It walks in first.
Not the thought.
Not the man.
The ego.
That quiet rehearsal that straightens the smile, adjusts the tie, and clears the throat before the heart even catches up.
It knows how to fill a room, sometimes before the person behind it even arrives.
We all do it, that quick glance in the mirror before stepping into a meeting, a conversation, a crowd.
Not to see how we look, but how we’ll be seen.
Between confidence and performance, something sneaks in practiced, polished, safe.
And that’s where it begins.
When Ego Enters First
Ego doesn’t always wear arrogance.
Sometimes, it hides behind charm or intellect.
It can be polite, even gracious. It knows the right moments to nod, to smile, to laugh just enough.
It rarely announces itself.
Ego doesn’t storm in shouting, “Look at me.”
It leans in and whispers, “Make sure they see you.”
It feeds off the smallest things, the approving glance, the “so true” in the middle of a meeting, the laughter that lands just right.
Harmless, we think.
But little by little, it replaces authenticity with performance.
The Rehearsed Applause
In boardrooms, in friendships, even in love, we start speaking from scripts written by expectation.
Every word gets dressed before it’s spoken.
Every silence rehearsed before it lands.
And the room?
It bends.
Not toward truth, but toward whoever sounds most sure.
It’s not that we mean to pretend… it’s that ego convinces us that being liked is safer than being real.
So we perform.
A little here, a little there, until we can’t quite remember which version of us showed up first.
The Polite “So True”
We’ve all seen that person who fills every space confident, composed, always in control.
And sometimes, if we pause long enough, we’ll realise ~ we’ve been that person too.
Ego lives in those micro-moments of validation we chase, the nods, the polite laughs, the need to have the last word.
And when it takes the lead, something inside us follows smaller.
Quieter.
Less whole.
After the Applause
Then the room empties.
The noise fades.
The performance ends.
And we’re left wondering, who was I in there?
Ego is brilliant at entrances but terrible at goodbyes.
It leaves behind exhaustion, a quiet ache, and that search for the next applause.
The irony is, the louder ego gets, the softer truth becomes.
We don’t need to win every conversation to be heard.
We don’t need to fill every silence to matter.
It’s not the noise people remember.
It’s the stillness that follows you.
Standing Before the Mirror
The man or woman, in the mirror is always worth another look.
Not to fix the mask, but to meet the eyes behind it.
When we strip away the polish, the applause, the lines we’ve practised to fit in we find something far more powerful.
Something real.
Ego will always whisper.
But authenticity? It doesn’t need to.
It speaks in silence.
In how we listen.
How we show up.
How we make others feel seen, not outshined.
Because when the lights dim and the applause fades, the world won’t remember the performance.
It’ll remember the presence.
Maybe that’s where we all begin again ~ before the man.
