Control Your Ego Quotes & Sayings

Sacrificial religion was all exposed in Jesus' response to any mechanical or mercenary notion of religion, but we soon went right back to it in many Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant forms, because the old ego will always prefer an economy of merit and sacrifice to any economy of grace and unearned love, where we have no control. — Richard Rohr

Our reputations are so out of our control that it's laughable how much time and effort so many of us put into trying to "control" them. — Taite Adams

The functional importance of the ego is manifested in the fact that normally control over the approaches to motility devolves upon it. Thus in its relation to the id it is like a man on horse back, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse; with this difference, that the rider tries to do so with his own strength while the ego uses borrowed forces. — Sigmund Freud

In the ego's world, power means having the ability to control circumstances to your benefit, to manipulate or dominate people in order to get your own way. If what you want is the greatest good for everyone, ego has little to say. The kind of strength that is giving, selfless, devout, trusting, and patient is decidedly feminine. It belongs to saints and mothers. By affirming this kind of strength, you are demonstrating faith that there can be power without aggression, domination, and control. Is there real power in the feminine aspect? Certainly there is, and even though the ego has exercised control for a long time, spiritual power has always been in charge. Spiritual power pervades every aspect of life as the intelligence that nurtures and organizes all forms, atom to cosmos. This power is yours to tap into. It comes from inside, and nothing can stop it once you have found its source in the true self. — Deepak Chopra

When I taught the meditation on sound to the participants at my weekend workshop and had people open to the ringing of their cell phones, I was trying to introduce them to his method. By listening meditatively, we were changing the way we listen, pulling ourselves out of our usual orientation to the world based on our likes and dislikes. Rather than trying to figure out what was going on around us, resisting the unpleasant noises and gravitating toward the mellifluous ones, we were listening in a simpler and more open manner. We had to find and establish another point of reference to listen in this way, one that was outside the ego's usual territory of control. You might say we were simply listening, but it was actually more complex than that. While listening, we were also aware of ourselves listening, and at the same time we were conscious of what the listening evoked within. Unhooked from our usual preoccupations, we were listening from a neutral place. — Mark Epstein

The suggested idea or group of ideas," said M. Charcot, very justly, " find themselves in their isolation sheltered against the control of that great collection of personal ideas, a long time accumulated and organised, which constitute consciousness properly so called, the Ego." ' " With certain subjects it is possible to call forth, by means of suggestion or intimation, a coherent group of associated ideas which install themsehes in the mind in tlie fashion of a parasite, remain isolated from all the rest, and may be explained outwardly by corresponding motor phenomena." " We ask permission to preserve this striking metaphor: Suggestions, with their automatic and independent development, are real parasites in thought. — Anonymous

Mastery of self is the endless battle in which we must pursue our consciousness straight forward, and head over heels transmute all our focus on what it is ailing our immediate reality. Question yourself without pride and ego, step out of your shoes and look from the outside it. What do you see? What do you hear? This is the reflection our your energy, your absolute control source. Does it benefit you? — Will Barnes

If you want to reach a state of bliss, then go beyond your ego and the internal dialogue. Make a decision to relinquish the need to control, the need to be approved, and the need to judge. Those are the three things the ego is doing all the time. It's very important to be aware of them every time they come up. — Deepak Chopra

If we seek spiritual heroism ourselves, the old ego is just back in control under a new name. There would not really be any change at all, but only disguise, just bogus self-improvement on our own terms. — Richard Rohr

The territorialism and desire to possess things comes directly from the ego, which strives to own and control things. Your spirit already knows you own nothing. It is a matter of realizing that your happiness does not depend on your ownership of things. They help you in your journey but they are not the journey itself. — Karen Kingston

The ego constantly competes with the spirit for control over your inner voice. — Darren Johnson

Ego is like an antivirus which eventually takes unwanted control of the computer itself. — Saurabh Sharma

Uncertainty is fearful to the ego, which always wants to control reality, but from the viewpoint of detachment, a constantly shifting and changing universe must remain uncertain. If things were certain, there could be no creativity. Therefore spirit works through surprises and unexpected outcomes.
We achieve peace of mind only when we accept the wisdom of uncertainty. — Deepak Chopra

Hello Kitty is an icon that doesn't stand for anything at all. Hello Kitty never has been, and never will be, anything. She's pure license; you can even get a Hello Kitty car! The branding thing is completely out of control, but it started as nothing and maintains its nothingness. It's not about the ego, and in that way it's very Japanese. — Tom Sachs

