Stop Your Ego and Exercise

Written by: Julia Karlstad, M.Ed., CSCS

Do you ever go through your day and wonder if your mind is ever going to stop?  Do you have conversations with yourself?  Ongoing conversations that spin from one thought to the next and each thought perpetuates to another and before you know it you are all worked up for no particular reason?  Or maybe now as a result of your constant “inner voice” conversation, you have more reasons, thoughts, and turmoil than you ever knew possible.  All of these thoughts encompass your ego, they are your hopes, dreams, habits, hobbies, aspirations, goals, battle wounds, emotions, and memories that all come from within.  Every single one of these things come together to make your personality, ego, and identity.

We all have that inner voice…it’s your “ego” talking to you, that voice that never stops thinking.  Pretty soon you’re looking at the world through a pair of glasses that have been spattered with different colors of paint.  You might still be able to look through the glasses, squinting your eyes and peering through the spattered paint, but your vision is blurry.  There’s no real clarity and the world through your lenses is not reality.  You see the true world has been distorted due to all of the different thoughts or splashes of paint that have successfully disrupted your peaceful world.

I write this blog because I’ve been confronted with my ego up close and personal over the past several months.  Every day thoughts would come in and try to disrupt my inner peace, it would go right to the heart of my soul and dig in until scars would appear.  My subconscious mind was out of control, going a mile a minute and leaving different splotches of paint on my crystal clear world.  As the world became more and more chaotic and no longer clear I finally had to take hold and rid myself of all the thoughts that were causing disruption.  Here is my secret to managing one’s ego?  The solution is comprised of two things: 1) Having a conscious awareness of your ego and 2) Regular exercise which creates a platform to recognize and control your thoughts. 

Just like you have to constantly be aware of your posture in order to have good posture, you also have to be aware of your inner voice in order to control your ego.  The thoughts will not go away, but if you can recognize the thoughts and then filter them appropriately you’ll be able to keep your vision free of smudges, free of paint splatter, and ultimately sustain a clear vision of reality and live a peaceful life.  So be aware of the thoughts that enter your mind and when those negative thoughts come into play, simply recognize that you had this thought and filter it away keeping in mind that it is just a thought; it isn’t reality.  Reality is what’s happening at this moment.  You see the only real place to live in this world is today, right here and now.  Yes, that is life…all of your thoughts that stem from the past and the what-ifs of the future must be directed in a positive manner in order to stay clear and uphold your character.  You see if you’re not careful you can allow your ego to pull you down so deep that you won’t even recognize who you are or what you’ve become.  Why, because it isn’t reality.   I’ve been able to put my mind at ease and endless thoughts to rest through conscious awareness and regular exercise.  I’m now able to recognize my ego and not let it control my thoughts and ultimately my personality and true identity!

Now that you’re aware of your ego, you’ll need to incorporate regular exercise to help keep those thoughts at bay and create an environment that manages stress, reduces anxiety and depression, and improves self-worth.  You see exercise can do all of those things for you.  Now there are several different fitness modalities that you can use to start managing your ego, but yoga is a great place to start.  In fact, the main focus of yoga is to maintain a relaxed and focused present state of mind inside your body.  Now sometimes you’ll actually experience a lot of different thoughts that will try to enter your head while you are exercising, but stay focused.  You might think this is a bad thing, but your workout environment will allow for a superior training platform to be consciously aware of your inner voice.  Remember, recognize the thought and then put it away so that it’s no longer able to cause disruption.