Kay:

Hey there Questers. It’s Wednesday, August 25th. This is episode 428 and we have a quote for you today from one of our very favorite American fitness icons, businesswoman, author, and television personality, Ms. Jillian Michaels.

Shi:

Jillian tells us, “A bad day for your ego is a great day for your soul,” and oh, this hits good right now.

Kay:

Ooh, it sure does because oftentimes your ego and your soul can seem to have competing interests.

Shi:

They can and I think this is such a wonderful reminder of the different dimensions of growth. Wise people will tell you when you look back on your life and you reflect, and someone asks you, what were the most impactful growth moments, or learning moments where you learned or transformed the most. You’re not going to say it was the day you won the race, or you got the award, or your name got called in a big, special thing. It’s going to be when you got sucker-punched, when you didn’t expect what was coming, when something massive happened to you. And those are the days where your ego gets sucker-punched, but your soul expands and grows so much. I think that’s just a really beautiful way to demonstrate that

Kay:

You might be listening to the word ego and getting a little triggered and if you are that’s okay, that’s just your ego. But the word ego is so much more dimensional than many of us give it credit for. Your ego is not just how highly you think of yourself. Your ego is not your level of confidence. This is where a lot of people think that ego equals this level of confidence and if I have a big ego, it means I have too much confidence. While yes, in some contexts that’s true, ego from a psychological perspective is what Jung would refer to as your id. This is your ID. It’s the person inside. It’s that voice inside your head that articulates your human experience. Your eyes absorb your surroundings, your brain and executive function make sense of it verbally, and then it feeds that to you in the form of word thoughts, and that creates your ego.

Shi:

If we think about where ego really got popularized when psychotherapist Freud really developed his theories around ego and talked about it and really brought it into psychiatry and psychology in a really meaningful way, separating those three areas that we know. That id being that first animalistic… It’s just your reactions, it’s your habits. It’s all of those things that are ingrained into you and then your ego is that personality that you develop over time based on that executive function feedback that you’re receiving and your positioning in the world and the meaning that you attach to things.

Then the third level that Freud identifies is the superego and this is what you believe the world expects of you. What are those institutions around you that reflect back what it means to be whoever it is that you are? The popular media, the shows, the cultural pieces around you. So, there are these three different levels that you’re having to actively navigate and manage inside of yourself all of the time and none of them mentioned the spirit at all, which is where this new age is coming forward and where philosophers have always known that id, ego and superego have nothing to do with the true, unlimited spiritual being that you are, but you are having a human experience, which means you are well-integrated with that ego and know it likely better than you think.

Kay:

This is a Jillian Michaels quote so let’s take this in the metaphor or just bring it into the body for a minute. A bad day for your muscles aka a hard day at the gym is good for your growth like a hard day for your ego is a great day for your soul. A hard day at the gym for your muscles is a great day for your overall health. So, you’re really finding that in a physical sense it’s the same thing. It just so happens that life, when it threatens your ego, creates mental anguish and pain, which sometimes is even harder to deal with than the physical.

Shi:

Good point and it’s easier to see that transactional piece when it is something physical, like your body and even then, it’s hard to make yourself go, intentionally hurt yourself in the short term for that long-term growth and that long-term benefit and that’s precisely what happens with us here. If we want long-term spiritual growth, if we want to have souls that have beautiful dimension with the capacity for compassion and love and all of those things that we look for in our human experience, it means figuring out how to have an ego that is small, even if you’ve accomplished a lot and don’t mean small in that confidence way, but in how much attention you give it, how much importance you place on the opinion of the ego. That ego is most easily identified as that voice, that just goes and goes and goes in your head and narrates your life continuously and it helps you make decisions. Often, we let that voice be controlled by the ego because that’s our default method. So, a tricky one, but such a powerful quote. To remind you what Jillian Michaels tells us here and think on it for your day, “A bad day for your ego is a great day for your soul.”

Kay:

Alright, gang, we’ve got a Jillian Michaels Quest for you today. Today we want you to engage in some sort of physical activity or wellness practice that makes you feel just a little bit weird. You’re stretching yourself. You’re doing that hard thing. You’re putting yourself through some intentional pain. So, whether it be burpees or ballerina twirling or whatever that is, feel yourself giving in to the intentional growth that comes through maybe having a bad day. The physical is really going to help you mirror up into how you might be able to break through that ego and have more great days for your soul. Are you ready? Say it with us.

Kay & Shi:

Let’s quest!