The cure to combat the three Ss- stress, strain, and speed- can be found in three Ws- the work of devoted practice, the wisdom that comes of understanding the self and the world, and worship because ultimately surrendering to what we cannot control allows the ego to relax and lose the anxiety of its own infinitesimally small self in the infinitude of the divine. — B.K.S. Iyengar

I'm not in front of the camera, they are. I encourage them; I build up as much of their confidence and ego as possible. They've got to take control; I can't act it out. — Taylor Hackford

There are three things we have to let go of. The first is the compulsion to be successful. Second, is the compulsion to be right-especially theologically right. (That's merely an ego trip, and because of this "need" churches split in half, with both parties prisoners of their own egos.) Finally, there is the compulsion to be powerful, to have everything under control. — Richard Rohr

You've got to have an ego as big as Mars to want to think that you, of all people, are better than anyone else to be president of the United States. People that vain, they want their place in history, and they want to be able to control how much they'll be worshipped by future generations. — Jello Biafra

According to Mr. E., all of this was my fault," Ryan explained. With a little too much amusement if you ask me. "For making you fall in love with me
and ruining everything."
"Why did that ruin everything?"
Ryan was quiet for a moment, and I couldn't believe it when his grin changed into that infamous cocky smirk. "You just said you love me!" he
accused with excitement.
Again, I gaped at him, temporarily speechless. Of course I denied it. I had to; it was my natural reaction to his ego. "I did not!"
"Did too." He grinned. "You said, 'why did that ruin everything.' Meaning you agree that it happened. You said it. Can't take it back. You love me."
Learning to control my powers was child's play compared to keeping a straight face right then, but I couldn't give in to his smugness. He was just so
sure of himself. "Do not."
"Do too."
"Do not."
"So do too. — Kelly Oram

Artists are most themselves when they are out of their minds, transcending the ego skirmishes of conceptual thought, and intuitively relinquishing control to the greater Creator — Alex Grey

There is nothing more vulnerable than caring for someone; it means not only giving your energy to that which is not you but also caring for that which is beyond or outside your control. Caring is anxious - to be full of care, to be careful, is to take care of things by becoming anxious about their future, where the future is embodied in the fragility of an object whose persistence matters. Becoming caring is not about becoming good or nice: people who have "being caring" as their ego ideal often act in quite uncaring ways in order to protect their good image of themselves. To care is not about letting an object go but holding on to an object by letting oneself go, giving oneself over to something that is not one's own. — Sara Ahmed

The more you become a connoisseur of gratitude, the less you are a victim of resentment, depression, and despair. Gratitude will act as an elixir that will gradually dissolve the hard shell of your ego-your need to posses and control-and transform you into a generous being. The sense of gratitude produces true spiritual alchemy, makes us magnanimous-lar ge souled. — Sam Keen

In mindfulness meditation, the self that needs protection is put into neutral. The observing self slips into the space between the ego and the dissociated aspects of the personality and observes from there. The breath, or sound, becomes the central object of focus, as opposed to thought. Thinking becomes one more thing to observe in the field of awareness but is robbed of its preeminent position. Do not grasp after the pleasant or push away the unpleasant, but give equal attention to everything there is to observe, taught the Buddha. This is difficult at first but becomes remarkably easy once one gets the hang of it. One learns first to bring one's attention to the neutral object and then to relax into a state of choiceless awareness rather than always trying to maintain control. As the ego's position is weakened, waking life takes on aspects of dream life to the extent that new surprises keep unexpectedly emerging. — Mark Epstein

All my battles were with male egos. I'm just looking for equality, not to dominate. But I want to be able to control my vision. — Joni Mitchell

All that the posture of skepticism accomplishes is to freeze the ego in an ignorantist poverty that never stretches or diversifies its resources of imagination or understanding. Any uncultured cretin can close his eyes and try to reduce the issues down to linear simplisms and say, "I am doubting, I am proving my magisterial or sovereign control over my own mind." Doubt is a useful and significant test of one's critical powers, but by itself it bears little if any significant cultural charge of enlightenment or satori; indeed it is the very opposite kind of thing. — Kenny Smith

Unlike cognitive load, ego depletion is at least in part a loss of motivation. After exerting self-control in one task, you do not feel like making an effort in another, although you could do it if you really had to. In — Daniel Kahneman

Individually we can work on ourselves. By working on your own ego and developing truth, control, and an equitable inner dialogue, you individualize the spirit within you through the process of observation. If you work on yourself, the progress you make radiates invisibly to others, helping them and giving them courage, which also improves the global picture. After all-your ego is a part of the world ego, and as you control it, you lessen the overall influence of the world ego while expanding the presence of truth on our planet. — Stuart Wilde

