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What is a ‘Perennial Seller’ and Why Do They Matter?

Hidden from view for the vast majority of public is a little page that explains the complicated methodology behind the famous New York Times Bestseller list. And buried mid-way through that explanation is an unusual phrase. It says, with matter-of-factness, “among the categories not actively tracked at this time” by the editors at the Times are so-called “perennial sellers.”

To people not in the industry, this is a strange phrase. Perennial sellers? Like books about flowers? What does that mean?

In fact, it’s an industry term for perhaps the most important type of book in publishing, one that some estimate is responsible for the vast majority of the revenue for the $70 billion dollar book industry: the titles published long ago that keep selling without fanfare and without attention. That’s what a perennial seller is: a product that keeps reaching new customers week in and week out, year in and year out.

Nor is publishing the only industry that has this trend or this concept. In 2015, “catalog albums”—albums 18 months or older—outsold all new releases. In Hollywood, it’s the “library” that funds the massive budgets of the blockbusters that come out each year (and keep the companies in business when the majority of these movies inevitably lose money).

Perennial sellers are books like What To Expect When You’re Expecting, Good to Great, The Great Gatsby, movies like “The Shawshank Redemption” or “A Christmas Story,” or songs like “Happy Birthday” or “Candle In The Wind.” It’s products like Red Wing’s 1907 Work Boot (which confusingly only dates back to the 1950s) or restaurants like The Original Pantry, which has been open every single day since 1924.

If you think I am overstating the economic impact of perennial sellers in these billion dollar industries, a few examples are illustrative: The later Harper Lee’s will contained a clause which stated that her estate would no longer consent to mass market paperback editions of To Kill A Mockingbird. This edition was so profitable and such a reliable sales engine for Hachette that sent executives panicking about how they might replace it. Or look at this list of the bestselling rock albums of 2015. Notice something? Of the 20 albums, a full 10 of them are more than a year old—in fact, the average age of the album on the list is 10 years (and the oldest is 40). Or take the estate of Michael Jackson, which was valuable less because of his music but because of the music of other artists. His empire of copyrights and music libraries, which he bought up over the course of his career, generates hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue to this day. Most famously, he bought the rights to the Beatles catalog—partly because he believed it was worth more than the Beatles did (a decision they came to regret).

Jay Z once rapped, “Own your masters, slaves!” Why? Because that’s where the money is in the music business. As I tell authors and creatives, forget creating a bestseller. Create a perennial seller. Because perennial sellers are the revenue engines of the creative industry. They are like gold or land—they go up year after year—they pay like annuities.

But the paradox of this economic fact is that almost no one in the music, movie or publishing industry focuses on this. As Seth Godin once observed, “Book publishers make more than 90% of their profit from books they published more than six months ago. And yet they put 2% of their effort into promoting and selling those books. Editors, agents, salespeople all focus on what’s new, instead of what works.”

They seem to think that perennial sellers are created by accident. Or that because they are dependable, they’re boring. So agents and execs chase the next big hit, the next big star and try to get lucky. They chase a dragon, an addiction that, in the end, bankrupts most of them.

As mind-bendingly stupid as this is, it’s also good news.

Because it means that if you ignore that noise and create something that lasts, you can write your own ticket. It also means there are all sorts of lessons to be learned from the classics that the so-called experts have deliberately declined to learn.

With my own books, I try to follow Jeff Bezos’s advice: Focus on the things that don’t change. As the founder of Amazon, he knows a thing or two about what customers really want. It’s not what’s new. It’s what works. What’s best. What fills their needs. What’s cheap and accessible. And this was true 100 years ago and it will be true in a 100 years.

The fact that my clients have sold north of 10 million books isn’t what I’m proud of. It’s that they continue to sell hundreds of thousands of copies each year. That several of the books I’ve written have debuted on bestseller lists is great—I love having a framed copy of the Wall Street Journal on the wall in my office. That they aren’t on the list this week or that week? I don’t care. What really matters to me is that the books have continued to sell. (My book The Obstacle is the Way will sell more copies in 2017 than it did in 2016, and sold more in 2016 than it did in 2015 and 2014). That’s what being perennial is about.

This wasn’t easy to do, but I have done it. Not once, but several times now. And so have thousands of other creators, building their careers around timeless principles and avoiding the toxic advice and fads of their industries.

In the next couple weeks and months you’re going to see me writing and talking about this concept a lot so I wanted to take a minute first to define my terms. I also wanted to explain why it matters, even if you’re not an author or a musician or a movie producer.

No one sits down to make something hoping it will disappear. No, the whole point is to stand the test of time. And that’s true whether you’re building a small side hustle or opening a coffee shop or putting on a play. The reason you get up each morning and throw yourself into it—in a way that you would never throw yourself into a memo at the office or another conference call—is because you believe in what you’re doing and you know that there is something special about it.

Success then isn’t something you’re after for a month or two. You want to be evergreen. To sell for decades. To be classic. To make the backlist. To be a perennial seller.

Because that’s where the impact is, in reaching people, and lasting.

You can read all about this in my book Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts which is officially out now. James Altucher has said it’s my best book yet and Michael Rapino, the CEO and president of Live Nation, says it’s a “formula for becoming a classic and legendary.” I hope you enjoy it.

A Leadership Lesson From Eisenhower’s Stoic Reversal at D-Day

On June 6th 1944, Dwight D. Eisenhower pulled off the most stunning and impressive invasion in military history. A total of 156,000 Allied troops invaded the beaches of Normandy and by June 11 more than 326,000 troops had crossed with over 100,000 tons of military equipment. One of those men was my grandfather.

