How deflated is your ego 🤔?

Allow me to first clarify. I am not talking about a “bruised” 🤕 ego. I refer to ego in the psychological sense, not the colloquial sense.
Did you know your ego craves sustenance and can run out of steam.
The ego important to us, serving as our connection to our environment, our conscious thought and our “self”. Throughout the day, we are making the “right” moral and ethical decisions, resisting urges, temptation, bad foods, being lazy, etc. All this decision making and staying on the righteous path can deplete or drain the ego of its resources.
Our ego needs to be fed, satisfied, gratified and mollified. It needs intrinsic incentives or else it gets hungry, cranky, and “depleted”. When this occurs, our ego is no longer capable to consistently self-regulate, resist urges or make practical decisions. Compulsive buying of the consumer is a common behavioral manifestation from ego depletion.
 

Theories on ego depletion

An older ego depletion theory says that it is actually our “willpower“ that gets drained. In other words, you possess a certain amount of willpower storage for the day, and if you use it all up, you succumb to your immediate urges, unable to or unwilling to resist. 
The newer model portends that a lack of motivation or intrinsic incentive is the culprit to our inability to self-regulate. Without that motivation or immediate reward, we are no longer able to feed ego and lose the “drive” to stay on point.
In either case, whether it’s lack of will power or lack of incentive to keep on track, it’s the tendency to make poor decisions that is the common denominator.
Let me provide an example. A few months ago, I had some deep blood work and found that I was deficient in a few vitamins, had candida (stomach yeast infection) and possibly an intolerance to gluten. It was prescribed that, for 1 month, I cut out all dairy products, wheat and alcohol.
Staying on this new, strict dietary regimen could easily have either drained me of my willpower from constantly fighting temptation (theory #1) or been met with discouragement, fighting the good fight, but never seeing the end to war (theory #2). However, after only 1 week, I felt and saw immediate positive results (decreased bloating after meals, increased energy, improved sleep, better “poops”). My early results fed my ego with reward. My will power was strong because I’m a science nerd. I fully understood the benefits of changing things up in my diet to derive the best results. The urge to drink alcohol or have a big ass cheeseburger diminished quickly. A little bit longer without feeling a dramatic change may have been a different story and I may have wavered a bit.

What are some of the causes of ego depletion? 

• Lack of rest. Poor recovery. 
• Excess sugar/poor diet. 
• Emotional/psychological issues such as anxiety or depression.

What are the symptoms of ego depletion?

• Self-regulation impairments
• Consumer Behaviours: When consumers are depleted, they are more likely to become passive, and make more impulsive decisions that may not fall in line with their true values.
• Guilt
• Fatigue
• Athletic performance Research has found that competitive athletes’ mental determination can be hindered after completing a difficult cognitive task more than after completing an easy cognitive task.[23] This indicates that the hindering effects of ego depletion can be applied not only to subsequent performance on cognitive tasks, but on physical tasks, as well.

Here are a couple things you can do to decrease ego depletion.

• Get enough rest and recover well from workouts. 
• Schedule in time off every fews  weeks to take time and enjoy yourself. This can be your “ego“ day.
• Stop trying to juggle all those plates on so many sticks. Prioritize your day task. 
• I can’t repeat the old adage enough — “You are what you eat.” The right nutritional plan, based on your particular needs,  will make or break you eventually.

 
Protect your ego. Let both body and brain rest when I need to, stick to the basics as far as nutrition, stress management, rest in recovery, exercise/lecture
 
Heal. Move. RESTORE. Evolve.
#Ego #Superego #Id #EgoDepletion #BlackPhysicalTherapist #Healmoveevolve #MoveEvolut