I used to fight the pain, but recently this became clear to me: pain is not my enemy; it is my call to greatness. But when dealing with the Iron, one must be careful to interpret the pain correctly. Most injuries involving the Iron come from ego. I once spent a few weeks lifting weight that my body wasn't ready for and spent a few months not picking up anything heavier than a fork. Try to lift what you're not prepared to and the Iron will teach you a little lesson in restraint and self-control. — Henry Rollins

Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it. Your problem is, you just can't let this one go. It's over, Groceries. David's purpose was to shake you up, drive you out of that marriage that you needed to leave, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light could get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you had to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master and beat it. That was his job, and he did great, but now it's over. Problem is, you can't accept that this relationship had a real short shelf life. You're like a dog at the dump, baby - you're just lickin' at an empty tin can, trying to get more nutrition out of it. And if you're not careful, that can's gonna get stuck on your snout forever and make your life miserable. So drop it. — Elizabeth Gilbert

The Hindu saint Ramakrishna said that when a man becomes a saint, followers swarm to him as wasps to honey. Because he had to become holy to achieve his charisma, a saint won't misuse that power, that control over others. But if a common man, a volk, with no saintly quality, with in fact an inflated ego, a narcissist, should tap into this magnetic current or whatever, he could draw legions to him ... and lead the world to ruin. Bibi — Dean Koontz

The ego mind both professes its desire for love and does everything possible to repel it, or if it gets here anyway, to sabotage it. That is why dealing with issues like control, anger, and neediness is the most important work in preparing ourselves for love. — Marianne Williamson

Have the courage to speak your mind and tell the truth from a position of love rather than anger or fear, being open to accept the views of others without feeling threatened or defeated, relinquishing the ego's need to be in control by demonstrating the willingness to do whatever it takes to establish peace. — Iyanla Vanzant

The ego seeks intimacy through control and guilt. The Holy Spirit seeks intimacy through acceptance and release. — Marianne Williamson

The thought of both East and West (philosophies) can indeed be integrated into a higher truth. They show us that the West is correct in maintaining that life is about progress about evolving toward something higher. Yet the East is also correct in emphasizing that we must let go of control with the ego. We can't progress by using logic alone. We have to attain a fuller consciousness, an inner connection with God, because only then can our evolution toward something better be guided by a higher part of ourselves. — James Redfield

As long as the mind and ego control the direction of creating, there will always be problems in the outer world, for the ego thinks only of itself and lives in duality. But when the heart is in control, everything comes back to balance, for the heart feels and knows only the oneness of life. — Drunvalo Melchizedek

People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.
A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.
A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master ... — Elizabeth Gilbert

Ideas about a person's place in society, his role, lifestyle, and ego qualities will lose their hold as the cohesive forces in society disintegrate. Subculture values will proliferate to such a bewildering extent that a whole new class of professionals will arise to control them. Such a Transmutation Technology will deal in fashions, in ways of being. Lifestyle consultants will become the new priests of our civilizations. They will be the new magicians. — Peter J. Carroll

So long as the sense of the observing subject remains, there is the effort, however indirect, to control feeling from the outside, which is resistance setting up turmoil in the stream. Resistance disappears and the balancing process comes into full effect not by intention on the part of the subject, but only as it is seen that the feeling of being the subject, the ego, is itself part of the stream of experience and does not stand outside it in a controlling position. In — Alan W. Watts

Evolve your understanding of success from the outer realm of control, materialism, and ego, to the inner realm of surrender, spirituality, and compassion. — Bryant McGill

if you have had to force yourself to do something, you are less willing or less able to exert self-control when the next challenge comes around. The phenomenon has been named ego depletion. — Daniel Kahneman

There is, inside all our heads, the ego's rabid attack dog. It is purely vicious toward others and toward ourselves as well. Learning to control that dog, and ultimately to end its life, is the process and purpose of enlightened relationships. — Marianne Williamson

If you want to build an open source project, you can't let your ego stand in the way. You can't rewrite everybody's patches, you can't second-guess everybody, and you have to give people equal control. — Rasmus Lerdorf

