The Art Of Ethical Ego-Feeding: Jenny Wood And Dr. Preston Cherry On JUST PRESS RECORD

Everyone has an ego that needs feeding. That's not controversial - that's human nature. What's controversial is admitting we should learn to work with it instead of pretending it doesn't exist.

I sort of want to blame Ryan Holiday for telling us that ego is an enemy. I mostly want to blame Megadeth for putting that idea in his head.* I know the truth is more nuanced, and I think about this stuff a lot.

Ego comes from the Latin "I” - effectively meaning, your core sense of self. Freud made it weird from there. But the sense of self and identity refers to a basic self-awareness, not any form of arrogance.

Here’s a universal truth, i.e. it’s true whether you bombed 7th grade Latin or successfully avoided it: Everyone has an ego that needs feeding, a sense of self-awareness that requires finding, and an arrogance-line worth learning to exist above.

When Dr. Preston Cherry casually tossed out this Martin Luther King Jr. quote on Just Press Record, it pushed that idea into my mind, big time.

Because if we stop pretending people don’t have egos, we can start acknowledging a fundamental human need to learn to work with it (re: stay above that arrogance line) and not against it (re: find your, and help others discover their, sense of self-awareness).

But knowing everyone has an ego is only half the equation. The other half is learning how to skillfully work with that reality - which brings me to a word that's been even more unfairly maligned than ego: manipulation.

I introduced Preston to an author who changed my idea about “manipulation” - Jenny Wood.

Manipulation, like ego, has a great Latin-based etymology worth mentioning here. “Manus” is hand, and “pilus” is to fill - which becomes “manipulus” aka “a handful.” When we add the -tion, and as it’s evolved over time, manipulation became “skillful handling.” In that pure form, there’s no bad connotation. The handling has skill, and whether you do that for good or evil, it’s a simple manipulation.

As Jenny points out why manipulation is a form of mutual value creation,

You can see how Preston and Jenny are already winning the Just Press Record language-nerd awards.

Jenny showed us exactly how this works in practice. She told us about rewriting a Google sales email - flipping "I loved coming in and training your team. I had so much fun. I really enjoyed helping you understand our new products," to "Your team was amazing to partner with. You are clearly passionate about helping serve your end customers. You were enthusiastic and educated enough that I think you're ready for us to train you on this other product."

Same goal, different approach. The flipped version feeds the client's ego while achieving the business objective. Pie = expanded. Because when you skillfully handle (manipulate) a situation so that someone's ego gets fed while you achieve your goals, you're practicing the art of ethical influence. Ego is identity via self-awareness. Manipulation is mutual value creation via a personal skillset. Put them together and you get something really powerful.

And, if all humans (I said, ALL HUMANS) need to feel valuable and seen, these definitions aren’t just really powerful, they really matter too.

We live in a world of social manipulation. We live in a world of confused and confusing words (democratic socialism, I’m looking at you). We live in world of loneliness and polarity, where the ethical choices to bring people together, is both as simple and as hard as making others feel important, capable, and recognized.

Jenny and Preston are both doing that in their own circles and communities. They’re trying to teach it. They’re writing books, speaking publicly, and yes - going on weird little podcasts about it.

It won’t surprise you to know that I’m obsessed with how personal creativity contributes to solving this problem. Not once and for all, but materially improving the world around us by not feeling trapped in our own heads. Look how Jenny put it to us,

Most people think manipulation is always bad and feeding egos is inauthentic. But as Preston and Jenny explained to me, this is actually the most honest and effective way to create value - by becoming obsessed with others' success, not just your own.

Next time you need to influence someone, or you're under the influence of someone else - which could be anywhere from sending a cold email to getting LinkedIn DM'd with a calendar link for what you already know is a sales pitch - think of Jenny's approach with Preston's mindset. Take 30 seconds and think about how everyone's ego is getting fed (or starved) in this interaction. Then, find the mutual value. Figure out what's growing the pie for all the egos involved. If you can flip it to lead with that instead of what anybody individually needs - congratulations!. You just made the world a slightly better place.

This is the Cultish Creative brand of counter-culture in a nutshell: be obsessed with how your creativity helps make others feel valued and successful. When the obsession is sourced out of mutual benefit, you'll never fall on the side of selfish manipulation, and you'll constantly and confidently act out of ethical influence.

Jenny Wood and Dr. Preston Cherry are living embodiments of this theme, and you just have to see them be introduced to each other, for the first time ever, on Just Press Record:

*even though I have no proof of this, I’d just prefer to like Ryan Holiday, as I do, and be annoyed with Megadeth, as I always have been.