Eisenhower’s critics often harped that he was more of an organizer than a leader. But it was in the days after D-Day that Eisenhower illustrated one of the most profound and clear moments of leadership — an example that entrepreneurs can follow.

After their hard-won initial successes, the Allied troops became bogged down in the hedgerows of France. These obstacles — half earth, half hedge, sometimes 15 feet tall — plus the reality of coordinating that many men and so much material created a temporary stall, allowing the Germans to wage a series of counteroffensives — a final blitzkrieg of some 200,000 men.

The German blitzkrieg was one of the most intimidating and shocking developments in modern warfare. At the beginning of World War II, columns of Panzer tanks rushed into Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium and France with devastating results and little opposition. In most cases, the commanders confronted by the Germans simply surrendered rather than face what felt to them like an invincible, indefatigable monster bearing down.

The blitzkrieg strategy was designed to exploit the flinch. The Allied forces would collapse at the sight of what appeared to be overwhelming force. Its success depended completely on such a response. The military strategy worked because the set-upon troops saw the offensive force as an enormous obstacle.

That was reaction of the Allied forces to the blitzkrieg for most of the war. They could see only its power and their vulnerability. How could they stop it? And when that final blitzkrieg came, would it throw them back to the very beaches they had just purchased at such high cost?

Eisenhower answered that question unequivocally. Striding into a hastily assembled conference room at the Malta headquarters, the American general made an announcement: He would have no more of this quivering timidity. “The present situation is to be regarded as opportunity for us and not disaster,” he said. “There will be only cheerful faces at this conference table.”

Eisenhower was able to see a tactical solution that had been there the entire time: The Nazi strategy carried its own destruction.

Finally, the Allies were able see the opportunity inside the obstacle rather than simply an obstacle threatening them. As long as the Allies could bend and not break, more than 50,00 Germans could be sent rushing headfirst into a net — or a “meat grinder,” as General George Patton eloquently put it.

The Battle of the Bulge and the previous Battle of the Falaise Pocket — which the Allies initially feared were major reversals and the end of their momentum — set the stage for stunning triumphs. By allowing a forward wedge of the German army to pass through and then attacking from the sides, the Allies encircled the enemy completely from the rear. The invincible, penetrating thrust of the German Panzers became not just impotent but suicidal — a textbook example of why flanks should never be left exposed.

Eisenhower’s important decision is a moment I think of often. My grandfather, who landed at Normandy two days after D-Day, experienced these initial setbacks only to later fight at Battle of the Bulge, which resulted in his being awarded the French Croix de Guerre. Eisenhower’s decision reminds me of the role that perceptions play in the success or failures of those in opposition.

It’s one thing to not be overwhelmed by obstacles — to not become discouraged or upset. Few people can do this. But only after controlling one’s emotions, seeing objectively and standing steadily does the next step becomes possible: a mental flip, to look not at the obstacle but at the opportunity within.

As Laura Ingalls Wilder put it, “There is good in everything, if only we look for it.”

Yet many people close their eyes to the gift. Imagine being in Eisenhower’s shoes, with an army racing closer and only impending defeat seemingly in view. How much longer would the war continue? How many more lives would be lost?

Or imagine being Thomas Edison when his entire research and production facility became consumed in a terrible fire? Instead of feeling heartbroken, Edison calmly but quickly proceeded to the fire. “Go get your mother and all her friends,” he told his son. “They’ll never see a fire like this again.”

Let these stories put in perspective the next computer glitch, employee error, rude phone call or missed workplace target.

The hard thing about hard things is that people often make them worse by seeing the disaster and not the opportunity presented. The danger lies in assuming that things need to be a certain way. Businesspeople assume that they’re at a disadvantage or that it would be a waste of time to pursue an alternate course. In reality it’s all fair game and every situation is an opportunity to act.

Blessings and burdens are not mutually exclusive. It’s a lot more complicated.

Try to remember, in moments like these, that a second act comes along with these unfortunate situations.

Sports psychologists recently did a study of elite athletes caught up with adversity or serious injury. Initially, each reported having a sense of isolation, emotional disruption and doubts about their athletic ability. Yet afterward, they reported having a desire to help others, added perspective and a realization of their strengths. The fear and doubt encountered during the injury turned into their realization of greater abilities.

It’s a beautiful idea. Psychologists call it adversarial and post-traumatic growth. “That which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” is not a cliché but fact.

The struggle against an obstacle inevitably propels the fighter to a new level of functioning. The extent of the struggle determines the extent of the growth. The obstacle is an advantage, not adversity.

So this is what can be learned from Eisenhower about any situation bearing down right now. Be the one to stride into the conference room and make it clear: This will be an opportunity and not disaster. Be the first cheerful face at the conference table.

This post appeared originally on Entrepreneur.com. 

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36 Books Every Young and Wildly Ambitious Person Should Read

If there is one thing the great men of history have in common it’s this: books. They read, a lot. Theodore Roosevelt carried a dozen books with him on his perilous exploration of the River of Doubt (including the Stoics). Lincoln read everything he could get his hands on (often recording passages he liked on spare boards because he didn’t have paper). Napoleon had a library of some 3,500 books with him at St. Helena, and before that had a traveling library he took on campaigns. The writer Ambrose Bierce, the Civil War veteran and an underrated contemporary of Mark Twain once remarked, “I owe more to my father’s books than to any other educational and directive influence.”