The world outside your skin is just as much you as the world inside: they move together inseparably, and at first you feel a little out of control because the world outside is so much vaster than the world inside. Yet you soon discover that you are able to go ahead with ordinary activities - to work and make decisions as ever, though somehow this is less of a drag. Your body is no longer a corpse which the ego has to animate and lug around. There is a feeling of the ground holding you up, and of hills lifting you when you climb them. Air breathes itself in and out of your lungs, and instead, of looking and listening, light and sound come to you on their own. Eyes see and ears hear as wind blows and water flows. All space becomes your mind. Time carries you along like a river, but never flows out of the present: the more it goes, the more it stays, and you no longer have to fight or kill it. — Alan W. Watts

How to get rid of ego as dictator and turn it into messenger and servant and scout, to be in your service, is the trick. — Joseph Campbell

But calm is precisely what is absent from love's classroom. There is simply too much on the line. The "student" isn't merely a passing responsibility; he or she is a lifelong commitment. Failure will ruin existence. No wonder we may be prone to lose control and deliver cack-handed, hasty speeches which bear no faith in the legitimacy or even the nobility of the act of imparting advice. And no wonder, too, if we end up achieving the very opposite of our goals, because increasing levels of humiliation, anger, and threat have seldom hastened anyone's development. Few of us ever grow more reasonable or more insightful about our own characters for having had our self-esteem taken down a notch, our pride wounded, and our ego subjected to a succession of pointed insults. We simply grow defensive and brittle in the face of suggestions which sound like mean-minded and senseless assaults on our nature rather than caring attempts to address troublesome aspects of our personality. Had — Alain De Botton

Debate is an attempt to cling to the illusion of control provided by a point of view designed to keep the ego in place; dialogue is an attempt to dance with the unknown at the risk of losing what we think we know. — Oli Anderson

The Ego, however, is not who you really are. The ego is your self-image; it is your social mask; it is the role you are playing. Your social mask thrives on approval. It wants control, and it is sustained by power, because it lives in fear. — Deepak Chopra

I feel especially vulnerable when I know I've let the reactive ego take control of my actions and it may have had hurtful implications with someone I love. I feel vulnerable when I don't listen to my conscience. — Richard Brancatisano

Ego can't sleep. It micro-manages. It disempowers. It reduces our capability. It excels in control. — Robert K. Greenleaf

One of the great dangers on the spiritual path is that the ego becomes spiritualized. The ego loves to think of itself as spiritually evolved. It is just another way that it manages to feel important and in control. It is very difficult to free yourself from an enlightened ego. — Leonard Jacobson

Who was responsible for this fear of the feminine that could only be described as acute collective paranoia? We could say: Of course, men were responsible. But then why in many ancient pre-Christian civilizations such as the Sumerian, Egyptian, and Celtic were women respected and the feminine principle not feared but revered? What is it that suddenly made men feel threatened by the female? The evolving ego in them. It knew it could gain full control of our planet only through the male form, and to do so, it had to render the female powerless. — Eckhart Tolle

Your ego depends on mirrors. And every relationship functions as a mirror, every person you meet functions as a mirror, and this ego goes on controlling you. And why does it control in the first place? It controls because the society appreciates control, because the society gives you even more ego if you control. — Osho

When words don't add up in love, it is because of six possible reasons:
1. They are afraid to tell you the truth because you will leave them.
2. They enjoy being a liar or playing people because of ego reasons and/or control.
3. They don't know the truth themselves.
4. They are undecided.
5. They refuse to let their guard down and be vulnerable because you or someone else have hurt them tremendously.
6. You are not being told all the information because of a break down in communication. — Shannon L. Alder

The more you let your ego speak (there's no way in hell I'm going to do that!), or let fear dictate your decisions (log kya kahenge? I can't do that!), the more you let 'Life' take the reigns. You can ALWAYS take the reigns back and take control over your own destiny. You only need to break your own shackles. — Rupali Rajopadhye Rotti

With humility comes the willingness to stop trying to control or change other people or life situations or events ostensibly 'for their own good'. To be a committed spiritual seeker, it is necessary to relinquish the desire to be 'right' or of imaginary value to society. In fact, nobody's ego or belief systems are of any value to society at all. The world is neither good nor bad nor defective, nor is it in need of help or modification because its appearance is only a projection of one's own mind. No such world exists. — David R. Hawkins

The fantastic postulates that there are forces in the outside world, and in our own natures, which we can neither know nor control, and these forces may even constitute the essence of our existence, beneath the comforting rational surface. The fantastic is, moreover, a product of human imagination, perhaps even an excess of imagination. It arises when laws thought to be absolute are transcended, in the borderland between life and death, the animate and the inanimate, the self and the world; it arises when the real turns into the unreal, and the solid presence into vision, dream or hallucination. The fantastic is the unexpected occurrence, the startling novelty which goes contrary to all our expectations of what is possible. The ego multiplies and splits, time and space are distorted. — Franz Rottensteiner

