In a recent post, I described an intense experience a colleague identified as “ego death.” It occurred on Mount Aconcagua in the midst of a storm and summit push, during which all I believed about my own strength, skill, and resilience was tested to the extent that my sense of self seemed illusory.
By definition, an “ego death” is a profound emotional and psychological crisis in which one’s beliefs and purpose collapse. It may be triggered by a major upheaval or an emotional trauma: a respected surgeon who makes a fatal mistake, or a professional athlete facing career-ending injury.
Can these moments be “purposeful suffering,” a doorway into a new phase of life? Can the “dark night of the soul”1 create deeper understanding of one’s true nature?
Forced out of Apple at age 30, Steve Jobs endured a crushing personal blow and public humiliation. “What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.”2 Jobs also said it was “…the best thing that ever happened to me. There wouldn’t be a Pixar if that hadn’t happened.”3
He added: “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”4
Visionary inventor Buckminster Fuller described a crisis that transformed a “failure” into the “genius” behind the revolutionary geodesic dome and “Spaceship Earth” concept. At age 32, after his four-year-old daughter’s death and being fired as president of Stockade Building Systems, a penniless Fuller walked to the edge of Lake Michigan, intending suicide. Instead, an “ego-death” experience led to a full reassessment of his life’s purpose. Fuller entered a year of solitude to discover what he “might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity.”5
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, the sole survivor of his immediate family during the Holocaust, wrote his first book while imprisoned in a concentration camp. Although Nazi guards destroyed the manuscript, he reconstructed “Man’s Search for Meaning,” a much-lauded book still read frequently today. Frankl often quoted Nietzsche: ‘Those who have a ‘why’ to live can bear almost any ‘how’.”
These examples offer clues about what may come after things fall apart. For myself, with fresh insight, it is the pursuit of excellence and the love of my family that gives meaning to my work and my desire to help create a path for a good life for my children and those I love.
- A phrase used by Spanish poet St. John of the Cross to describe a process that leads to spiritual maturity. It is informally used to describe a painful period of one’s life
- medium.com/@vikasjangir/speech-by-steve-jobs-to-graduates-of-stanford-university-in-2005-5fbb5b644488
- instagram.com/reels/DUXEAMijUNH
- medium.com/@vikasjangir/speech-by-steve-jobs-to-graduates-of-stanford-university-in-2005-5fbb5b644488
- time.com/archive/6813253/design-the-dymaxion-american