Bullying is not just “being mean.” It is a pattern where someone repeatedly hurts, scares, or controls another person, on purpose, to feel safer, stronger, or less ashamed inside. It often starts as a way to cope with their own fear of being blamed, mocked, or rejected.
Self-respect is how you treat yourself on the inside. It means seeing yourself as a person who has value, deserves care, and is worth standing up for. It is not about thinking you are better than others; it is about knowing you are not less.
Masking is when a person hides or changes parts of who they are in order to feel safer, fit in, or be accepted. It is like wearing an invisible costume in social situations. Many people do this, often without fully realising it, especially if they have been judged, bullied, neglected, or misunderstood in the past.
Showing off is something many people do when they feel small inside, not big. It often comes from pain, not pride.
Authenticity Authenticity means being real with yourself and others. It is living in a way that matches who you truly are inside – your values, feelings, limits, and needs – rather than just copying what others expect from you. It…
Honesty and Truth Honesty and truth sit at the centre of both authenticity and “showing off” – boasting, exaggerating, attention-seeking, etc. They are what your real self stands on, when it is brave enough to stop performing and start simply…
When senior leaders rely on dichotomous (black/white) framing under conditions of stress, competition, or political threat, organisational actors create and enforce information-filters (gatekeepers, shadow channels) that preserve apparent unity while displacing unresolved tensions into inverted compartmentalised stovepipes — damaging decision quality and situational awareness.
In this article, I will try to flesh out the behaviour that is embodied within the phrase; “an ego-bound” individual. That is, an individual that projects themselves via a mask of false self behaviours, designed to cover up their inner sense of lacking or inability, that hides their secret belief that they are irretrievably broken. The term ego-bound, specifically, refers to someone that has largely “become” that mask, and considers it to be part of their authentic individuality.
The Four Noble Truths are the foundation of Buddhist teachings, offering a framework for understanding suffering and the path to liberation.
Buddhism’s Two Truths doctrine distinguishes between Conventional Truth (how things appear in daily life, like tables and chairs, bound by concepts) and Ultimate Truth (the ultimate nature of reality, which is emptiness or interdependence, devoid of inherent existence).