speaking in front of others as a yoga teacher! And most importantly, these quiet qualities in orders no longer trigger me. Hope that’s inspiration enough ☺