One of my startling realisations while doing the Advanced Inner Game Acceleration Program was that my ego is my friend. Received wisdom in the Game community identifies Ego as an enemy to be dropped or killed before you’ll be free to identify your problems and set about fixing them. This is half true. It’s certainly a necessary part of the process. In my case it was only after my wife left me in 2009 that I realised I was not the well-rounded awesome man I thought I was. Her presence, support and sexual provision satiated my ego’s cravings while shielding me from all the negative real-world consequences that could’ve dented it. Long dry spells have a way of forcing introspection but having hot sex with a hot girl who adores you has a way of blunting such self assessment. Like sportsmen tell you, losing is a better teacher than winning. So when she walked out and I spiralled downhill, my Ego was starved and in it’s weakened state I overcame it long enough to turn the tanker around.

Your ego is responsible for two fixing processes that can be turned to either good or ill, depending how channeled. First, your ego provides the boundary control that allows percolation to occur. Second, it’s your primary resource in managing social position. I’d best explain my terms but first consider an obvious evolutionary psychology paradox – If you are evolved to execute the survive and reproduce program why have you developed a mental structure that greatly inhibits your ability to do so? Makes no sense. Common explanations for the Ego’s existence come down to situational mismatches and twisted socialisation. Captain Caveman will tell you the Ego is evolved for life on the African savannah in tribes of 50-100 people but the pace of social development under civilisation has rendered it obsolete, requiring inner game workarounds. Captain Manosphere will tell you boys are socialised into an unnatural role and their natural drives suppressed by the feminine imperative and this the Ego has a stunted growth, becoming an unruly child. Both are kinda true but my AIGAP tells me a third way.

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Your Ego is the friend you didn’t know you had. Consider the strongly positive influences your Ego can have on your life. Here’s some random thoughts your ego may trigger:

• I’ve made my mind up about something and I’m gonna stick to it. If all those other people want to disagree with me, good luck to them. I know what’s best for me.
• I’m not falling for that rubbish.
• Sorry pal, you tried to steal my girlfriend. I’ll have nothing more to do with you
• You called me a cunt in public. Them’s fightin’ words.
• I want to make VP and get the corner office.
• This suit makes me look way cooler than all the other guys round here
• Do I look like James Bond when I stand like this?

Essentially your ego is what drives you to struggle and excel against other men. It’s your primary weapon in meeting women’s hypergamy needs. It’s what gets your back up and stops the world / other people from rolling you over and stealing your lunch money. When a woman you’ve approached in a bar does something outrageously rude it’s the feeling in your gut that says “Fuck this. I don’t care how hot she is, I’m not having that!” Like fire, the Ego needs to be trained and channeled so it will cook your food and heat your home, rather than burn your fingers. Your ego is the drive to conquer.

So I use the term fixing to mean the crystalisation of your identity and it’s resistance to degeneration over time or from outside influence. Think of your identity as a big pot of gold sitting in a field you own. People are gonna fuck with it and steal your gold so the first order of business is to put a big fence around it. Some barbed wire, sentries, attack dogs, suitcase turret guns whatever. You need to enforce boundary control over your life so you can choose who gets in and you can choose to dole out your treasure on your terms. Hopefully you’ll make a rather better job of it than the UK Border Agency does at a national level. Your ego is the mental structure that keeps your boundary wall in place. When people fuck with you, your ego gets indignant. When people manipulate you, your ego gets suspicious. When people take advantage of you to steal your treasure, your ego does the stocktake and notices the pot of gold emptier than records suggest. Crucially, it also controls the flow of ideas into your neural net. A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.

Percolation is my term for the slow and steady acceptance of new ideas, people and behaviours into your life. Literally, imagine a coffee percolator. To make your morning coffee you get some beans, grind them, fill up the filter, and add water. Then press Go and wait five minutes as it hisses, spurts, and a steady trickle of coffee drips into the jug. It is only then, after every drop of water is filtered and every gram of coffee run through the filter paper that you pour it into your cup and drink. What you don’t do is dump a few teaspoons of instant Nescafe into the cup. Well, you could but it’ll be a shit cup of coffee. Percolation is an important boundary management tool because it allows you to take onboard new life-improving features while still aggressively screening at the point of entry. Taking the Instant route of downloading your opinions, friends, lifestyle choices is relying on a pre-filter by people who don’t have your interests at heart. Without a solid base, you will be tossed around on the waves of fashion. Without a solid change management process, you will acquire more parasites and viruses than a London council estate.

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My friends are aware that I never concede a key pillar of my case while I am still in an argument. Yet I am not so inflexible as to never admit I’m wrong. My strategy is to defend my boundaries and hold my frame during the argument while taking receipt of their ideas in a quarantined holding cell. Those ideas are the coffee beans. Over the days and weeks that follow their ideas will percolate through and, if they are right, I’ll change my mind. Thus I avoid the twin extremes of obsessive frame control / not bending until you break in a spectacular meltdown and also being a total pushover open to anything. It should be clear how this helps your frame when dealing with women.

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The second core function of your ego is to drive you to engage and win in the male dominance hierarchy. You’re probably aware that Echart Tolle spent two years living on a park bench while Buddha was a fat fucker and all those Indian mystics live in filth-ridden caves. That’s the problem with killing your ego, you achieve nothing. I suspect those guys don’t get laid, and if they do it’ll be because the ego is re-activated to set up a Guru-Acolyte frame for deep conversion. Sneaky fuckers. But weirdo hippies aside, a life without ego is a life without purpose. You need that nagging feeling that other men are doing better than you, having more fun than you, earning more money than you, fucking more girls than you, getting better work assignments than you… that’s what gets you competing and achieving. You just have to know when to turn it off. Don’t take your work home with you. Once Ego Achievement Monkey has advanced your station in life you put him back in the cage until you need him again.

To summarise. Your Ego is your friend. He exists because he fortifies you against external frame control threats. A strong well-managed ego is your personal hard dominance tool that secures your pot of gold. Problems only occur when he’s allowed to run rampant. When monkeys run the zoo they just fling shit at each other. So don’t make your frame so strong it can’t respond to real-world opportunities to improve nor make your drive for social position so strong that it steamrolls your life purpose.