The point is: Successful people read. A lot. And what about us young, wildly ambitious people who want to follow in their footsteps? We have that hunger, that drive, and desire. The question is: What should we read? What will help us on the path laid out for us — and all that it entails?

Now a lot of the right recommendations are domain specific. If you want to be a writer, there are certain books you should read. If you want to be an economist, well, there are genres you need to deep dive into. If you want to be a soldier, there are others too. Still, there are many books that every person who aspires to leadership, mastery, influence, power, and success should read.

These are the books that prepare you for the top, and also warn against its dangers. Some are historical. Some are fiction. Some are epics and classics. These are the books that everyone must have in his library. Good luck and good reading.

Biographies

The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro. It took me 15 days to read all 1,165 pages of this monstrosity that chronicles the rise of Robert Moses. I was 20 years old. It was one of the most magnificent books I’ve ever read. Moses built just about every other major modern construction project in New York City. The public couldn’t stop him, the mayor couldn’t stop him, the governor couldn’t stop him, and only once could the President of the United States stop him. But ultimately, you know where the cliché must take us. Robert Moses was an asshole. He may have had more brain, more drive, more strategy than other men, but he did not have more compassion. And ultimately power turned him into something monstrous.

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr. by Ron Chernow. I found Rockefeller to be strangely stoic, incredibly resilient, and, despite his reputation as a robber baron, humble and compassionate. Most people get worse as they get successful, many more get worse as they age. In fact, Rockefeller began tithing his money with his first job and gave more of it away as he became successful. He grew more open-minded the older he became, more generous, more pious, more dedicated to making a difference. And what made Rockefeller stand apart as a young man was his ability to remain cool-headed in adversity and grounded in success, always on an even keel, never letting excessive passion and emotion hold sway over him.

The Kid Stays in the Picture: A Notorious Life by Robert Evans. If you’re specifically looking to make your way in showbiz, this is the book you have to read. It’s the rags-to-riches, rise and fall and rise of Robert Evans, one of the most notorious figures in Hollywood. From pants salesman to running Paramount Pictures (and producing The Godfather), his story is the one that everyone who heads to L.A. hopes to have. It was one of the first books I read when I started working in the business. I think it shows you how far hustle and hype and heat contribute to success. And how they can also lead to your downfall and exile.

Empire State of Mind: How Jay-Z Went from Street Corner to Corner Office by Zack O’Malley Greenburg. This is a biography that also functions as a business book. It shows how as a young man in Brooklyn, Jay applied hustling techniques to the music business and eventually built his empire. A true hustler, he never did only one thing — from music to fashion to sports, Jay dominated each field, always operating on the same principles. As he puts it, “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man!” And related to that, I also recommend The 50th Law, which tells the stories of many such individuals and will stick with you just as long.

The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King by Rich Cohen. This book tells the incredible story of Sam Zemurray, the penniless Russian immigrant who, through pure hustle and drive, became the CEO of United Fruit, the biggest fruit company in the world. The greatness of Zemurray, as author Rich Cohen puts it, “lies in the fact that he never lost faith in his ability to salvage a situation.” For Zemurray, there was always a countermove, always a way through an obstacle, no matter how dire the situation.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley by Malcolm X. I forget who said it but I heard someone say that Catcher in the Rye was to young white boys what The Autobiography of Malcolm X was to young black boys. Personally, I prefer that latter over the former. I would much rather read about and emulate a man who is born into adversity and pain, struggles with criminality, does prison time, teaches himself to read through the dictionary, finds religion, and then becomes an activist for Civil Rights before being gunned down by his former supporters when he tempers the hate and anger that had long defined parts of his message. Booker T. Washington’s memoir Up from Slavery and Frederick Douglass’s epic narrative are both incredibly moving and inspiring as well.

Personal History by Katharine Graham. If one thing is certain about your path to success, it is that it will be fraught with adversity. Fate will intervene in ways you would never expect. Which is why you absolutely must read Graham’s memoir. After the tragic suicide of her husband, who ran the The Washington Post and which they both owned, Katharine Graham, at age 46 and a mother of three, with no work experience to speak of, found herself overseeing the Post through its most tumultuous and difficult years (think Watergate and the Pentagon papers). Eventually, she became one of the best CEOs of the 20th century, period. She pulled through and endured with a strong sense of purpose, fortitude, and strength that we can all learn from. In similar regard, read Eleanor Roosevelt’s two-volume biography to see how she managed to turn what was at the time a meaningless position in the White House into a powerful platform for change and influence.

How-to & Advice

The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. It is impossible to describe this book and do it justice. But if you plan on living life on your terms, climbing as high as you’d like to go, and avoid being controlled by others, then you need to read this book. Robert is an amazing researcher and storyteller — he has a profound ability to explain timeless truths through story and example. You can read the classics and not always understand the lessons. But if you read the The 48 Laws, I promise you will leave not just with actionable lessons but an indelible sense of what to do in many trying and confusing situations. As a young person, one of the most important laws to master is to “always say less than necessary.” Always ask yourself: “Am I saying this because I want to prove how smart I am or am I saying this because it needs to be said?” Don’t forget The Prince, The Art of War, and all the other required readings in strategy. And of course, it doesn’t matter how good you are at the game of power, without Mastery it’s worthless.

Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon. Part of ambition is modeling yourself after those you’d like to be like. Austin’s philosophy of ruthlessly stealing and remixing the greats might sound appalling at first but it is actually the essence of art. You learn by stealing, you become creative by stealing, you push yourself to be better by working with these materials. Austin is a fantastic artist, but most importantly he communicates the essence of writing and creating art better than anyone else I can think of. It is a manifesto for any young, creative person looking to make his mark. Pair up with Show Your Work which is also excellent.

Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton. Ah yes, the drive that we all have to be better, bigger, have more, be more. Ambition is a good thing, but it’s also a source of great anxiety and frustration. In this book, philosopher Alain de Botton studies the downsides of the desire to “be somebody” in this world. How do you manage ambition? How do you manage envy? How do you avoid the traps that so many other people fall into? This book is a good introduction into the philosophy and psychology of just that.

What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars by Jim Paul and Brendan Moynihan.There are lots of books on aspiring to something. Very little are from actual people who aspired, achieved, and lost it. With each and every successful move that he made, Jim Paul, who made it to Governor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, was convinced that he was special, different, and exempt from the rules. Once the markets turned against his trades, he lost it all — his fortune, job, and reputation. That’s what makes this book a critical part in understanding how letting arrogance and pride get to your head is the beginning of your unraveling. Learn from stories like this instead of by your own trial and error. Think about that next time you believe you have it all figured out. (Tim Ferriss recently produced the audiobook version of this, which I recommend.)

Philosophy & Classical Wisdom

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. I would call this the greatest book ever written. It is the definitive text on self-discipline, personal ethics, humility, self-actualization, and strength. Bill Clinton reads it every year, and so have countless other leaders, statesmen, and soldiers. It is a book written by one of the most powerful men who ever lived on the lessons that power, responsibility, and philosophy teach us. This book will make you a better person and better able to manage the success you desire.

Cyropaedia by Xenophon (a more accessible translation can be found in Xenophon’s Cyrus The Great: The Arts of Leadership and War). Xenophon, like Plato, was a student of Socrates. For whatever reason, his work is not nearly as famous, even though it is far more applicable. This book is the best biography written of Cyrus the Great, one of history’s greatest leaders and conquerors who is considered the “father of human rights.” There are so many great lessons in here and I wish more people would read it. Machiavelli learned them, as this book inspired The Prince.

Lord Chesterfield’s Letters by Lord Chesterfield. Just like Meditations, which was never intended for publication, this is a private correspondence between Lord Chesterfield and his son Philip. We should probably be happy that this guy was not our father — but we can be glad that his wisdom has been passed down. I have not marked as many pages in a book as I have in this one in quite some time. Of course, the classic in this genre of letters is Letters From A Self Made Merchant To His Son. Dating back to 1890, these are preserved letters from John “Old Gorgon” Graham, a self-made millionaire in Chicago, and his son who is coming of age and entering the family business. His letters are an incisive and edifying tutorial in entrepreneurship, responsibility, and leadership. Rilke’s Letters To A Young Poet is also moving and profound. Addressed to a 19-year-old former student of his who sought Rilke’s critique, these short letters are less concerned with poetry and more about what it means to live a meaningful and fulfilling life as an artist and as a person.

Plutarch’s Lives (I & II) by Plutarch. There are few books more influential and ubiquitous in Western culture than Plutarch’s histories. Aside from being the basis of much of Shakespeare, he was one of Montaigne’s favorite writers. His biographies and sketches of Pericles, Demosthenes, Themistocles, Cicero, Alexander the Great, Caesar, and Fabius are all excellent — and full of powerful anecdotes. These are moral biographies, intended to teach lessons about power, greed, honor, virtue, fate, duty, and all the important things they forget to mention in school.

The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects by Giorgio Vasari. Basically a friend and peer of Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Raphael, Titian, and all the other great minds of the Renaissance, Giorgio Vasari sat down in 1550 and wrote biographical sketches of the people he knew or had influenced him. Unless you have a degree in Art History it’s unlikely that anyone pushed this book at you and that’s a shame. These great men were not just artists, they were masters of the political and social worlds they lived in. There are so many great lessons about craft and psychology within this book. The best part? It was written by someone who actually knew what he was talking about, not some art snob or critic; he was an actual artist and architect of equal stature to the people he was documenting.

The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi. Widely held as a classic, this book is much more than a manifesto and manual on swordsmanship and martial arts. It’s about the mindset, the discipline, and the perception necessary to win in life or death situations. As a swordsman, Musashi fought mostly by himself, for himself. His wisdom, therefore, is mostly internal. He tells you how to out-think and out-move your enemies. He tells you how to fend for yourself and live by a code. And isn’t that precisely what so many of us need help with every day?

Fiction

This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff and Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi. If you wanted to read a book to become a successful, well-adjusted person, you probably could not do worse than Catcher in the Rye. Tobias Wolff’s memoir is a far better choice for the young man struggling with who he is and who he wants to be. I also suggest pairing it with the female counterpart: Totto-Chan. The latter is the memoir and biography of one of the most famous and successful women in Japan (akin to Oprah). It’s an inspiring little story of someone who didn’t fit in, who always saw the world differently (sound familiar?). But instead of making her hard, it made her empathetic and caring and kind — to say nothing of creative and unique. (The former is actually fiction but based on a true story. The latter is a true story but reads essentially like fiction).

