Hi, my name is Matt Goddard, and I want to talk to you today about the distinction between forward and behind. And when I say forward and behind, what I'm talking about is whether your egoic mind is in the foreground or in the background. And so if your ego is in the foreground or in the forward position, then you can be like a spider in a spider's web.
Now a spider in a spider web sits waiting for anything and everything to be caught in the entangled in its web. And when that happens, it reacts to check out whether or not the thing that has landed in its web is something which it can devour. When a human has that egoic mind in the foreground, they often perceive anything that triggers them based upon the beliefs and conditioning that they have had for many years is something to check out and to react to.
Now, in reacting to it, they are reconfirming the belief or conditioning that they have and they are looking to establish the evidence of that trigger to confirm their perception that the world is against them. In doing so, the ego is firmly in control of that person's mindset. Now, the real person, i.e. the person being in the background is the person who has insight and wisdom and empathy and understanding to know that they have a choice to respond to anything that might be caught in their web of influence.
Someone with their real self in the foreground and the egoic mind in the background notices everything and anything that might trigger the web. But it has the understanding to calibrate whether or not that is something that they can choose to respond to. They are firmly in control of what they respond to. And when I say respond, they are choosing their response based upon the insight and wisdom that they have and the understanding that other human beings in the world or circumstances that happen or situations in which they find themselves aren't a personal attack.
They aren't personal to them. They are neutral events which they can choose to respond to. The person with the ego in the foreground sees everything as a personal attack, something that is there to react to and to take deeply personally as though it were against them. They assume that every circumstance or situation is evidence to show that the world is against them or that their identity is somehow under attack.
You see this across the spectrum of leadership. Some people are very clearly with their ego in the foreground, some are very clearly with their real self in the foreground, and you get to choose what type of person you want to be, what type of leader you'd like to be by deciding on how you want to respond. If you want to find out more information about how to respond rather than react and how to help your ego move to the background and bring your true self to the foreground, I'd love to have a conversation with you, so feel free to book in some time with me via my website: https://academy.thirtysixtwentysix.co.uk/
