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ego are two words meaning exactly the same thing. ‘Ego’ is just the Latin
word for ‘I’ – your personal ego that is yourself with a small ‘s’ is a
protective barrier between the outside world and your inner feelings of
vulnerability. Whether it's raised as a permanent shield against bad
experience, or lowered to permit the passage of true individual
awareness, is entirely up to each of us as individuals. Our various
personas are part of a complex wardrobe of role costumes, each one
custom designed to fit a particular situation. Taken as a whole, they go
to make up our individual personalities - the one-off collection of
attitudes and behaviour patterns that identify you as being separate and
distinct from every other person. An attitude is a personal collection of
beliefs about how the world works, and how best to face the problems
it presents. It's a kind of how-to-do-it compendium we carry around in
our heads packed full of set responses about how best to respond to
worrying situations. For example, if you were afraid of being bullied at
school and found that an aggressive attitude of confrontation worked for
you at the time, then you might build your future personality construct
around that. On the other hand, you might have decided that discretion
was the better part of valour and applied that belief to construct a
permanent attitude of self-effacement. There's a saying that goes, “we
don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.” You'll never be able to
see what's really going on around you right now, as long as your fixed
attitudes and patterns of behaviour remain stuck in the past, with your
eyes permanently focused on an unchanging inner landscape. If you
aspire to become personally aware, which is the ultimate aim of Unitive®
coaching, you’ll continually need to examine your own fixed attitudes
and discover their true function. Your work is to bring them up to date -
to make them relevant to the here-and-now. And yes, it's a lifelong task,
but the rewards are enormous. You'll be free to play - and play is the
operative word here, not work! - in whatever role you choose. Not only
that, but you'll also be able to put it on or discard it at will. You then
acquire the creative ability to step in and out of your chosen roles - your
chosen personas- easily and with grace.