I love OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network). When I need a break from all the foolishness that my favorite reality shows bring, I watch OWN and see the "real" life stories of people who are just like me. But, last night was the premier of Oprah's Life Class series. It's just Oprah, on a couch talking "one on one" with her audience about the things she has learned over the years. Her opening question was " where does your ego get in your way?"My first reaction was, ohh, this doesn't apply to me because I don't have an ego. I never thought that I was better than anyone, and I'm confident but not arrogant. But, I'll go ahead and watch this anyway.
Little did I know what the true definition of ego was. She explained ego in many scenarios, including her "fat wagon" show when she wheeled 70 pounds of fat onto the stage to illustrate how much weight she had lost. But the one that hit the nail on the head for me is when she said that ego is that annoyance you feel when you think you have been disrespected, that "how dare you" attitude. Then she went on to say that there are people who give of themselves and do so much for people, expecting the same in return. And then you get mad when it doesn't happen that way. She went on to ask "is your love truly unconditional?" My mouth dropped.
It hit home for me because I had just come out of a mini pity-party of my own the day before. Me and my husband's birthday are five days apart and we just turned 30. And, like I always do, I go big and make sure that we do something new and exciting for his birthday and I was hoping beyond hope that he would do the same for me this time. I mean come on, this was a milestone birthday and I have been super stressed these days with the kids and the business. He had geeked me up, trying to be all secretive, so I had all these scenarios in my head that I was about to have the best birthday of my life. It was about to be on and popping. But, that's not what I got. We had a game night with the family, which was fine, but my imagination had so far exceeded our usual family gathering that I was a little disappointed. Okay, a lot disappointed. But, because I am a suffer in silence type of girl, I went on with the festivities and slapped a smile on my face and continued to be the same ol' Rhonda.
But, the next day I was steaming mad. How dare he make me feel like I wasn't worth the effort? And how dare my friends and family act like it was just another day? Where was the excitement? Where was the love? I went from pissed to depressed and I literally spent the whole day in the bed. My ego kept me down for a whole day because I felt I deserved better.
It's three days later and I'm still struggling with this because one, I'm a continual work in progress, and two, I do go above and beyond for people and it's not to get something in return physically but emotionally. All I want a lot of times is to feel like I have been seen or heard, so that is my personal battle I'm dealing with. There was a woman on the show who said something to the effect of:
"It's not possible for other people to hurt me. They are giving me their observation- and I am giving it
meaning. I get to choose what that meaning is."
So when people don't call or don't do what they say they are going to do, or don't live up to that expectation, it's up to me to define that moment. All I know is that that was the first and last pity-party for me. I'm going to work on putting my ego in check and I can't wait for tonight's Life Class lesson: Letting go of anger. This gone be goood.
Make sure you tune in tonight and also sign up for the class at www.oprah.com/oprahs-lifeclass, where there will be a webcast following the show with more wisdom from Oprah and questions from Facebook, Twitter and her website audience. See you in class.
