“A man asked Gautama Buddha, “I want happiness.” Buddha said, “First remove “I,” that’s Ego, then remove “want,” that’s Desire. See now you are left with only “Happiness.” As a human being, poor or rich, we all want the same thing, happiness. And one of the keys to happiness is to let go of your ego.
When you have a big ego, everything evolves your “I”. I want, I desire, I love, I like, I dislikes it. I should be treated like this; I should be respected like that … The more you demand for yourself, the more you are frustrated as the fact is people exist in this world not to fulfill your desires or expectations. And the problem is too much ego will hinder your improvement. Taking example, when someone said something negative to you or criticize you, you don’t take it as a chance to review yourself and see if you need to improve anything. Instead of it, the first thing you do is to blame others and protect your ego.
In any type of relationship, when the ego rises, the relationship will deteriorate. Taking example of a common situation in marriage. The wife is very upset as her husband always comes home late in the evening and spends no time for her and children. But the husband thinks he tries to work hard to give his wife and children a good life. Instead of putting their ego down and try to have a straightforward communication with compassion and understanding, they fall into a big argument as both sides think they are right. In love and marriage, there is no right and wrong. You might think you win in an argument with your partner, you end up hurting each other more. And the relationship gets worse and broken time by time.
I want to tell you a real story. There’s a girl who suffered from depression for many years due to a failed relationship. She’s been trying many things but still cannot get over it. One day she met a life coach. The coach told her to go to volunteer at a pagoda where there’s a monk who raised more than 10 children on her own. All those kids are abandoned by their parents at birth. Many of them are sick or suffered from serious chronic disease. After couple weeks, the girl came back and said she loved her volunteer work. Helping those unfortunate lives makes her realize the suffering she got in the past is nothing compared to many miserable lives out there. She found the meaning of her life in giving love and happiness to others. Through that, she got over that long life depression. The fact is when she less desires, less demands for herself and expands her heart and compassion to other people, she becomes happier. When she learns to give joys and happiness to others without expectation, she finds more happiness.
Everyone has their own ego but how much you let your ego control your life and relationship is critical. One of the things you can do to reduce and control your ego is to learn to be more compassionate. When things happen, try to put yourself in other shoes to think and feel the way they feel.
