Pearls of Wisdom: Ego, the Destroyer of Everything—and the Illusion That It Is Helping Us

By Upendra Mishra

There are some lessons in life that we learn once and then spend the rest of our lives learning again.

Ego is one of them.

I first wrote about ego in February 2018. I returned to the subject in December of that year, after realizing that what I had written months earlier was only the beginning of my own understanding. Now, years later, I find myself returning to it yet again.

The strange thing is that I am not returning because I have finally figured out what ego is.

I am returning because I am beginning to understand how difficult it is to recognize it.

The more I observe it—in myself, in others, in relationships, in success, in failure—the more elusive it becomes. Ego changes its clothes. It changes its language. It changes with age, experience, achievement, disappointment and even spirituality.

Sometimes it appears as arrogance.

Sometimes as wounded self-respect.

Sometimes as ambition.

Sometimes as righteousness.

Sometimes even as humility.

And perhaps its greatest trick is that it rarely introduces itself as ego.

It tells us it is protecting us.

It tells us we deserve respect.

It tells us we are being treated unfairly.

It tells us our work is better.

It tells us that people do not understand us.

It tells us that we are right.

And sometimes, when we have achieved something significant, it tells us that we achieved it.

That last one has been particularly instructive in my own life.

Looking back, I can see a recurring pattern. Ego helped me climb some of the highest peaks of my life. It gave me confidence when confidence was necessary. It pushed me to take risks, to believe in myself, to work harder, to refuse to accept limitations.

But then, often after I reached the peak, the same ego began dismantling what it had helped me build.

It is an almost eternal human story: rise and fall.

It is also the central theme of my novel, After the Fall: How Owen Lost Everything and Found What Truly Matters. I wrote that story as fiction, but life has continued to teach me that the distance between achievement and destruction can sometimes be surprisingly small.

And ego can be the invisible bridge between the two.

Sometimes, the person who truly loves you is also the person who has to tell you something about yourself that you desperately do not want to hear.

For me, that person was my newlywed wife.

Just two weeks after we were married in 1990, we had our first—and, as it turned out, certainly not our last—argument. During that fight, she looked at me and said something that stunned me.

“You are an egoist. You have too much ego.”

I was furious.

Not mildly annoyed. Not defensive in some polite way. Furious.

How could she say that about me?

I had always thought of myself as almost the opposite of an egoist. I respected my elders and teachers. I helped family and friends whenever I could. I worked hard. I believed I was considerate. I tried to do the right thing.

So, in my mind, I immediately began building a case for my defense.

I went through every piece of evidence I could find to prove that she was wrong.

Look at this. Look at that. Look at all the things I do for other people. Look at how I treat people. How can you possibly call me an egoist?

But she had already reached her verdict.

“You have too much ego.”

We had a huge fight.

And then life moved on.

Except that her words did not.

They stayed somewhere in the back of my mind.

It took me years to understand why.

Now, 35 years later, as I have read more, experienced more, failed more, succeeded more and, perhaps most importantly, reflected more, I have come to a conclusion that is both humbling and strangely comforting:

My wife was right.

She saw something in me in 1990 that I could not see in myself.

And perhaps that is one of the gifts of being deeply loved. Someone who loves you can sometimes see the thing that your own ego will not allow you to see.

The irony, of course, is that my immediate reaction to being told I had too much ego was itself an expression of ego.

I did not pause and ask, Could she be right?

I asked, How dare she say that about me?

That distinction has taken me decades to understand.

The ego does not merely prevent us from seeing our weaknesses.

It often prevents us from even considering the possibility that someone else might see us more clearly than we see ourselves.

And that is where my journey with ego really began.

When I was younger, I thought ego was relatively easy to identify.

An arrogant person had ego. A boastful person had ego. Someone who constantly talked about money, power, achievement or status had ego.

I no longer think it is that simple.

The more subtle ego is far more dangerous.

It says:

I am only defending my dignity.

I am standing up for myself.

I know what is best.

I have sacrificed more than everyone else.

I am the one who always helps people.

I am loyal.

I am honest.

I am better at this than they are.

I don’t need anyone.

I don’t care what people think.

Even “I don’t care what people think” can sometimes be another form of caring deeply about what people think.

Ego is remarkably creative.

