In the Arena III- Becoming Hilariously Pleased

[Zues126]

Thanks uturn. Trust me, ego and inadequacy have been a big challenge for me. It was a huge part of my pool playing. I'm on my way to a tournament now, but you inspired me to look up some of my old journal stuff on this. It has to do with pool of course. I'll quote it here and maybe we can talk about it on my thread if you want to reply, that way JB can actually get some support around this one

Thanks for letting me hijack JB.

Your ego tells you that you are the greatest player in the world. At first it feels great to hear, and you become addicted to placating the ego. You begin to treat your ego like a boss that you are trying to impress, constantly striving to earn its ongoing praise. You win tournaments, money matches, set new high runs, all striving to hear the occasional pat on the back from the ego. You collect praise from others and silently feed the ego at night.

When things go right the ego takes credit for your accomplishments. It says that it is your master, and if you serve it it will make you the greatest player in the world. In the meantime, every time you miss a ball it whips, saying “I should give up on you, how could the greatest player in the world miss that ball???” (This is apparent every time someone says “I should have made that” or “The score should be 4-2 right now”)

You believe that you deserve a whipping, even welcome it because you feel it is making you better. In fact, whip me harder, master. You want to satisfy your ego so badly that you wish to get whipped, because the more pain you endure now the better you will become. The ego admires your ability to welcome the pain, saying “You whip yourself harder than anyone in the world, keep this up and no one will ever beat you because they are too soft to go through what you are going through”.

Now you have reached the point where every poor performance is a session of self abuse, followed by depression. To heal, the ego stirs up memories of past performances, telling you how great you used to be, or how great you will be, and your misery today is worth it when compared to the amazing joy that will come once you can beat everybody all of the time.

On a good day, it takes credit for your performance and says “this is a taste of what serving me can get”. It then feeds on your win and gets you your fix. Often times the only way to get this fix is to blow your accomplishments out of proportion (I ran 5 racks, never missed a ball, won $5,000, played perfect, it was amazing). You then try to convince other players that this is true, because if they believe it then maybe you aren’t that far from reality. Constantly comparing yourself to other players, asking people how they think that you match up with so and so.

It is almost like people rank all of the players in the pool world, and assumes that the best players are the happiest. After all, they can feed their ego slightly bigger trophies, so they MUST be happy. In reality, they simply have a higher tolerance.

[PART II]
Ego says (laughable when you expose it):

(when you first pick up the cue) You can’t do this. Look at how hard it is for you. Everyone else is doing so much better. You must be the worst player in the world, might as well give up. (Ego telling you that the only reason to play is outcome, if you can’t get everything that you ever wanted easily, why bother?)

(when you make your first shot) Look at you! Now you’re talking. Shoot, you’ve only been playing for a few minutes and you already made that shot! Think of how great you’ll be in a few months! You could be the world champion! (bipolar already kicking in, ego building expectations, beginning to believe that happiness is attached to outcome and performance)

(when you get discouraged and someone gives you a pep talk) See, people are saying good things about you. Listen to me and do what I say and you’ll be great and achieve happiness, glory, and acceptance. (ego blows pep talk out of proportion and feasts on garbage. Person that gave the pep talk is part of a culture that thinks that it is normal that when a guy is ‘down’ you pump him up. That is feeding garbage, as what they really need is an ego check.)

(when you get positive results) See, I told you that if you listened to me you could become the greatest in the world. Aren’t you HAPPY NOW!!! Look at how perfect you are! You are the man, and everything that you do is awesome! Finally, you are there! (ego blows accomplishments out of proportion and feasts on more garbage. People around say things like, ‘gosh, so and so won one match and now he thinks he is the best in the world’. Obviously you have always felt that, and just needed a tiny bit of positive outcome for you to feel that way)

(when you get negative results) Do you know what? You might just be the most terrible player ever. Anybody with any ability at all would never have (missed that ball, lost that set, blah blah blah). Here you had a chance to be someone, to win, to be happy, to have something to show for your time here on the planet, but instead you blew it and now will be eternally worthless, despised by everyone who’s respect you need. And you deserve it, even misery is too good for you, being in agony every second for the rest of your life is more than you deserve after single handedly ruining my shot at fulfillment. (aha, MY shot, ego wants to feed and is furious that it gets nothing, may result in eating more garbage by fishing for flattery again)

(shortly after negative results- the deal) You had better not ever let that happen again! But you will, if you don’t have ME to help you. From now on, admit that you are horrible and that you need my help. Just do everything that I say from now on and you will be great. I can do great things for you and give you everything you want. Understand that you are miserable now so that greater happiness will come down the road, and it will be worth it. (mini ego feast to feel good again, maybe the ‘someday they’ll all see how good I play and then it will all be worth it’, or the ‘nobody else is willing to whip themselves this hard, they are all weak, that is why I’ll be the greatest’.)