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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this video I'm going to talk about it ego and the super-ego all right welcome back so let's talk about the it'd the ego and the super-ego in this video I want to cover what these concepts are and how they play into practical personal development how do we actually apply these old-school concepts from really Sigmund Freud back in the early 1900s how do we take them and how do we make sense of them and actually use them to help us today in our own lives to improve our self-control and our ability to be happy and successful so let's talk about that let's really define what the it'd the ego and the super-ego are like I said these are some old-school concepts coming from Sigmund Freud way back in the day and in a lot of ways they're somewhat obsolete today they're somewhat archaic and the whole Sigmund Freud school of thought the whole analytical psychoanalytical school of thought is in many ways not what you want to be using in order to move forward in your own personal growth what I'm delivering to you guys through actualized org is more practical more modern ideas things you can go out there and apply but we can still take some lessons from this old model that Freud developed and we can see how we can use it to help us today so a really good analogy that I loved and I got from Jonathan Haight who wrote the happiness hypothesis there he gives us on this amazing analogy for what the it'd the ego and the super-ego are he says it's like this imagine in the old times there's an old buggy a horse carriage drawn buggy and here you've got the horses which are pulling this buggy forward at breakneck speed then what do you got you've got the rider on top of the buggy who is holding the reins and trying to control the horses trying to steer the horses he's also got a whip so he's whipping the horses to make them run and that is like the relationship between the heed and the ego the it'd are the horses the ego is the rider he's trying to control the horses but then inside the carriage behind the rider is his old father and his father is yelling at the rider telling him where to steer the carriage and that is like the super-ego so I love this image because it's so easy to remember and it just clearly illustrates what each one of these functions of the psyche are and that's exactly what Freud was talking about here these are functions of the psyche the heed the ego and the super-ego so what is the it that it is the horse or the multiple horses that you've got pulling your carriage forward so what is that literally well that can be described as your more base instinctual desires this is that force within you that force within your psyche that is looking for instant gratification that is looking for pleasure it's more or less unconscious right the way that you would imagine a horse a horse is just kind of doing its own thing it's not too worried about where we're going it's just hungry or it's thirsty or it wants to run or it doesn't want to move and that's just a horse then you've got the ego the ego is the rider he's the rational one he is the more conscious one and he's the one who's in control he's thinking long-term he's planning he's the realistic person he's the the strategic element of the psyche he's that part of you that's being rational and that's planning your life that's the ego and it's trying to rein in the it it's trying to rein in the horses because sometimes the horses want to do crazy things that not healthy for the overall throw over old carriage and rider situation it might even be something that's not healthy for the horses themselves maybe the horses decide that they will go want to lead the carriage and themselves off a cliff and they'll do that unless the rider holds the back and steers them in the right direction and then of course we can't forget the lovable old cranky man the father sitting in the carriage behind the rider and he's the wise one he's the one who knows best he's got experience he's got morals he's got ideals he's got high standards he is the societal influence you might say and he's the one who's lecturing who's moralizing the rider on how to best steer the horses so he might criticize the rider in one aspect of how he manages the horses or he might he might offer some suggestion or some advice about how it should be done better and that is the super-ego and what is that well that's the part of our psyche that is the moralizing part it's our conscience you might say it's that part that is the ideal self but also the critical self it's that inner critic that we all have that tells us that we know we could be doing better and that we should be living up to something more than we currently are so this is the dynamic the it'd the ego the super-ego this is how Freud thought of it this is how Freud characterized the human psyche is that he thought that we had this very low base part which is virtually unconscious the horses but it all it wants are instant gratification and desires right quick hits of pleasure without thinking about long-term repercussions then he imagined we've got the flip side of that the complete opposite which is like the the moralizing site the ideal side of us which knows what should be done which is the conscious part but it's also the part that can be sometimes to ideal stick to moralizing to sermonizing and so then you have this dysfunction in-between which is the ego and it's the egos job to kind of guide between the two extremes the ego is trying to really live up to the conscience but in the hand it's also trying to appease the horses and it's trying to appease the the it'd so yes the ego wants to to indulge in pleasures but isn't one indulgent pleasures in such a way that it's self-destructive and it's going to lead you off a cliff so he listens to the super-ego and then sometimes the super-ego is a little bit too Stern and a little bit too self criticizing too