My Ego…
One of the hardest things to accept about myself has been my ego.
Over the years I have fought my ego constantly. When it was in charge, which was more often than not, I was a miserable person to work with. I couldn’t do anything wrong. When someone made a comment on my code that was anything less than good, I became very upset with the person.
I did everything I could to disprove their comment so I wouldn’t have to make any of the changes. I thought I was so good at my job.
Things came to a head with one project. The Project Manager asked me, “What’s going on? We all have the same goal here. We want to make a good product, right?”
That stopped me completely.
I sat back and thought about it. We all did have the same goal. We wanted to do our best. We wanted to make the client and users as happy as possible.
That’s when I realized I was making my coworkers miserable, and not just them, I was making myself miserable. My ego caused me to seeI saw everyone as an enemy and so I treated them as an enemy.
That wasn’t right. I should never have been treating my coworkers like that. So, I shifted my mindset.
Instead of looking at everyone as an enemy, I look at them as someone who can teach me. When I get a bad comment on a PR, I think about what I can learn about the person’s comment. When we disagree in meetings, I take a step back and ask myself if I can learn from their point.
I obviously don’t do this all the time, but it keeps everything in check. And it helped me to realize something else: it’s ok to have an ego. This can provide the drive for you to work hard, to push back when you know you’re right. But, you can’t let it control your actions to the point where you view everyone as an enemy.
What about you? Where is your ego holding you back? Are there people in your life you can learn from?
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