I want to be grounded and real, and for the most part I am. But when I get on my high horse, I’m an actor, an artist; I can become an insufferable egomaniac. And I can live in that state until my best friend, Heather, pulls me back into reality. “Look, your high-and-mighty artistness, you’re dribbling barbecue sauce all over your shirt.” And firmly I land on my ass on the ground.
John Mulaney, the very funny and smart comedian, tells this story about walking down the street with his wife. He admires her because she doesn’t give two shits in a purse about what anyone thinks of her. Mulaney contrasts this with himself; he needs everyone to like him so much all the time. His wife says walking down the street with you is like walking with someone who is running for mayor of nothing. I laughed. Mostly because I saw myself in that statement. I encapsulate these two identities in one deeply troubled person: the “I don’t care what anyone says” and the “dear God, please like me” person, always. It’s like the kid in me likes the frosted side and the adult likes the healthy side. But for me it’s more: the kid in me needs constant approval and back pats, while the adult in me hates people, doesn’t care what they think, because I am a god and they are nothing.
Try living like that. Walking down the street with me is like carrying a poster with Hello Kitty on one side and Pope Innocent X, by Francis Bacon, on the other. Joy, joy, joy, backed with Sweet Baby Jesus, what is happening???
I want to be grounded and real, and for the most part I am. But when I get on my high horse, I’m an actor, an artist; I can become an insufferable egomaniac. And I can live in that state until my best friend, Heather, pulls me back into reality. “Look, your high-and-mighty artistness, you’re dribbling barbecue sauce all over your shirt.” And firmly I land on my ass on the ground. Thank God for her. It’s all about ego. Sometimes my ego is much, much bigger than it deserves to be, and sometimes a cockroach can have status over me; it just happens. It depends on where my ego is that day, or even hour to hour, if I’m being really insufferable.
The Ego
The ego, in its resting state, deserves no judgment. The truth is, the ego is neither inherently good nor bad; it is a fundamental psychological tool that shapes human identity, self-worth, and practical decision-making. Whether it has a positive or negative impact depends entirely on how balanced, flexible, and aware a person is of its influence. So the ego stays fairly neutral until the person carrying it activates it — for good or bad.
When the Ego Is Good
Identity and Boundaries: It gives you a clear sense of who you are, separating your internal experiences from the outside world.
Confidence and Resilience: A balanced ego provides the self-assurance needed to pursue goals, withstand stress, and stand up for your well-being.
Practical Function: As outlined by the Cleveland Clinic, the ego helps balance basic impulses with moral conscience, allowing you to function rationally in daily life.
Functioning rationally through daily life — oh, what a joy that would be. But you see here that the ego is good and can be useful and helpful if handled correctly.
When the Ego Is Bad
Defensiveness: An unchecked ego treats differences of opinion or minor setbacks as existential threats, leading to needless arguments and anger.
Isolation: Constantly needing to feel superior, right, or important damages relationships and prevents genuine empathy.
Rigidity: When the ego anchors your entire self-worth to status or past achievements, it breeds anxiety and blocks personal growth.
I have had experiences on both sides, good and bad, and both have taught me some things. Today, I want to talk about a bad ego situation, how it almost ruined me, and what I learned that saved me. Buckle up; this one will be personal, and that means hideous.
My Supersized Ego
Many years ago, when I was still in grad school at Brandeis, I got a summer gig, and I was excited. I had just come off two films (small B-movies), I felt great about my training, and I was, let’s be honest, quite full of myself.
A big part of the summer gig was improvisation, and I was pretty good at it. One day during rehearsal, I was working on a bit with another actor, and it was falling apart. She wasn’t a great improviser, but she got great by the end of the gig, and I had zero patience because I was, at the time, the center of the universe. Anyway, after the bit went flat again and again, she apologized and said she was working on her improv skills, and I said, Dear God, forgive me, “Well, I hope so, because I’m not here to teach you remedial improv.” Yup, I said that out loud to a fellow actor. Trust me, I paid for it.
By the end of the gig, I had settled down, apologized, and made sure I was always at the top of my game. I listened, I gave stage, I put my colossal ego in a trunk, and the gig turned out to be great. I went back to grad school with a new set of tools and a big lesson learned. The lesson came from the director at the closing-night party. He said to me something like: “Okay, so you started on rocky footing, made some pretty terrible statements, and were an incredible egomaniac. Thankfully, you put that shit away quickly, and you turned out to be okay.” If he had said that to me at the start of the summer, I would have jumped up and down and screamed, “Okay, I’m so much better than okay…” and that’s the truth. However, by the end of the gig, being humbled daily by the rest of the cast and falling on my face a few times with no help from anyone, I had changed and grown. So when he said I was okay, I was thankful. I really was.
He said something else that has stuck with me until this moment, as I write this. He said, “I’m happy I cast you; you have a lot of talent, but you seem to forget one basic rule of theater.” “What’s that?” I asked, and he answered: “The basic rule is that you are always, always infinitely replaceable.” And he was right.