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler. Duddy is the ultimate Jewish hustler, always working, always scheming, always looking for a deal, and looked down upon by everyone for his limitless ambition. Duddy never stops in his pursuit to acquire real estate in order to “be somebody” — never forgetting his grandfather’s maxim that “a man without land is nobody.” Except it doesn’t work out like he planned. From this book, you learn that the hustler — the striver — if he cannot prioritize and if he does not have principles, loses everything in the end.

What Makes Sammy Run by Budd Schulberg. A composite figure based on some of Hollywood’s first moguls, the book chronicles the rise and fall of Sammy Glick, the rags-to-riches boy from New York who makes his way through deception and betrayal. Essentially, Sammy is your Ari Gold without the slightest bit of human decency. He’s running from self-reflection, from meaning. It’s fear knocking on the door that he’s frantically trying to block with accomplishments. Sammy is an accomplished man, but not a great man — that takes ethics, purpose, and principles. All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren is another similar story — a sort of fictional version of The Power Broker — that tells of the effect that power and drive can have.

The Disenchanted by Budd Schulberg and The Crack Up & The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Disenchanted and The Crack Up are both about the fall of F. Scott Fitzgerald, one from the first person perspective and the other from the fictional eyes of a friend watching his hero fall to pieces — just like the story of Gatsby itself. The Crack Up is a collection of essays, many of which are off-topic, but they had to be — a person cannot look so directly and honestly on their own broken soul without turning away at times. Fitzgerald’s Crack Up has always been illustrative to me and it’s something I’ve thought a lot about. I call it the Second Act Fallacy, and you pity and feel for a man with so much talent and wisdom who was helpless to apply it to himself.

Liber medicina animi — a book is the soul’s medicine.

Of course, the books listed here are by no means all you need to be healthy or fulfilled. It’s just the beginning. But they do make a solid start to your library.

Enjoy and be careful out there. It’s a perilous road to the top.

This post appeared originally on The Art of Manliness.

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Loving Los Angeles: 36 Books To Help You Finally “Get” LA

Los Angeles is a hard city to truly love. Not because it’s “always thrusting you away like an unwanted orphan” as John Fante once put it, but because it’s difficult to understand. Sure there is a lot to like—the weather, the food, the space—but love requires something deeper. It requires a deep understanding.

LA is a city that continually obscures its own history and forgets what it has going for it. So it’s no wonder that “getting” it is so difficult. I lived in LA for 5 years and I just could not understand the city, especially in light of other cities I loved like New York or New Orleans. But only after I randomly read a bunch of books that gave me a glimmer of understanding—a hint into its past as a real place with history and people and life—was I really able to appreciate this unique and special place.

It’s a city that launched its own literary genre and some of the greatest American authors who ever lived. It’s a city with amazing architecture (though it loves to tear that down). It’s a city where the second oldest athletic club in the United States costs $100 a month to join. It’s a city that once had amazing public transportation—where you could ride from downtown to Long Beach on a streetcar (which, btw, is what the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is about). It was once the home of everyone from Upton Sinclair to Wyatt Earp and his family. I mean, seriously.

Los Angeles is a city that you’ll love more the more you know about it. These books will help. Plus…they’re amazing.

The Works of John Fante

I found John Fante through Neil Strauss, who considers Ask the Dust one of his favorite books. I read it in one day, LOVED it and subsequently read everything by Fante I could get my hands on. It’s like people have been hiding this writer from us—and LA’s only attempt to recognize him is the silly little “square” they named after him Downtown. Fante’s Ask The Dust is the west coast’s Great Gatsby. Fante has benefited from some recognition—mostly thanks to Bukowski championing him in his later years—but because the book is about Los Angeles and not New York City, it is mostly forgotten. Better than Gatsby, it is a series. In one year alone, I read seven Fante novels, one biography by his son and a book of letters between John and H.L Mencken. Arturo Bandini, the subject of his most famous series, is a wonderful example of someone whose actual life is ruined by the fantasies in his head–every second he spends stuck up there is one he wastes and spoils in real life. Of historical note: Fante tells a side of Los Angeles that most people don’t know existed, a side that for some inexcusable reason has been completely forgotten. From Bunker Hill to Long Beach to Malibu—Fante’s works cover all of Los Angeles, usually in different eras. My favorite Fante books, in order, if you need more guidance are: Ask the Dust, Dreams from Bunker Hill, The Brotherhood of the Grape, Full of Life, Wait Until Spring, Bandini, The Road to Los Angeles, 1933 Was a Bad Year. Once you read those, you will almost certainly enjoy Fante/Mencken (HL Mencken was a mentor of John’s), and Fante: A Family’s Legacy of Writing, Drinking and Surviving.

The Works of Raymond Chandler

If Raymond Chandler doesn’t make you love Los Angeles, no fiction writer can. I read every book Chandler published plus a biography in about a week and a half. I’m not sure what drew me to these books originally, but what kept me in them—literally one right after another without stopping—was how great they are. Chandler was a writer who the critics hated but the people loved, which is usually a pretty good indicator that he was onto something. Noir fiction appeals to me because it does what writing is supposed to: immerse the reader in a vivid, entertaining world. That it also happens to hold great insight about life, power, and people is extra. Chandler never forgot that. It’s why you should read him—you’ll be captivated and learn about the city, about people and about the time period. He too covers the full geography of Los Angeles county from the old gambling boats off Santa Monica to Pasadena to Riverside to Big Bear Lake. Chandler often changes the names but it doesn’t matter. You want to live in his Los Angeles, it just feels so much more interesting. Ranking his books in order of my favorites: The Big Sleep, The Lady in the Lake, Playback, The Long Goodbye, Trouble is My Business, The High Window, The Little Sister, Farewell My Lovely, and The Simple Art of Murder. Also read and liked: Raymond Chandler Speaking, Chandlertown, and Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles (which has some excellent photos).

