Ego death is often defined as a temporary loss of self, usually described in the context of altered states (a.k.a. doing drugs)

Our ego is the drug.

You see it happen in real time: a friend announces their promotion on LinkedIn. Another closes a funding round. Someone you started alongside three years ago is now running a team. And there it is - that quiet tightening in your stomach. Not quite pain, not quite anger. Just a low hum of: why not me?

This is the ego at work. It keeps score. It reflexively compares titles, progress, visibility. It feeds on proximity, on seeing what others have and asking why you do not. When that comparison becomes habitual, your sense of self becomes brittle, dependent on constant reinforcement.

Jealousy does not sharpen you. It makes you fragile. It pulls attention outward when the actual work demands inward focus. The ego insists that other people’s success diminishes you. In reality, it only reveals how much of your identity you have tied to comparison.

To move forward in life, you must experience ego death.

People talk about ego death as something induced, something external. But the ego can undo itself without drugs, without spectacle. Ego death doesn't have to be dramatic. It is a small surrender repeated. Choosing motion over measurement. Choosing depth over display. Allowing yourself to be unfinished without interpreting that as failure. To be ridiculed for not knowing things. To move through challenges without internal resistance.

It means living unapologetically to yourself, immersed in the grand universe without needing to prove your place in it. Not measuring yourself against others. Not keeping score. Just doing the work, learning, growing - without the constant need for validation.

There is relief in that.

What remains is just you and the work itself.