judgemental and so the the ego wants to bring it back towards the it'd and this is the job of the ego it's to mediate between these two extremes like the best in us and the worst in us to kind of mediate between the two and to keep us on the road on the road going forward in life doing whatever it is that we have to do now there are a few problems here with this model I mean first of all it's not literally how the mind works this is just more of a kind of a figurative or just a a diagram diagrammatic way of looking at what is going on here so this is not literally what's happening you don't actually have an it in your brain you don't actually have an ego in your brain and a super-ego it's all kind of meshed together and so some of these roles are hard to really deal delineate I think there's something powerful here though to the idea that we do have a lower self or something that seems like that in our brain you know it's that lower self that tells us that we shouldn't go to the gym today that we should just take it easy it's that lower self that says we shouldn't push it at work today we should just take it easy maybe we should just take a vacation maybe we should drop off that diet maybe we've been good enough so we should indulge in some TV or some internet or some sort of easy stimulation maybe go get that third martini maybe go drinking with the friends go have a party do something fun do some recreational drugs right that's the it'd and we all we've all been there we've all given in to that and we also know the dangers of that the dangers of that are forming bad negative habits that can really destroy your life I mean in the the worst of situations like drugs like literally those habits can wreck your entire life but even in more subtle ways even in more socially acceptable ways just simple things like watching television or being addicted to partying and drinking even though that's socially more socially acceptable than hardcore drugs it's still probably destroying your life and robbing you of all the potential that you've got so you got to watch out for that you got to watch out for that for that in then of course we also know the conscience part and the conscience part I think is really where Freud's model here kind of starts to break down is I think the ego is more accurate and that the the the super-ego is the problematic thing because really you don't have you don't have this I mean you do have some sort of societal conditioning and you probably have morals that you picked up from your parents and from society and from the media it just things from culture that you're told are taboo that are wrong and so you've got those in the back of your mind but that is really not your highest self your highest self is something different than the super-ego really if we take this whole model and we we cut it up in a different way I think a more accurate way to cut it up would be to simply say you that you've got your lower unconscious self and then you've got your higher conscious of because your conscious self naturally tries to live up to ideals and it naturally tries to do good and your higher self this is where you ultimately want to be it's not that you should be mediating between your your lower self and your higher self no you should be going totally for your higher self but this higher self is not the moralistic higher self that your parents taught you about it's not that that sermon that you got church that tells you that if you don't do good and you don't do right and then if you lie and you cheat and you have sex then you're going to go to hell with brimstone and and pain and torture it's not it's not about that that's not how it works and I think that this is where Freud's model really starts to break down is that use probably coming at it more from this religious context and the societal conditioning context that was telling you what to do no in reality the way it works is that when you're doing things for the lower values you're doing things just to get pleasure or stimulation or doing things that are easy and comfortable really what you're doing is you're behaving in an unconscious way and when you're doing that that is the evil of the world that is what's destroying your life that's also what's causing evil in the world is when people live like that they live unconsciously they get angry they have negative thoughts are always judgmental they're criticizing they're engaging in activities that are not good for them in the long run they're they're hurting their health they're hurting their relationships hurting their businesses their work their careers that is all unconscious when you start to move towards consciousness you start to develop more knowledge more self-awareness then what happens is that really you move towards your higher self and your higher self is not a mixture of both good and bad elements like the super-ego is because the super-ego on the one hand it has ideals but it also is negative in the sense that it's critical right it's like that critical parent well that parent might have good intentions but in the end that criticism that the parent is throwing out the judgments the constant nagging that's not healthy and that's actually an unconscious behavior so what we want to do is in Freud's model what we would do is we would take the super-ego we would carve out that critical part and we would now move it over into the it'd that's where it properly belongs and so if we reformulate that whole model then what you've got is you've got the it'd which is the negative stuff and then you've got the higher self you've got now the new super-ego which one is what I call the higher self and that's you being fully conscious when you're fully conscious that's ultimately where you want to be that's when you're making the best decisions that's when you're thinking long term that's when you're able to delay gratification that's when you're able to be wise that's when you're able to control your