Pausing the Ego’s Chatter

Francisco Flores
Nov 1 · 3 min read

The ego crushes our will to self-expression

Photo by Jasper van der Meij on Unsplash

“But my best writing, by far, started when I started taking Klonopin.” — James Altucher

In a very brave essay, James Altucher says that the drug Klonopin, to which he is addicted, helps him control his anxiety and produce his best writing. Addiction is a pretty steep price to pay even for your best writing and I wish him the best in his battle against it.

The part that resonates the most with me, though, is how anxiety trips us when expressing ourselves. The ego tries to cover our insecurities and the parts of ourselves that we feel ashamed and repulsed by. The ego also wants us to focus on the potential results of our writing, rather than focusing on just writing. As a result, our writing is stilted.

I feel myself pulling in constantly as I write. Part of the purpose of this blog is to exercise writing freely and without regard for the consequences, and do it in a public space. Writing without regard for the consequences in my bedroom on a piece of paper that I’ll burn is easy. What’s difficult is to quiet down the ego or disregard what it says when I’m writing something meant to be published. “What will they say about me? Me!” I’m not going to take any drugs, but I really would like to experiment how it is to write freely.

They say you can’t create and judge at the same time. Julia Cameron prescribes writing three pages in the morning with abandon, before the gatekeeper awakes. Dorothea Brande and Phil Stutz have similar advice: write without judgement, let yourself go in the first drafts.

I believe we can train ourselves to reduce the anxiety drug-free by combining different techniques. One of them is to visualize the fear that writing evokes in us. It’s not easy — even just recognizing that we have such fear is a feat. Then, fearlessly run toward our fear and embrace it with all our might. Pema Chödrön recommends to lean into the uncomfortable feelings, such as fear of being inadequate or coming across as dumb and uninteresting.

Similarly, acknowledging the parts of ourselves that we have hidden since when we first become self conscious of the things others — e.g., our parents — disapprove of in us is difficult, not to mention embracing such parts. I have spent years piling parts of my self that I saw as unbecoming, parts that, in my view, would have kept me from belonging. What would it be like to write with my whole self and transparently? At this point, I can only imagine, but I think it would feel like what James feels — “free to take risks, to explore, to be more creative.” don’t think it’s even a question of the “quality” of his output. He’s happy with what he has put out in the world. He says what he needs to say.

Most importantly, I need to write and publish what I write. Tools are great, visualization is great, but they don’t matter at all if the result isn’t action.

What would you do if you could turn the volume of your ego down, if you could be half as fearful? The lie is that fear protects us. That’s true, but only up to a certain extent. Ten percent of our fear is what keeps us alive, the other 90% just keeps our lives small. Less fear doesn’t mean less security, it means more opportunity.

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