The only guys that make it through are the guys that make it through are the guys that have a complete control of their ego where they tap out in the beginning, all the time, you're always losing in the beginning ... Your ego can get bruised if you don't have control of it. So what ends up happens is Jiu Jitsu is the ultimate douchebag filter. — Eddie Bravo

We leave our homeland, our property and our friends. We give up the familiar ground that supports our ego, admit the helplessness of ego to control its world and secure itself. We give up our clingings to superiority and self-preservation ... It means giving up searching for a home, becoming a refugee, a lonely person who must depend on himself ... Fundamentally, no one can help us. If we seek to relieve our loneliness, we will be distracted from the path. Instead, we must make a relationship with loneliness until it becomes aloneness. — Chogyam Trungpa

Sure I am a religious man who is also passionate about conserving the environment. But I am also a CEO, with all the bad habits and attitudes that are natural to the species ... I am still naturally self-interested, overconfident, full of pride, and eager to control a meeting as any CEO in America. Every day, I struggle with my ego. — Tom Chappell

Serial killers kill for the power and control they experience during the murders and for the added ego boost they get in the aftermath from community fears, media coverage, and the police investigations. — Pat Brown

When you seek power and control over other people, you waste energy. When you seek money or power for the sake of the ego, you spend energy chasing the illusion of happiness instead of enjoying happiness in the moment. When you seek money for personal gain only, you cut off the flow of energy to yourself, and interfere with the expression of nature's intelligence. But when your actions are motivated by love, there is no waste of energy. When your actions are motivated by love, your energy multiplies and accumulates - and the surplus energy you gather and enjoy can be channeled to create anything that you want, including unlimited wealth. — Deepak Chopra

Only by renunciation of the desire to manipulate and control will the ego melt into the Universal Self of Infinite, Eternal Love. — Maharishi Sadasiva Isham

Christians are usually sincere and well-intentioned people until you get to any real issues of ego, control power, money, pleasure, and security. Then they tend to be pretty much like everybody else. We often given a bogus version of the Gospel, some fast-food religion, without any deep transformation of the self; and the result has been the spiritual disaster of "Christian" countries that tend to be as consumer-oriented, proud, warlike, racist, class conscious, and addictive as everybody else-and often more so, I'm afraid. — Richard Rohr

Is the human condition not defined by an endless struggle to control the ego's subterfuges? — Romeo Dallaire

Turning something over to the Holy Spirit is a leap of faith that lets go of attempting to control outcomes. The core of alcoholism, anorexia, bulimia, smoking and a host of things the world calls addictions is control. The little willingness the Holy Spirit asks is the key to letting go of the attempt to manage the body and the world, which is the insane attempt to maintain a self-concept image that God did not create. An idea to contemplate from the Course is this: "Seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world." The requirement is to change your thinking, not to focus on behavior and form. Behavior flows from thought, and transformation of the mind is synonymous with changing thought patterns from ego-based to Spirit-based. — David Hoffmeister

People who lead for selfish reasons seek ... Power: They love control and will continue to add value to themselves by reducing the value of others. Position: Titles are their ego food. They continually make sure that others feel their authority and know their rights as a leader. Money: They will use people and sell themselves for financial gain. Prestige: Their looking good is more important to them than their being and doing good. — John C. Maxwell

Chaos is what we've lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control. — Terence McKenna

Baumeister's group has repeatedly found that an effort of will or self-control is tiring; if you have had to force yourself to do something, you are less willing or less able to exert self-control when the next challenge comes around. The phenomenon has been named ego depletion. In — Daniel Kahneman

So many things happen that we can't control, its best not to worry about what we can. Believing you can change the world has a terrible effect on one's ego. — Bauvard

Magic is the envelopment and coercion of the objective world by the ego; it is a dynamic subjectivism. Religion is the coercion ofthe ego by gods and spirits who are objectively conceived beings in control of nature and man. — Richard Chase

If you want to reach a state of Bliss - make a decision to relinquish the need to control, the need to be approved and the need to judge. — Deepak Chopra

In the practice of mindfulness, the ego's usual insistence on control and security is deliberately and progressively undermined. This is accomplished by steadily shifting one's center of gravity from the thinking mind to a neutral object like the breath, or in the case of my workshop, the random sounds of the environment. — Mark Epstein