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A SLOW, PAINLESS AND DIGNIFIED DEATH OF THE EGO

The Gentle Art of Killing The Ego

T.T.G

3 min read

Losing weight and getting in shape is not hard.

Before you send me an angry email asking me how dare I invalidate and undermine every squat, salad, and sacrifice you've ever made as well as your 5 a.m. workouts and your calorie deficits, hear me out sweetie.

I'm not saying it's easy, I'm saying it isn't the hardest thing you'll ever do.

Neither is building a business, nor defending your thesis, nor training for a marathon. I know I'm really starting to get on your nerves, but I'm going somewhere with this, stay with me.

All of those things are difficult, yes. But they have one thing in common. Most of them don't require you to put your ego on the chopping block.

And therein lies the difference.

You see my love, I've come to believe that the hardest things in life are rarely the things that require the most effort. They're the things that require the most humility. The things that ask you to become smaller and to surrender.

Which brings me to what I think might be one of the greatest enigmas in the universe:

Apologising. Literally saying three words, "I AM SORRY".

A real apology. Not the "I'm sorry you feel that way" apology. Not the apology that somehow turns into an explanation, or a defence. I mean a genuine apology.

Why is that so difficult? Why can a grown adult negotiate contracts, build companies, raise children, and navigate life's chaos, yet completely fall apart at the prospect of saying two simple words?

I think Ryan Holiday may have answered that question in his book Ego Is the Enemy.

His argument is simple. It's the ego. And I totally agree with him, of course it's the ego. Why? Because apologising requires something that our ego absolutely despises. It requires surrender. It requires us to loosen our grip on being right.

And for many of us, that feels like death. A brutal one. Now here's the problem sweetie: Relationships cannot thrive if ego is always well-fed. One of them must starve. You can preserve your pride, or you can preserve the connection. Most of the time, you don't get both.

"But Miss T, what if my ego refuses to cooperate?" Excellent question sweetie. I have a simple solution. Nurse it. Yup, you heard me right, nurse your ego. I know it sounds directly contrary to what I've just said, but stay with me, I'm going somewhere with this.

Walking up to someone and immediately saying, "I'm sorry I hurt you," can feel like an instant execution of the ego. A public beheading at that.

But writing an apology letter? Now that's different. Writing gives your ego time to adjust to its inevitable fate. It allows you to remove the defensiveness, the excuses, and the unnecessary commentary. It helps you focus on the one thing that matters: the hurt you caused and the relationship you'd like to repair.

In short, writing allows your ego to die slowly, peacefully and with dignity. I call it the elegant death of the ego.

Which is one of the reasons I love letters so much. A letter gives us the space to say what we really mean before our pride barges into the room and starts editing the script.

So if there's an apology you've been postponing, perhaps don't start with a conversation. Start with a pen and a paper. Write it and mean it.

And if a blank page feels almost as intimidating as the apology itself, I've created beautifully designed apology papers specifically for moments like these. They have an opening prompt to help you get started and a closing prompt to give you a powerful closing.

I hope you enjoyed the read my love. You can head over to the shop page to choose from a variety of beautiful apology prompt papers  and write that apology.

And just know that there is a beautiful woman somewhere in the world cheering you on and who is so proud of you for the apology you're about to write.