Southern California: An Island on The Land by Carey McWilliams

Carey McWilliams was a famous public intellectual who lived and loved Los Angeles. It is his words that are inscribed on the statue in Pershing Square:

Then it suddenly occurred to me that in all the world there neither was, nor would there ever be, another place like this city of angels…Here indeed was the place for me, a ringside seat at the circus.

But I prefer a different line from him. In his biography of Southern California he remarks that Los Angeles, which possesses some of the most unique and special geography in the world—from mountains to ocean to desert to valley all within a few minutes drive, should take our breath away. But at the same time we can’t help but feel that with all this potential, the city and culture somehow disappoint us. It’s true. This book explains how and why the city came to be. It also gives you a glimpse as the where some of those problems come from.

Los Angeles Plays Itself

This is not a book but it’s one of the most unusual documentaries I have ever seen. It’s about Los Angeles…as it has been portrayed in the movies over the last one hundred years. As far as I know it will never be traditionally released due to rights issues but it’s usually available on YouTube. The film professor who made this is basically the greatest LA tour guide and historian who ever lived. If you don’t like reading, watch this moving. It’s like a cliff’s notes of all the books here and then some.

Los Angeles: Portrait of a City by David L. Ulin and Kevin Starr

Even though I haven’t lived in LA for 4 years (I live in Austin now), this is the book I have on my coffee table. Yes, it is expensive. I think it’s like $60, but damn it has some of the most beautiful photographs I have ever seen. From the first known photo taken in Los Angeles, to the tragic photos of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination at the Ambassador Hotel and the Rodney King riots, this book encapsulates the entire history of LA in amazing photos.

A History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory by Norman M. Klein and City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles by Mike Davis

I am putting these two books together because they are somewhat academic but nevertheless spectacular. Both are historians who explain Los Angeles’ strange tendency to obscure its own past. A city of reinvention, it likes to deny that it was ever once something else, or god forbid, something better. As Mike Davis points out, Los Angeles once had a world famous stone arch which celebrated the entrance to the Selig Zoo. Every child in the city had seen and loved the animals which decorated the arch. When the zoo closed, everyone forgot about the arch and it was dismantled. A few decades later they found most of the animals in a junkyard in Fontana. Can you imagine this happening to the lions of the of the Central Park Library? Only LA could wipe out it’s own history this way.

The Price of Experience: Power, Money, Image and Murder in Los Angeles by Randall Sullivan

If you liked any of Bret Easton Ellis’ fictions of Los Angeles like Less than Zero and Imperial Bedrooms then you need to read this book. Because it is basically the real life version. Joe Hunt, a delusional genius creates a Ponzi scheme called the Billionaire Boys Club with a group of friends. Living the high life in Los Angeles they eat at the best restaurants and shop at the best stores. They lived in one of the high rises in the corridor between Beverly Hills and Westwood, which I believe still stands. Most incredibly, one of their marks is actually a con man who ends of conning them. As the wheels begin to come off, they descend into violence and murder. And this all happens during the 1984 Summer Olympics in LA. This book is just a fascinating look at the kind of culture that LA had during that era and the worst it brought out (and brings out) in some. This is a truly underrated book.

LA Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City by John Buntin

This is not related to the video game. It is an excellent book about Los Angeles, crime, the police force and it’s dark period of the 30s, 40s and 50s. I prefer some of the primary sources but this book is great, especially the parts about gangsters like Mickey Cohen. I saw the writer give a talk about it at the Los Angeles Athletic Club a few years back—itself a place that features into the book—and got a lot out of it.

4 Books About the Movie Business (because you can’t understand LA without understanding the biz)

The Big Picture: The New Logic of Money and Power in Hollywood and The Hollywood Economist: The Hidden Reality Behind the Movies by Edward Jay Epstein are the first books I was told to read before I moved to Hollywood. They explain the actual business model of the Hollywood studios (hint: it is NOT box office receipts) and this helps you understand why your actor and writer friends live and act the way they do. It’s why writers can have a house in the Hills without ever having made anything, for example. I also like Hit & Run: How Jon Peters and Pete Guber Took Sony For a Ride In Hollywood because it explains just how incompetent and awful studio heads actually are. Finally, for a glimpse of some old school Hollywood glamour, check out The Kid Stays In The Picture: A Notorious Life by Robert Evans (it’s also a great documentary). Evans is nuts. I’m not sure how much there is to learn about the city itself but it is a fascinating story of some of the people who made the town in the last half of the 20th century—better than fiction. I think it shows you how far hustle and hype and heat contribute to success in LA. And that faith in yourself—deserved, delusional or not—goes a long way.

Los Angeles is an important city to understand. It’s just as old as San Francisco, but it seems like it went wrong somewhere along the way. It had its own version of the Lower East Side (Bunker Hill, which you’ve probably seen in LA Confidential). But where is it now? They tore it down. It wasn’t simply some diabolical plot to destroy a city (sorry, Chinatown) but mostly apathy and as we said earlier, a lack of understanding. The people who live there fundamentally do not understand their own heritage and thus they allowed it to be wrecked, often in the name of “improvement.”

