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“I’m the best player on this field.” They - pros, coaches, recreational athletes and Saturday afternoon quarterbacks - will tell you with certainty that in order to succeed in sports, you must believe that as soon as you step out there, you’re unbeatable. And it’s true: Self-belief is necessary. What we do too often, though, is we give Ego the keys to the car, put them behind the wheel, toss Humility to the curb, and say “go ahead!” Have you ever played pickup basketball at a YMCA? You know that one guy - it’s always a guy - who is out there like scouts are watching, talking shit and criticizing the people around him for not playing hard enough, lashing out and taking everything personally and treating Sunday morning pickup like his next contract is riding on the outcome? That guy is always somewhere between 23 and 32 years old, and can usually play - maybe even is “the best player on [this] court.” Unfortunately, he is also kind of a jerk and not really fun to play with; I know that guy well, because he was me. You could say that he is “ego-driven,” and you would be correct. Ego can be a useful tool; its whole purpose is to help me understand ME, separate from YOU. It is a differentiator, allowing for the pursuit of individual achievement and self-reflection under certain conditions. However, unmitigated ego that lacks guardrails or guidance makes my identity fragile because it depends on those perfect (narrow) conditions in order to feel secure. I can only be me under certain ideal conditions, and when those conditions become less than ideal, I break down or shut down - usually mentally and emotionally - and the ego lacks the tools on its own to navigate this challenge to my identity. This holds true at the individual and collective levels - let me give you an example. Say you have an extremely talented soccer team: They’re young, but also the best collection of talent that a program has ever had. Confidence is high, practices are competitive and skill level is impressive. Everyone is feeling pretty good about defending the back-to-back regional titles this program has won leading into this season. They play some non-conference games and thrive, but then conference play arrives. Now they’re in games that count, and the team underperforms against less talented opponents. All of a sudden, it feels like an uphill battle to the top of the standings. What happened? A few things, but one stands out: This team has been hearing nothing but how good they are, how talented, how no one can touch them, how they’re the favorite to repeat as champs. They played well in games where there were no stakes, and their ego - collective, and individual - is now running wild. “We’re the best team on this field” gives rise to an assumption, both unconscious and conscious, that they can just show up and win - lacking the humility to understand that they’re going to get every team’s best shot, and leading to a lack of effort early in games. Now, they’ve conceded goals and lost games they perhaps wouldn’t have with a more conscious, more humble approach. By the time they start to play to their level, there’s not enough time left on the clock to recover. And yet, the subconscious result of this challenge is not that they wake up and start playing the way they’re “supposed to,” because with the ego in the driver’s seat, all decisions come from the increasingly urgent (panicked!) need to maintain that fragile identity of “The Best.” Since the ego is very powerful and sneaky but not actually very smart, rather than a switch flipping, decisions on the field become safer rather than more courageous in order to avoid mistakes that are a further threat. Opportunities to score - which require “risk” that can lead to mistakes - are not taken advantage of because of the threat. At the same time, any mistake that IS made is automatically someone else’s fault - a teammate, a coach, the refs, the improperly inflated ball, a gust of wind, anything that keeps the individual’s or collective’s ego safe. You’ll hear some people say that this team “needs to figure it out,” or “just needs to play harder” or that the coach needs to “demand more from his players,” but none of those are useful without injecting humility into the collective mindset of this team. Humility tempers the ego, allows it to express its best functions without spilling over into its worst tendencies. Humility says “I believe in my/our ability to perform up to the level of my/our talent, AND I know that I/we have to work hard and compete and fail forward all the time in order to get where I/we are trying to go.” Humility is NOT an admission of weakness, it’s an invitation to engage fully in the process of improving. It allows me to let go of my need to be infallible and encourages me to make the kind of mistakes that teach and build resilience, flexibility, and adaptability in the face of a challenge. It makes me willing to take the actions associated with - and inherent to - being “all in” on something, and I’m able to make that something a collective purpose rather than just needing to differentiate myself based on my ego’s need to be special. Humility puts ME in service of WE, and allows me to channel the best parts of my ego - confidence, bravery, courage - into everything I do with an eye on improvement, a focus on self-responsibility, and allows me to celebrate my teammates’ success as if it were my own - because it is. Where a rampant ego makes me narrow and judgmental, humility brings openness and curiosity. Let me switch metaphors now, in case you’re not into sports: If the ego is a supercar - sexy, head-turning, fast, impractical, breaks down a lot, expensive to fix, needs smooth pavement to go anywhere - humility is the car with versatility, AWD, some cargo space, and good gas mileage. Not as exciting, but a Subaru will take you way farther than a Bugatti, and is way more useful when the roads turn rough.
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