Why Don’t We Do What We Know We ‘Should’ And Do What We Know We Shouldn't?

Have you ever had the experience of knowing you should do something... but you didn’t? Or conversely, doing something that you know you shouldn't... but did?

Recently, I had such an experience.

When I returned from an appointment I checked my phone messages and there was a call from a potential client asking for some information. That’s a priority... right? I should have called him back immediately. But for some reason, I didn’t. In fact, a couple of days passed before I got around to phoning him. By this time I was feeling guilty and had to make an excuse to him for not calling back earlier. That made me feel even more guilty!

It really got me thinking about why that happened, because this certainly wasn’t an isolated event. It had happened to me before and you, no doubt, have had similar experiences.

Maybe you're trying to lose weight and you KNOW you shouldn’t eat that extra slice of pizza, or you should exercise, or you should balance your cheque-book, or you shouldn't say the words coming out of your mouth, or you ....... (fill in the blank), but somehow you find yourself NOT doing what you know you "should" or doing what you know you shouldn't.

Why is that? Why do we do the things that we know we shouldn’t and not do the things we know we should? Why do so many people make New Years resolutions but fail to follow through on what they intend?

After all, we’d like to be healthy; our relationships suffer when we say hurtful things; and life is certainly less complicated when we're well organized and efficient. But somehow, these little instances crop up and we end up feeling guilty which in turn erodes our self esteem and our confidence. Why?

Pondering this question, I realized that my ego was responsible for actually keeping me “small” and there had, in fact, been many such occurrences in the past. My cunning, creative ego found ways to continue making me feel bad about myself.

Some time ago, after reading Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now”, I realized that I identified with being a failure. Not doing something that I knew I should do was simply my ego’s way of maintaining the status quo. I 'failed' at a lot of things :(.

Many people believe the ego tries to make you bigger and wants you to be better than anyone else, but I don’t think that’s always true. The ego simply wants to be right, no matter what, and whether it persists in making you feel big or small makes no difference.

It’s only job is to maintain its identity and survive, and the only way it can do that is to keep us separate and prevent us from becoming the fully realized spiritual beings that we are by nature. This is accomplished by maintaining our ‘false’ identity no matter what it is we’re identified with.

How does one deal with these experiences?

By being aware of times when you are not living in the present; when you are fighting to be right; when you feel guilty; when you feel depressed; when you feel ‘less than’. In fact, any time you’re on the negative side of your Emotional Guidance System as Abraham Hicks calls our emotions.

You can’t fight the ego, but you can become aware of its existence in your life and identify all its little tricks. That awareness will eventually erode the ego, but you must be forever watchful because it’s a sneaky little thing and can creep into your mind when you least expect it :).