Give someone success and it can say, “I am successful.”

Give someone knowledge and it can say, “I know more than others.”

Give someone wealth and it can say, “I am important.”

Give someone suffering and it can say, “Nobody has suffered as much as I have.”

Give someone spirituality and it can say, “I am more evolved than others.”

Even give someone humility, and ego can whisper:

Look how humble I am.

That is why the older I get, the less I think ego is simply arrogance.

It is identification.

It is the constant construction of an “I”—a story about who I am, what I deserve, what belongs to me, what I have accomplished, what has been done to me, and how the world ought to treat me.

And once that story becomes sufficiently convincing, we begin defending it as though our life depends on it.

Ashtavakra’s Radical Insight

This is where I find the Ashtavakra Gita extraordinarily powerful.

Ashtavakra does not spend his time telling us how to make the ego better.

He goes much deeper.

In Chapter 8, he describes bondage through the ordinary movements of the mind: desire, grief, grasping, rejection, pleasure and anger. Then comes an extraordinarily direct statement:

“When there is no ‘I,’ there is liberation; when there is ‘I,’ there is bondage.”

The “I” here is not simply the ordinary word we use to identify ourselves. It points toward ahamkara—the egoic identification that says, in effect: I am the doer. I am the experiencer. I am the owner. I am the one who has succeeded. I am the one who has suffered. This happened to me. This belongs to me.

That is a much deeper idea than ordinary arrogance.

Ashtavakra’s insight has increasingly made sense to me because the ego does not need to be boastful to bind us.

It simply needs us to remain attached to “I” and “mine.”

I must have this.

I must not lose this.

They must respect me.

They must acknowledge me.

I must win.

I cannot be wrong.

I cannot be humiliated.

I cannot be forgotten.

And when reality refuses to cooperate, suffering begins.

We blame the person.

We blame the circumstances.

We blame bad luck.

We blame God.

We blame the world.

Anything except the “I” that is demanding that reality conform to its story.

That is why Ashtavakra’s teaching feels so radical. The solution is not merely to create a nicer, more socially acceptable ego. It is to see through the identification itself.

The Ego Changes as We Age

Perhaps this is why ego becomes more difficult to see as we age.

When we are young, it can be loud.

As we become older, it becomes sophisticated.

It learns from our experiences.

It learns our vulnerabilities.

It learns what makes us feel important and what makes us feel threatened.

And then it begins to operate through those things.

A young person’s ego may say, “I want to be famous.”

An older person’s ego may say, “I don’t need fame; I simply want recognition for what I have contributed.”

The words change.

The mechanism may not.

The ego is still asking the world to confirm an identity.

This is where self-reflection becomes essential.

Because the ego can even turn our life story into evidence for itself.

Look at everything I have accomplished.

Look at everything I have sacrificed.

Look at everything I have survived.

Look at how many people I have helped.

All of these things may be true.

But the ego takes facts and builds a fortress around them.

Soon, we are no longer simply living our life.

We are defending a biography.

When Success Becomes Dangerous

This has been one of the hardest lessons for me.

Success is not necessarily the opposite of ego.

Sometimes success is the fuel ego needs.

When things begin working, we naturally develop confidence. Confidence is useful. Without it, very little can be accomplished.

But there is a subtle point at which confidence becomes identification.

“I can do this” becomes “I am the person who can do this.”

“I succeeded” becomes “I am a successful person.”

“My work was good” becomes “My work is better than yours.”

And then criticism becomes a threat—not to the work, but to the self.

That is when ego becomes dangerous.

Because now we are no longer protecting an idea.

We are protecting an identity.

And identities can become prisons.

I have seen this pattern in my own life.

The same force that helped me reach certain peaks could become the force that made me unable to remain there.

At the peak, the ego starts whispering different things.

You know better.

You don’t need advice.

They don’t understand you.

You have earned the right.

Why should you compromise?

Why should you listen?

And slowly, the very qualities that helped us succeed—confidence, determination, independence, fearlessness—can become liabilities when ego takes ownership of them.

The climb is over.

The defense of the summit begins.

And eventually, the summit becomes the battlefield.

The Story of Chudala

There is a beautiful story in the Yoga Vasistha that has become particularly meaningful to me: the story of Queen Chudala and her husband, King Sikhidhvaja.