In show biz, no matter how good or talented you are, someone is always easier to work with, better to have around, and more likely to be a team player. In other words: congrats, you got the role; never forget there are about a hundred guys in line behind you who can take your place at the drop of a hat. You are always replaceable.
Thankfully, that summer, my director only told me that, and he didn’t replace me — which he could have easily, and admittedly should have, done. I deserved it. But he took a chance on me, pushed me in the right direction, and taught me something that has helped me keep my inflated ego in check. I am forever thankful.
Being Replaceable
That lesson has stayed with me because it extends far beyond theater. Being replaceable isn’t an insult. It’s a fact, and accepting it can be remarkably useful.
Businesses, however, aren’t always very good at accepting it. Success has a way of convincing a company that the rules have changed. Customers keep coming back, the company grows, the reputation gets stronger, and somewhere along the way gratitude can quietly become expectation. Of course they’ll come back. Why wouldn’t they?
Because they don’t have to.
That’s the part worth remembering. Your history may have earned you a reputation, but it doesn’t give you permanent ownership of the people who helped you build it. Neither does being good at what you do. I learned that during my summer gig. Talent helped me get through the door, but once I was there, I had to become someone worth keeping around. A business has to do the same thing.
The Customer Is the Casting Director
I like thinking about the customer as a casting director because it changes the relationship in an important way. The brand doesn’t decide its value. The customer does.
Businesses spend a lot of time telling people what makes them special. We build websites around it, develop campaigns to explain it, and carefully choose language intended to separate us from everyone else. There’s nothing wrong with that. Hell, it’s a significant part of what we do at ThoughtLab. But none of it matters if the experience of dealing with the company contradicts the story it tells about itself.
I could have spent that entire summer explaining what a terrific actor I was. I probably came dangerously close to doing exactly that. But the other actors didn’t need my explanation. They had to work with me. They knew exactly what I brought into the room, including the parts I was considerably less interested in acknowledging.
Customers know too.
They experience the company, not the language the company uses to describe itself. They know whether you listen. They know whether dealing with you is unnecessarily difficult. Most importantly, they know whether the promise that brought them to you resembles the experience they had once they arrived. That’s the audition that matters.
Ego Makes Brands Lazy
The danger of success is that it can turn evidence into entitlement. Something worked yesterday, so we assume it’ll work tomorrow. People liked us before, so we assume they still do. Eventually, we stop asking questions because we think we already know the answers. That’s ego.
It’s also where brands can get themselves into trouble — not because they suddenly become terrible companies, but because they stop noticing. A customer frustration that once would have bothered everyone becomes something people learn to live with. An old way of doing things survives because nobody has a compelling reason to question it. The company hasn’t necessarily stopped caring; it has simply become comfortable. Comfort can be sneaky that way.
I think that’s what happened to me during that summer. I wasn’t trying to be cruel to the other actor when I made that ridiculous remedial-improv comment. I had simply become so convinced of my own abilities that I stopped considering what I was bringing into the room besides talent. My ego had made me less observant.
Once I got knocked around a little, I started seeing the room again. I listened. I became more aware of how my choices affected the people I was working with, and the work got better — not because I became less confident, but because I stopped confusing confidence with importance. A little humility didn’t make me less capable. It made me more useful.
Replaceable Doesn’t Mean Forgettable
There’s another side to this, though. If everyone is replaceable, what exactly are we supposed to do with that information? Spend every morning staring nervously over our shoulders, waiting for someone better to arrive? That sounds exhausting.
I think the healthier response is to stop worrying about being irreplaceable. That’s an ego goal anyway. Instead, concentrate on being valuable.
For a brand, value grows from understanding why people chose you in the first place and continuing to deserve that choice. Sometimes that means improving something obvious. Sometimes it means noticing something small that everyone else overlooks. Most of the time, it means paying attention.
That may not sound as exciting as becoming indispensable, but I trust it more. Indispensable is a claim you make about yourself. Someone else has to experience your value. I couldn’t control whether another actor was more talented than I was. I could control what it was like to work with me. Once I understood that, the director’s comment stopped sounding like a threat. It became advice.
The Takeaway
I still have an ego. Of course I do. Somewhere inside me, John Mulaney’s candidate for mayor of nothing is still campaigning furiously, desperate for approval, while my high-and-mighty artist self occasionally climbs back onto his horse. Thankfully, Heather remains available to point out the barbecue sauce on my shirt. And my pants. And my socks and shoes.
But somewhere in the middle of those two lunatics is the lesson I learned that summer: you are always, always infinitely replaceable.
For years, I heard the harshness in that sentence. Now I hear the opportunity. If I’m replaceable, then I can stop wasting energy trying to prove how indispensable I am and put that energy somewhere more useful. I can listen, pay attention, and keep getting better. Brands can do the same.
At ThoughtLab, differentiation is central to what we do, but it isn’t simply finding a clever way to announce that your company is special. It’s creating a meaningful reason for someone to choose you — and then living up to that reason when they do. Ego wants the distinction without having to earn it continually. That’s where the trouble starts. Your customers don’t owe you permanence. They gave you a choice. Make them glad they made it.
