Confronting Your Ego: Why Corporate Is So Hard to Leave

I was listening to Pema Chödrön's "Unstuck". And she says, “I remember well when I was not glad to be alive. When the box I was in was so small. Now I'm glad to be alive and to experience. The nice and the not so nice,” and in that moment, I am suddenly transported back, and I remember the absolute pain that I was in.

How much I just hated my everyday. And when I look back now, I can literally see the box that I was trying so hard to keep myself in.

Trying to avoid what was outside of that box. Because I didn't know what was outside of that box. I didn't know what would happen outside of that box.

The uncertainty was choking me. I didn't have all the answers, and I wasn't going to make a move until I did. After all, isn't that the "rule": no changes until you have that next thing lined up? It came down to not trusting myself. Not trusting that I could get through something I couldn't yet see. And the maddening part is that I had gotten through. I'd survived so many things by then, and I wasn't conscious of any of it. The blinders were on, and the evidence was right there in front of me. What I remember is the pain. How much of it there was. A visceral memory that still lands in my body when I go back to it. And so I stayed.

I Remember The Pain Well

That pain was not the kind you could bandage.

How painful it was, and I don't mean ouch, like I cut myself, but just this deep sort of restlessness and ache.

I just wanted to be left alone. But it was relentless. At my absolute worst, I was seeing my therapist three times a week. She was talking me off of ledges. I remember the dark period of nihilism, and describing life as nothing more than just a series of milestones, and you're just waiting to die. I was just biding my time in between until it was over.

It was bleak. An internal deadness. And the thing that made it worse was that I couldn't accept it. What was wrong with me that I couldn't make peace with it?

I remember distinctly thinking, “How can I find that little nugget of hope or spark inside me and snuff it the fuck out?”  The spark was the problem. The knowing that something more existed. The gap between what I could feel and what I couldn't reach. If I could kill the part of me that wanted more, the suffering would stop.

Everybody else figured out how to be happy in the box. Why couldn't I?

The Corporate System Reinforces Ego

The source of my pain was the ego. My mindset was driven by it. I know that now.

Let me tell you that ego is a fighter and a force to be reckoned with.

It will be your greatest opponent because that bitch wants to survive.

And she will claw, and she will fight, and then she will switch it up and talk sweetly to you. And do whatever she needs to do… to make sure that she sees another day.

Because that's her only job, to see another day. Her survival is her only objective. Your compliance is how she does it. And she's going to make damn sure she does it, and she doesn't give a shit what she says or does to you to get you there.

But she'll do it, and she doesn't feel bad about it. And you've got to respect that level of survival instinct.

She'll tell you all the things she needs to say to make sure that she survives and doesn't care what it does to you. It took me a long time to recognize this.

But listen, once you see it, once you see ego, once you start to recognize ego, she's not so scary.

She gets a little smaller. You get a little bigger; a little braver.

And you can start to get to the other side.

If you're ready to face her down, book a call to learn if working together makes sense.