Happy 2014 year!
2013 was a big year! I completed The Bumpy Road to Collaboration and gracefully launched my book into the world, while pursuing my relentless exploration of the ego. One year ago, I wrote Being detached in 2013, a declaration of intention about freeing myself my ego’s hot button. I think I made progress on mastering my counter-productive reactions. You can ask my husband, daughter, colleagues, boss, neighbors and clients. However, at this beginning of 2014, I feel again the need to recap where I am at in my ego-exploration and summarize a few basic concepts. I’m not a researcher. I’m just an artist, writer and cartoonist who has an urge to name -and even better draw- the invisible mechanisms that help understand the human psyche. So don’t expect too much (joke ♥)!
In The Bumpy Road to Collaboration, I chose a very specific angle to speak about the difficulty of working with others: how our ego’s hot buttons get in the way of collaboration.
A hot button is a point of sensitivity that our ego recognizes as a threat. When a hot button is triggered, our perception of reality is limited and distorted. We react ineffectively with fight or flight responses. We retract into a deluded state of confusion – at the mercy of others and external circumstances. We are in a box.
Our hot buttons are coming from our ego. Our ego has developed in our formative years, influenced by our context, family legacy and significant personal events. Our ego constantly keeps us preoccupied with our self-worth. It operates as a distorter of reality and exaggerates all our life experiences: threat, success, failure. In the confusion of the ego, we loose track of our intrinsic sense of love and worthiness, to relentlessly prove our value, and protect or hide our points of vulnerability. The more we spend time on our trade mile, the less we are connected to our authentic self and intrinsic sense of love and worthiness.
Concretely, if you have received a 360 degree feedback in your life and were told that you were too reactive, abrupt, frustrated, angry, shy, manipulative, confused, conflict avoidance, judgmental, detached, numb, shut down, impatient, bossy, stubborn, risk adversed, and so on… you’re lucky! You’ve identified the counter-productive behaviors linked to your hot buttons and therefore, you have a chance to step out of your box.
In my world, success is not to not have hot buttons, especially because we tend to numb them. Success is to: 1- become aware of our hot buttons and their impact on us, others and our projects, 2- master our hot buttons, and 3- free ourself from them, in order to 4- fully bring all our resources to the table and collectively work on solving the mega-gigantic-complex-socio-politico-environmental challenges that our societies are facing.
On this optimistic note, I hope you’ll join my exploration and I wish you a a wonderful new year that feeds serenity, hope and sustainability!
New Year Gift! As a reminder, you can download for free my hot button workbook and assess what are your main hot buttons, with whom, and where they are coming from. Enjoy and keep me posted about your discoveries!