Competition, Resentment and Letting your Ego get in the way

{illustration by tommy the pariah. Are you your own worst enemy?}

I think there comes a point in every creative person's work life (or every person's every day life) when you may feel like you're not being valued. Like you're good enough, you're smart enough and gosh darnit, people like you, yet you're still not being recognized for all the hard work you do. What gives?

I think this feeling happens when you start getting too worried about what your competition is up to.

It's easy to compare yourself to your competitors in a way that becomes detrimental. When you start to view them as being "more successful" than you, in whatever your personal measures of success may be, you can find yourself right up against a fit of anger, jealousy and resentment.

I know, I've been there, I've felt it before. I've been in the place where I felt like all my ideas were being "copied" by others, like I wasn't been recognized for doing this first, or doing that better. I felt like I put so much hard work into something and where was my credit? My prize? My gold star that said, job well done!

I'm sure you've felt that little voice inside you too. The voice that creeps in to ask "How has she made 500 sales on etsy?" or "why is that person getting written up on so many blogs?" or "how the heck did he get so successful when my stuff is way better?" And you know what that horrible little bugger of a voice inside you is?

Your ego.

Your ego, in this context, is the part of you that's just begging to be seen, to be recognized, to be perceived in a very specific way. The part of yourself you identify as "me." When you don't feel like the world is seeing you back in the way you want, your ego can get hurt and offended. And when you compare yourself to others and feel they're getting the recognition that you deserve, that's when jealously and resentment can rear their ugly heads.

To squash those awful voices, I've made an effort this year to take on a whole new outlook on how to approach my work, my feelings about how my work is perceived and how I view my "competition." I'm trying to lead myself in my work as "ego-free" as possible.

It's all thanks to a book I read over the holidays by Eckhart Tolle called A New Earth. This book is all about how our ego affects us, and how we can lead much freer, happier, more fulfilled lives if we can just get beyond it. Here's one of my favorite passages from the book that really stuck with me, and deals directly with work related issues (bold text by me):

I have met others who may be technically good at what they do but whose ego constantly sabotages their work. Only part of their attention is on the work they perform; the other part is on themselves. Their ego demands personal recognition and wastes energy in resentment if it doesn't get enough- and it's never enough. "Is someone else getting more recognition than me?" ... When work is no more than a means to an end it cannot be of high quality. When obstacles or difficulties arise in their work, when things don't go according to expectation, when other people or circumstances are not helpful or cooperative, instead of immediately becoming one with the new situation and responding to the requirements of the present moment, they react against the situation and so separate themselves from it. There is a "me" that feels personally offended or resentful, and a huge amount of energy is burned up in useless protest or anger, energy that could be used for solving the situation if it were not being misused by the ego. What is more, this "anti"-energy creates new obstacles, new opposition. Many people are truly their own worst enemy.

People unknowingly sabotage their own work when they withhold help or information from others to try to undermine them lest they become more successful or get more credit than "me." Cooperation is alien to the ego, except when there is a secondary motive. The ego doesn't know that the more you include others, the more smoothly things flow and the more easily things come to you. When you give little or no help to others or put obstacles in their path, the universe- in the form of people and circumstances- gives little or no help to you because you have cut yourself off from the whole. The ego's unconscious core feeling of "not enough" causes it to react to someone else's success as if that success had taken something away from "me." It doesn't know that your resentment of another person's success curtails your own chances of success. In order to attract success, you need to welcome it wherever you see it.

As Tolle points out, letting our ego get in the way of our work can sabotage us. And being caught up in anger and resentment towards someone is, of course, much more harmful to you than to the target of your frustrations.

Basically, I think we just have to get over ourselves. Get over our feelings of how or why we're not being recognized in whatever ways. It seems impossible to not feel hurt and dismissed when we encounter these situations, but I think eventually, in order to be happy, we just have to let things go. 

We need to stop comparing ourselves to others so much. Realize that we can't control anyone else's actions, and we can't control the success that those actions may receive. As long as you can find joy in what you're doing, that's what matters. Try not to let competition and comparison distract you from that joy.

Do you think your ego has ever gotten in the way of your business success or of your personal happiness? Have you ever found yourself resenting the success of those around you?