When I left Los Angeles I needed to move out of there so badly. I was just so tired and sick of it. So much about LA is broken and not what it could be—how can a city that very intentionally embraced the car and had forsaken all other forms of transportation have such horrible roads? How could a city with so many sports teams, professional and college, basically not be into sports? How could a city known for it’s awesome weather basically be unbearable when its hot and shut down when it rains? And yet, understanding and reading about it—a lot of which happened after I left—made me love and miss it again.

So understand it now before it’s too late. You’ll thank these authors—not me—if you let them teach you.

This post appeared originally on Thought Catalog.

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Meet Your Worst Enemy

No matter where you are and what you’re doing, your worst enemy is always with you—your ego.

“Not me,” you think. “No one would ever call me an egomaniac.” Maybe you’ve always thought of yourself as a pretty balanced person. But for any person with ambitions, talents, drives, and potential to fulfill, ego comes with the territory. Precisely what makes us so promising as thinkers, doers, creatives, and entrepreneurs—what drives us to the top of those fields—makes us vulnerable to this darker side of our psyche.

Freud described the ego with a famous analogy—our ego was the rider on a horse, with our unconscious drives representing the animal the ego tried to direct. Modern psychologists use the word “egotist” to refer to someone who is dangerously focused on themselves, with disregard for anyone else. Each of these definitions is true enough but of little value outside a clinical setting. The ego we see most commonly goes by a more colloquial definition—an unhealthy belief in your own importance. It is, as Bill Walsh put it, “where confidence becomes arrogance.”

Most of us aren’t egomaniacs, but ego is at the root of almost every conceivable problem and obstacle we have, from why we can’t win to why we need to win all of the time—and at the expense of others.

We don’t usually see it this way. We think something else is to blame for our problems—most often, other people. We are, as the poet Lucretius put it a few thousand years ago, the proverbial “sick man ignorant of the cause of his malady.” With every ambition and goal we have—big or small—ego is there, undermining us on the very journey we’ve put everything into pursuing.

Ego is the enemy of what you want and of what you have: Of mastering a craft. Of real creative insight. Of working well with others. Of building loyalty and support. Of longevity. Of repeating and retaining your success. It repulses advantages and opportunities. It’s a magnet for enemies and errors. The second you believe in your greatness, the artist Marina Abramovic explains, that’s the death of your creative career.

Pioneering CEO Harold Geneen compared egoism to alcoholism: “The egotist does not stumble about, knocking things off his desk. He does not stammer or drool. No, instead, he becomes more and more arrogant, and some people, not knowing what is underneath such an attitude, mistake his arrogance for a sense of power and self-confidence.” You could say they start to mistake that about themselves too, not realizing the disease they’ve contracted or that they’re killing themselves with it.

If ego is the voice that tells us we’re better than we really are, we can say ego inhibits true success by preventing a direct and honest connection to the world around us. One early member of Alcoholics Anonymous defined ego as “a conscious separation from.” From what? Everything.

The ways this separation manifests itself negatively are immense: We can’t work with other people if we’ve put up walls. We can’t improve the world if we don’t understand it or ourselves. We can’t take or receive feedback if we are incapable of, or uninterested in, hearing from outside sources.

We can’t recognize opportunities—or create them— if instead of seeing what is in front of us, we live inside our own fantasy. Without an accurate accounting of our own abilities compared to those of others, what we have is not confidence but delusion. How are we supposed to reach, motivate, or lead other people if we can’t relate to their needs because we’ve lost touch with our own?

Just one thing keeps ego around—since it certainly doesn’t serve any productive purpose. It is comfort. Pursuing great work—whether in sports, art, or business— is often terrifying. Ego soothes that fear. It’s a salve to our insecurity. Replacing the rational and aware parts of our psyche with bluster and self-absorption, ego tells us what we want to hear, when we want to hear it.

But it is a short-​term fix with a long-​term consequence. Which is why we must fight it.

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Why Ego is The Greatest Opponent to Your Creativity and Success (And How to Fight Back)

We all have goals: We want to matter. We want to be important. We want to have freedom and power to pursue our creative work. We want respect from our peers and recognition for our accomplishments. Not out of vanity or selfishness, but of an earnest desire to fulfill our personal potential.

While we hold up humility as an admirable trait, the problem is that we’re not sure it can get us to the goals above. We are petrified as the Reverend Dr. Sam Wells put it, that if we are humble, we will end up “subjugated, trodden on, embarrassed, and irrelevant.”

I’ve spent the last two years working on a book about ego, and I’ve heard some version of this paradox from many people. They would nod vigorously in agreement with me that ego was bad, that it destroyed creativity and happiness, that they knew plenty of toxic egomaniacs who had wrecked themselves. And then they would say, “But a little bit of ego is still important though, right?”

Even people who despise ego and aspire to humility, who plan to be humble once they are successful, are worried that actually enacting those beliefs would sentence them to a life of obscurity or weakness or failure.

Allow me to address that fear right now: One does not need to be an egotistical asshole to be successful. In fact, this is one of the most misleading and destructive myths in all of Western culture, right next to the idea that one must be a drug addict to be a successful musician or starving to produce great art.

The idea that only the swaggering, all-knowing, and ruthlessly ambitious succeed is a lie. One that has discouraged so many people with so much potential—and worse, encouraged many more to crash and burn.

History bears shows the truth. For every Douglas MacArthur or George McClellan, brilliant but laughably convinced of their own greatness and power, there is a George Marshall, a general who accomplished far more (far more quietly) and coveted far less credit along the way. For every Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian (who while successful are also spoiled and entitled), there is a Katharine Graham, who was born into greater wealth and did far more with it.