impulses you're able to control your thought patterns you're able to do things with complete awareness you're also very happy with life as it is you don't always need to be judging and criticizing browbeating yourself up all the time brow beating yourself and beating yourself up over the fact that you're not able to do as much as you wanted to do that's not a healthy impulse sometimes people get that wrong and I think that's referred got it wrong is that that's not a healthy impulse a healthy impulse is being completely conscious and it's also accepting the fact that you're not perfect and that you're going to slip up sometimes and that's okay what you're trying to do is you're trying to be conscious of all your imperfections as well as the things that are good about you and really when you get to a very high level of consciousness in your life then what happens is that you just become at peace with what is you're not so worried about striving for something you're not so worried about judging yourself for doing something wrong or not living up to some sort of goal you're just more comfortable you're more peace now you might say well if that's the case don't you become listless don't you become unmotivated don't you become lazy actually no what happens is that when you stop criticizing yourself you become more motivated when you're at peace it's not like you have no motivation now it's not like you just sit on the couch in fact quite the opposite when you're at peace everything's okay and now you have a very healthy emotional foundation from which to act upon you're not attached to two things and that's healthy to be attached to results and outcomes is neurotic so that parent that's sitting in the back of the buggy yelling at his son to steer the cart to the left or to the right that's really not a healthy relationship that's not a healthy attitude that's a neurotic situation kind of interesting to think about huh how does that apply to your relationship with your parents yeah that's what I thought right probably a little bit of that going on there too so basically that is what the it'd the ego and superego is now how does this actually apply to your life and what can you do with this well I think what you do with it is that you start to recognize that there are these forces within your mind and there's this tug-of-war going on that part of it is pretty accurate there is a tug of war going on between your lower self and your higher self and sometimes the lower self wins out sometimes the higher self wins out and sometimes we do get confused about really what is the lower self what is the higher self sometimes those elements kind of intermix and it's hard to even distinguish is our higher self really doing the best for us or does it have elements within it that are actually part of the lower self that are critical that are judgmental that are trying to get us to achieve things that are not really in line with what we want authentically I think this is the real the journey of personal development is that you go through this and you start to weed and sort out because it's not quite so simple to say what is the lower self and what is the higher self within you you have to actually do some work you have to do some introspection do some personal development and slowly as you get more experienced you start to see which elements are really part of your higher self and which elements are not and as you do that as you make as you make this this distinction more and more clear in your mind it becomes easier for you to become disciplined it becomes easier for you to go towards the route of consciousness and to do the things that are high conscious and that are good for you and you don't have to browbeat yourself to get them to happen it's an easy flowing kind of discipline and that's really what self-actualization is is the self actualized person has made this distinction very clear for himself and he is naturally effortlessly guiding himself towards what's good it's not just doing the bad stuff and knowing that there's good stuff you should be doing it's knowing the good and the fact that you know what's good makes you want to do it that's ultimately the level that you want to get to so I think that's really the power of this idea is that this is something that's real and this is something that you can have in your life is that you can carve out this distinction very clearly for yourself by doing conscious personal velopment work to the point where the things that are healthy for you are the things that you're doing naturally I've personally experienced this a lot in the last year in my own life where a lot the things that I've been struggling with a lot of the bad stuff that I knew I shouldn't be doing now I don't do them effortlessly that's because of a lot of the work that I've done and a lot of that stuff I try to share with you guys through the other videos that I've got so that is ego IDI and super-ego I hope that got you a little bit more clarity around those classic psychology concepts all right so this is it I'm going to be signing off go ahead post me your comments down below I'd love to hear what you guys think please like this and share this and spread this around share this with a friend on Facebook so that we can get other people conscious about what's going on with their own psychologies and then of course if you like this material go and check out actualized org because there i've got an amazing free newsletter for you guys i'm releasing content every week where i'm helping you understand how to self actualize how to develop yourself how to carve out this distinction within yourself how to find out what are the healthy things in your life and how do you become more conscious on how do you do that more effortlessly so that you're motivated you're supercharged you're healthy you're living the kind of life that you want to live you're not bogged down by negative 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