It is impossible not to have an ego in my opinion.

The question is is it the ego that runs you or can you operate beyond the ego enough to to that to a degree at times and enough to teach the ego to work for your goals and not against them.

About 70% of the ego is the mother and father parts of our ego which is the parts of our subconscious that treat (praise, punish, support, criticize etc) us in almost the same (or rebel and opposite) as how we experienced! being treated by our parents.

The ego becomes much more functional and healthy and supportive when the conscious adult chooses to act on ones own accord which may be similar or opposite to parents but often something completely different.

(this is my understanding of human nature and many may disagree - but the ego parts often operate without much, or any, awareness of the individual)

How many times have you seen examples of people turning into their parents - that is literally childhood programming - not good or bad but the way it works as I understand it.

Many people respond with an automatic unquestioning - "I can think for myself" - in my experience many many parts of the self are not in conscious awareness but with observation it is often quite easy to see some examples at least.

Winning is so focused on that the fear of loosing seems to be deeply embedded in the subconscious.

Loosing and failure in our western culture has some deep and strange aspects...

Consider a baby learning to walk - she falls... if its not seen negative by the parents, the child doesn't develop and negative perspective of falling and life goes on.

In falling she learns how to fall - learns how to catch self and not get hurt or minimize damage - this also teaches confidence in challenging balance because even if a fall happens she knows she is safe (relative to development and abilities)

She also learns how top get up again and walk again. Getting up after falling is huge!! The greats mostly seem to have over come many "falls" - M Jorden to Churchhill

Loosing - is learning and depending on how its viewed is a great great learning tool.

In falling she learns why and how and therefore learns to walk better.

Winning is everything is like walking is everything and falling bad and the development is greatly limited in my opinion and experience.

Questions - why the need to win? Where does that come from? Why is it so important?