Both are interested in spiritual knowledge, but Chudala progresses toward realization while her husband does not. Eventually, Sikhidhvaja becomes convinced that the answer lies in renouncing the world. He leaves his kingdom and retreats to the forest.

But leaving the palace does not free him.

He has abandoned possessions, comfort and royal life, but the deeper “I” remains.

Chudala, who has already attained realization, eventually approaches him in another form and teaches him.

The lesson is profound: renunciation of the world is not necessarily renunciation of the ego.

You can leave your house and still carry your possessions in your mind.

You can give away your wealth and remain attached to the idea that you are the one who gave it away.

You can walk into a forest and still carry the palace inside you.

And, perhaps most importantly, you can become “spiritual” and still have a spiritual ego.

In one passage, Chudala explains to Sikhidhvaja that simply abandoning the world does not bring the highest happiness; what must be relinquished is the egoism and desire that remain in the mind.

That distinction has stayed with me.

Perhaps the goal is not to run away from life.

Perhaps the goal is to live fully without constantly making everything about “me.”

Chudala’s story also carries another lesson that I find particularly beautiful: wisdom does not necessarily look the way we expect it to look. The person who has truly understood may continue to live, act, love and participate in the world without being imprisoned by it.

Freedom is an inner condition, not an external costume.

The Ego That Destroys What It Creates

I have come to believe that this is why ego can be such a powerful destroyer.

It can help us climb.

Then it convinces us that we deserve to stay at the top.

It makes us defensive.

It makes us stop listening.

It makes us underestimate people.

It makes us overestimate ourselves.

It turns advice into criticism.

It turns criticism into insult.

It turns disagreement into betrayal.

It turns humility into weakness.

It turns relationships into negotiations over who is right.

And slowly, almost imperceptibly, the people around us begin to withdraw.

Sometimes they don’t leave because they stopped loving us.

They leave because they stopped being able to reach us.

That may be one of ego’s cruelest consequences.

It creates a version of ourselves that eventually becomes impossible for even those who love us to live with.

And then, when everything begins falling apart, ego often makes one final argument:

It is everyone else’s fault.

That is when the cycle is complete.

The ego has helped build the castle.

It has convinced us the castle is who we are.

And then, when the castle begins to collapse, it tells us that everyone else knocked it down.

The Ego’s Most Subtle Trick

There is something else I have learned over the years.

Ego does not always want us to feel superior.

Sometimes it wants us to feel like a victim.

They don’t appreciate me.

Nobody understands me.

I have done everything for them.

After everything I have sacrificed, this is how they treat me?

The ego can feed on humiliation just as easily as it feeds on praise.

That is why both praise and criticism can become traps.

Praise says:

You are wonderful. You are special. You are better.

Criticism says:

You have been wronged. You have been insulted. You must defend yourself.

Both keep the attention centered on the same character:

me.

This is why Ashtavakra’s teaching about desire, grief, acceptance, rejection, pleasure and anger is so relevant to ordinary life. He is pointing not merely to grand philosophical ideas, but to the constant movement of the mind around what it wants and what it refuses to accept.

The ego survives by keeping us emotionally invested in its story.

How Do We Begin to Loosen Its Grip?

I am increasingly suspicious of any simple formula.

I don’t think ego can be defeated by declaring, “I have no ego.”

That statement itself can become ego.

Perhaps the first step is simply to recognize it.

To notice the moment when we become defensive.

To notice when praise makes us disproportionately happy.

To notice when criticism makes us disproportionately angry.

To notice when someone else’s success diminishes our own happiness.

To notice when we need to prove that we are right.

To notice when we cannot apologize.

To notice when we are telling ourselves the same story about ourselves again and again.

And, most importantly, to notice the tiny word behind all of it:

I.

I did.

I deserve.

I know.

I want.

I need.

I am better.

I was wronged.

I must win.

I must be recognized.

The observation itself creates a little distance.

And perhaps that distance is where freedom begins.

Returning to the True Self

The more I read the ancient texts, the more I feel that their message is not that we should become passive, weak or indifferent.

It is almost the opposite.

We should live.

We should act.

We should create.

We should love.

We should work.

We should pursue excellence.

But we should stop confusing what we do with who we are.

