 Hi, Paul Scanlon here. Thanks for taking the time to click on my podcast. I want to spend time focusing on my primary passions of leadership, personal development, communication, growing big people, and I hope that these podcasts really help and add value to your life and to your journey. Thanks for tuning in. My wife and I live in a 17th century farmhouse in England and we lived there 20 years. When we bought that farmhouse 20 years ago, all the oak timbers in the house had been painted. So for generations of house owners in that house, the beautiful oak timbers had been painted. So I decided to strip all the paint off to get back to the bare oak all around the house. Some of the timbers in the house were 13th century timbers. So I started stripping back all the paint. I must admit, we were able to buy stuff then to do that, that now you'd be in jail for having it in your house. It was like stuff you'd only see on Breaking Bad. Don't tell me you didn't watch that. So we stripped these beams back. It took us months. It was a nightmare job, but it was fascinating to me what people thought was a good color to paint an oak beam. You could tell when we got to the 60s, generations in that house. The yellows, the greens, the reds, painting an oak beam, bright red. Someone should be in jail. And I tell you that as a metaphor, because I think the metaphor is that this oak beam, to me, is a picture of human beings, that from before you're born and the moment you're born, life gets busy painting layers on you. This seminar is about attempting to get you to be aware of those layers, and some that are being put on you right now, today, you had a conversation that you know was an attempt by someone or something to paint another layer on you. And you had a disagreement, you felt uncomfortable, didn't like the energy of it, didn't know what to call it, but you kind of felt a part of you was in danger of being lost if you surrendered to the idea that someone else has of what color they think your life should be. So I think to get back to the bare oak version of you is to get back to the best version of you. Labels, labels, offer an identity based on external things, as I said, name and nationality and occupation and gender and skin color and religion and role and title and conditions. You know, like I mentioned, you name it on it goes. You know, you're troubled or a success or a failure or you're disabled or you're gay or you're straight or what all these labels in the world offer an identity based on external things that the world put on us. We call this version of identity the ego, the ego. Ego is a Latin word for I. That's all it means. The ego means I, in other words, the ego, you and me is the individualistic I, me, mine separate from you, separate from others, the ego. The ego is a false sense of self. It's a false sense of self because it's yourself based on labels of the people painted on you. So you form an identity based on all this labeling, but because that labeling isn't who you really are underneath it all, because your core identity is your soul, these labels create a false sense of self and identity other than the job of the ego all of your life is to protect it. This is why the ego, the ego loves attention, but it hates scrutiny. This is why another reason I have this chair here because I want to be careful that my ego doesn't want to lecture you about your ego because that could be my ego. Ego is a subtle live in the shadows part of us and self-awareness, which is a huge super power that is going to be vital in this coming age, self-awareness allows you to say and see why, what part of me was threatened by that person that made me respond in that way? What part of me needed to exaggerate? What part of me needed to lie about something? What part of me needed to make myself look better than I really am in that situation? What part of me couldn't say I was wrong, I'm sorry? What part of me thinks you're the problem and I could never be the problem? It's called the ego. The ego has taken entire nations to war on an individual's ego. One person's ego has taken millions into war because of the refusal to back down and not realize what you're protecting is your sense of status and power and entitlement and superiority and politics and idea of how things should be, you see it in children. The ego kicks in from the beginning and you see kids that begin to battle and fight over things that don't really matter and you try and step in as a parent and educate them not knowing it just reinvents itself in a more adult form later on. Ego is a social construct to get you started on your journey in life. I understand the need of it, I understand why we have ego and I want to say that ego, I know I'm reflecting it negatively because it primarily is in the outcomes but really ego, the sense of self, isn't good or bad. But what I want to say to you is it defaults too bad without guidance. It doesn't default to good. But ego in itself, we all have ego, Jesus had an ego. Every human has an ego, a false sense of self, his would have been, his would have been, wouldn't it? He was born in Nazareth. He is a carpenter's son. You can see him in his life battling this identity as people say, well isn't this Joseph's son? Who is this person? And now they're labeling him as the boy from Nazareth. He is the carpenter's son. This helps them to locate him so the behavior he's having, he has no right to behave that way because he has no labeling background to qualify him to speak to us in the synagogue. Because they're identifying him like they do all of us by this labeling social construct that we have and this social construct becomes like a survival capture through which we navigate life. But if we're not aware that we have an ego and the ego can go rogue on you and the ego can make you a bad version of you without guidance to make your ego serve you as I'll come to in a moment, then we all just finish up continuing generationally to repeat the problems of the ego problems of our forefathers. Ego is a set of agreements between your childhood self and your parents. Then it becomes a set of agreements as you age between you and your peers. Then as you age it's a set of agreements between you and your spouse, your significant other, your partner. Then ego becomes an arrangement between your politics and your nationality and your religion and your roles and so on. And the ego's job is to protect that version of you. The ego has bounces. It has bodyguards. Because when you get too close to the issue of the ego like we are now a little bit, it deploys anger and blame and avoidance to protect itself. We'll do this today a hundred times all of us and not realize we're doing it. We send out these little bodyguards to fight off any incoming resistance to our version of us that we want to keep intact because once your ego starts to collapse you're not sure who you're going to be and how will you do your day to day if you don't do it under those labelings that give you that external identity and ego. So its job is to keep all that intact. But the ego is about doing. The soul is about being. You are not just a human doing. You are a human being and we live in this doing world where we think the more we do, the more we dance to the tune of the labels, the more accomplished and the more identity we get and the problem is it's the wrong identity that we're pursuing. Because if you lose your job or you lose your freedom or you lose your status or you lose your identity based on what you've come to so far, if all of that is taken from you in some way as it can be for many people in life, then who are you? If you finish up being in prison, if you finish up losing your freedom, if you finish up losing that status and that role, that salary, that position, if your family disown you, if you finish up sick or disabled and can't function where you were athletic in your career and your options and now you have a tragedy that means you can't do that anymore and all this stuff you planned and your ego was planning you to go for. If all of that is removed, who are you? If now you can't leave your home because of some illness and now you can't have those options anymore that you set your heart on, who are you? Are you still you? And the truth is ego says, well now you've failed and now it's not an option for you and what a shame and how sad that is and we start using this language about what a shame, it's such a shame that happened to so and so and now the language of shame and guilt becomes another form of labeling because now you don't appear to be able to be the person you or we hoped you would be. This is why depression and suicide by the way are spiking because we live in such an ego centric world that if anything happens to you that spoils that identity capture that you're in, you're left with nothing to fall back on because you think now those labels have gone I need to find more labels and because you can't find them quick enough to cover up the cracks we despair and get suicidal and think what's the point in living anymore. So ego is about survival, soul is about surrender. Well thanks again for listening to today's podcast, I hope you found it beneficial and I know time is precious commodity for us all but I would love if you would take the time to write a review or comment and above all maybe subscribe to my podcast channel. Thank you.