Is your ego big enough?

You come down with something bad and you’re sent to bed for a few days with a warm drink and a painkiller or six. After some time you begin to feel better, and you thank your biological immune system for its service healing you, whilst also scolding it for not protecting you in the first place. You likely wish you had a stronger immune system to protect you from incoming viruses and flus.

It came as a surprise to me to find out that we actually have a psychological immune system too, and it serves us in a similar way to our biological immune system. Walter Mischel explains that this system allows us to ‘see ourselves as having more positive and fewer negative qualities than most of our peers’. It’s function is to protect us from chronic stress and dealing with terrible news, and it’s reasonable to extend this and say it helps us cope with our friends and peers when we receive negative and upsetting feedback. Our psychological immune system allows us to take in negative views, and the stronger our system is, overcome them. Think about the millions of people that despise Kanye West and vocalise this to him regularly. Were it not for his strong (ego) psychological immune system, he would probably have stopped making music a long time ago. Whether that’s a good or bad thing is up for you to decide…

In a study of over 800,000 high school seniors, Myers found that ‘compared to our average peer, most of us fancy ourselves as more intelligent, better looking, less prejudiced, more ethical, healthier, and likely to live longer’! We’ve all got egos, some are bigger and some are smaller. Taylor demonstrated that ‘high self-enhancers (big egos) have lower biological stress levels’. In contrast: ‘the realists who perceive themselves more accurately experience lower self-esteem and more depression, and are generally less mentally and physically healthy’.

I conjecture that having a big (ish) ego is an essential tool for effectively dealing with criticism (‘haters’, if you’re a hip-hop artist?). This ability is a fundamental element of success.

“If you accept the expectations of others, especially negative ones, then you never will change the outcome”

- Michael Jordan