We can work without needing our work to validate us.

We can love without needing possession.

We can succeed without needing superiority.

We can fail without turning failure into an identity.

We can receive praise without becoming intoxicated by it.

We can receive criticism without being destroyed by it.

We can lose something without believing that we have lost ourselves.

That, to me, is the beginning of what I would call freedom.

And perhaps this is what is meant by returning to the true Self.

When the noise of ego begins to quiet, something else remains.

It does not need applause.

It does not need to win.

It does not need to prove anything.

It does not become enormously high with praise or completely devastated by criticism.

It simply is.

The sages call that state by many names—Self, Atman, awareness, consciousness, bliss.

I think of it more simply as coming home.

Not escaping the world.

Not escaping relationships.

Not escaping responsibility.

But escaping the endless psychological demand that everything in the world confirm our idea of who we are.

The Lesson I Am Still Learning

I wrote about ego in 2018 thinking I had understood something important.

I was right.

But I had understood only a fraction of it.

Today I see ego less as a monster standing outside us and more as a brilliant storyteller living inside us.

It knows our history.

It knows our wounds.

It knows our ambitions.

It knows our insecurities.

It knows exactly what to say.

And it changes with us.

That is why the work never really ends.

We may recognize one form of ego only to discover another hiding behind it.

We may overcome arrogance and discover self-righteousness.

We may overcome the hunger for money and discover the hunger for recognition.

We may overcome the desire for fame and discover the desire to be admired for being above fame.

We may even begin a spiritual journey and discover that the ego has simply put on saffron robes.

The answer, therefore, may not be to fight ego endlessly.

Perhaps it is to become so familiar with its tricks that we no longer automatically believe everything it tells us.

To observe it.

To question it.

To let it pass.

And gradually, to loosen its grip.

Maybe that is what liberation begins to look like in ordinary life—not some dramatic disappearance from the world, but a quiet freedom from the endless demand that the world confirm me.

The rise and fall may continue.

Life will continue to bring praise and criticism, gain and loss, love and separation, success and failure.

But perhaps we don’t have to rise so high with praise or fall so deeply with loss.

Perhaps we can remain centered through both.

Perhaps that is what I have been learning, slowly and painfully, since my wife looked at me two weeks after our marriage and said words I did not want to hear:

“You have too much ego.”

It took me 35 years to understand that she may have given me one of the most valuable pieces of advice of my life.

She saw something I could not see.

And perhaps that is another lesson about ego:

Sometimes the first step toward freedom is not defeating it.

It is being willing to hear someone who loves you when they point it out.

The ancient wisdom seems to take that lesson even further.

The world does not necessarily have to change for us to be free.

Our relationships do not have to become perfect.

Our careers do not have to go exactly as planned.

Everyone does not have to recognize our worth.

We do not have to win every argument.

We do not have to remain at every peak.

What has to change is our identification with the “I” that insists all of these things determine who we are.

Ashtavakra put it with almost unsettling simplicity: when there is no “I,” there is liberation; when there is “I,” there is bondage.

And perhaps that is the ultimate lesson I am still learning.

The goal is not to become somebody greater.

It is to become less imprisoned by the somebody we have imagined ourselves to be.

To return, quietly, to what was there before the praise, before the criticism, before the success, before the failure, before the biography, before the ego began telling us its story.

To return to the Self.

To return home.

And perhaps, in that quiet place where nothing needs to be proved and nothing needs to be defended, we finally discover what the sages meant by bliss.

(Upendra Mishra is the founder of Precise Marketing & Media and a leading advocate for rethinking how marketing drives business growth. Through his “Marketing Upside Down” perspective, he challenges the traditional focus on marketing activity and instead emphasizes revenue as the only metric that matters.With more than 30 years of experience, Upendra has developed the Precise Marketing System, a proven framework that helps companies uncover revenue leaks, focus on high-value opportunities, and build scalable growth engines. His approach has delivered measurable results, including helping a company grow from $14 million to $55 million in just three years. He is the author of Precise Marketing: The Proven System for Growing Revenue in a Noisy World, where he outlines his philosophy for succeeding in today’s crowded and uncertain marketplace. He is also the author of After the Fall: How Owen Lost Everything and Found What Truly Matters. For more, vivit: www.UpendraMishra.com)