The other day, I was at the gym with my co-founder Joel and we started a short discussion about other products next to Buffer we might enjoy building one day. We went through various problems we’d enjoy solving, like online payments, social media monitoring and so forth. At one point, we got into some light brainstorming of one of the areas and the name of a related, prominent startup in the space came up. I said “I know the founder”. That line had nothing to do with the discussion and it didn’t add any value. It was rather pure display of ego, coming to light as what we commonly know as “namedropping”. I paused for a second and added “I think that was just my ego, that didn’t really add anything.” Since I can remember, the idea of ego was always only the display of the most blatant egoistic behaviour from us. Like, for example, strong arrogance and bragging, extreme defensiveness of our opinion in an argument. Since I started reading more texts about buddhism, mindfulness and most recently Eckhart Tolle’s “New Earth“, I learnt a lot more about what “ego” really means. I learnt that ego in most people, myself included, is the dominant driver of all thoughts, actions and ways of going about life.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 20:04:39 +0000