Am I Using My Ego, or Is It Using Me?

“Take care that you are not made into a Caesar, not dyed with the purple; for it can happen.” Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.30

When you stop checking yourself, you don’t notice the drift. That’s what makes it dangerous. You start believing you’re better than you actually are, sharper, wiser, more deserving than the people around you. Nobody wakes up and decides this on purpose. It builds one small assumption at a time, and by the time it’s settled in, you can’t see it anymore, because the thing that would let you see it is the thing you stopped doing.

The fall isn’t dramatic. It’s just a man who lost the ability to see himself clearly, and mistook that blindness for confidence.

The only fix I’ve found is to keep checking. What am I actually good at. Where am I actually weak. Am I still the person I think I am, or just the person I’d like to be. It’s not comfortable, but it’s the cost of staying honest with myself.

The signs

A few things I watch for in myself.

Position becomes identity. You get a title, a seat at the table, and slowly you start feeling like the title makes you a better person. Watch this one closest. Rank is a role, not a measure of your worth. Rank can be given and rank can be taken away. It should never decide how much better than others you feel.

Confidence quietly turns into ego. A promotion brings confidence, and confidence is good. But confidence and ego sit close together, and it’s easy to cross from one to the other without noticing. So this is the question I ask myself daily, the one I want my sons to carry: am I using my ego, or is my ego using me? A little ego used well is just self-belief doing its job. The moment it’s steering, you’re not making the decision anymore. It is.

Dismissiveness. The clearest tell. When I catch myself brushing off other people’s ideas and only pushing my own, that’s the signal. It means I’ve stopped listening and decided I’m the one who knows. It’s rarely about the idea. It’s the ego protecting its own sense of being right. When I catch it, I know it’s time to check myself again.

The correction

Humility fixes this. Not the performed kind, where you talk yourself down so people reassure you. The real kind, where you just see yourself accurately, no bigger and no smaller than you are.

I think humility might be the most important thing a person can hold onto, because everything steadier grows out of it. When you’re not busy defending an inflated version of yourself, you stop fighting reality and start accepting it. That’s where peace actually lives. You get calmer, easier to be around, harder to knock off balance, because there’s less pride left to bruise.

And humility teaches you something else, gently: not everything can be gained. Some things you won’t get, some heights you won’t reach, some outcomes just go the other way. That’s fine.

To my sons

If you keep nothing else from me, keep this.

You’ll do well in life. And the better you do, the more the world will hand you reasons to think you’re above other people. That feeling is the start of the fall, not proof of the climb. Stay humble. Keep checking yourself honestly, especially when it’s least comfortable and you feel like you’ve earned the right not to. Ask yourself often whether your ego is serving you or running you.

Hold onto humility and you’ll keep growing, you’ll find peace, and you’ll be able to accept the things you don’t get. That’s a good life. Better than any title.

I’m not writing this because I’ve mastered it. I haven’t. I still catch the ego sneaking back in, still ask myself the question, and sometimes don’t like the answer.

So I keep the practice simple. Every so often, I stop and check myself honestly. Strengths, weaknesses, and the question underneath all of it.

Am I using my ego, or is it using me?