Ego is certainly there in many of the greatest and most dizzying tales of success—but it’s there in some of the greatest stories of failure and self-implosion as well. Howard Hughes. John DeLorean. Ty Warner. Lance Armstrong. Richard Nixon.

When creative people warn against ego, they aren’t relying on Freud’s definition or any psychiatric diagnosis. They are using the colloquial definition—referring to the dangerous inflection point where our notion of ourselves and the world grows so strong that it begins to distort the reality which surrounds us. When, as the football coach Bill Walsh explained, “self-confidence becomes arrogance, assertiveness becomes obstinacy, and self-assurance becomes reckless abandon.” It is this belief in our own greatness or specialness that can undo our creative abilities.

The reasons why ego is a career-killer instead of the killer-advantage people tell themselves it might be are two-fold:

First, the essence of creativity is a deep and continuous connection to the world around you. To product lasting and meaningful work, one must understand themselves, other people and their craft—not delusionally but intuitively. If ego is the voice that tells us we’re better than we really are, we can say ego inhibits artistic expression by preventing a direct and honest connection to the world around us. So the artist must possess a certain amount of realism because that realism is critical to great art, great writing, great design, great business, great marketing, and great leadership.

From this connection and understanding stem all the other important parts of the puzzle—for instance, we cannot reflect truth if we’re incapable of seeing any. We cannot take or receive feedback if we are too conceited to hear it or if our own reality overpowers the objective standards we need to measure ourselves against. We cannot connect with others if our attitude and approach pushes them away—or pushes us above them. We cannot recognize opportunities—or create them—if instead of seeing what is in front of us, we live inside our own fantasy. We cannot be truly confident unless we have an accurate accounting of our own abilities. And we certainly cannot relate to, reach, motivate or compel other people to follow our lead if we’re not able to grasp their deepest and often hidden human needs.

One of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous defined ego as “a conscious separation from.” From what? Everything and everyone—especially our audience. In other words, you can get too wrapped up in your own head.

In his recent exploration of what makes for bad art, Toby Little, put it well when he said, “Bad writing is almost always a love poem addressed by the self to the self.” Ego blocks us from hearing that. Even works of fantastical fiction and surrealism require not only knowledge of human nature and truth, but in the course of their execution will require the artist to receive, evaluate and integrate feedback if they hope to successfully deliver their message. A creative can’t get better or learn if they think they’re already perfect. Which is why we find that when it comes to the art itself—despite any bluster and marketing—the artist must be humble and dedicated and open.

Second, managing a creative career requires a connection to one’s audience as well as a network of relationships with managers, clients, bookers, agents, and other industry personnel. Ego makes the management of these relationships and the cultivation of this audience difficult, if not impossible over the long term. There is an almost unbelievable scene told in Zac Bissonnette’s fascinating biography of Ty Warner, the creative and marketing genius behind the billion dollar Beanie Baby empire. At the peak of the toy’s popularity, Warner decided to abruptly discontinue selling Beanie Babies to sell Beanie “Kids” instead. Everyone around him told him these new toys were ugly, that he was making an enormous mistake. Fearing his wrath, most employees stopped challenging him (and when they did he’d say “Who’s the billionaire here?”) On the eve of the launch, one trusted advisor stood up to him, predicting failure for this new product. Ty’s response: “I could put the Ty heart on manure and they’d buy it!” he told them.

Needless to say, “they” did not buy them. The same behavior that propelled Ty Warner to massive success also propelled him right through and out of it—in fact, he narrowly avoided going to jail just a few years later. John DeLorean, the brilliant engineer and car designer followed a similar trajectory. He was brilliant creatively, but no amount of brilliance could compensate for the destructiveness of his ego. It was ego and his inability to work well with others that drove him out of General Motors. His ego mired his new company in chaos and dysfunction. Ultimately, instead of being able to reflect on these failures and resolve them, he hatched a plan to save his company from insolvency with a $60 million dollar cocaine deal instead of, you know, anything but that.

When people say “But a little bit of ego is a good thing,” they’ve considered the matter only superficially. What they mean is that success requires a certain confidence, a faith in oneself—and in that they are correct. But it’s critical that we make the distinction between confidence and ego.

The mixed martial arts pioneer and UFC pioneer Frank Shamrock has observed that of the two, only confidence can bear weight. “Confidence is important,” he said, “But ego is something false. Humility is the way to build confidence, and ego is hugely dangerous in this sport, because if you’re running on ego you aren’t running on good clean emotions or cause and effect. You bypass it to support a false idea. It’s all garbage, the ego is garbage.”

Confidence is based on what is real—it is earned. Ego is based on delusion and wishful thinking—it is artifice. Confidence doesn’t alienate us from others. On the contrary, it allows us to relate to others better—because it has removed insecurity and fear from the equation. When you are confident you can be empathetic and vulnerable. Ego makes us an asshole. Confidence—as anyone who has ever stepped foot into any martial arts studio can tell you—has the opposite effect. Confidence is calm, compassionate, curious, careful. That is: it is all the things one needs to be creative.

And yet, we hold onto the vestige of the idea that ego is something worth retaining. We tell ourselves that we need a certain brashness to succeed, why? Fear. Pursuing great work—whether it is in sports or art or business—is often terrifying. Ego soothes that fear. It’s a salve to that insecurity. Replacing the rational and aware parts of our psyche with bluster and self-absorption, ego tells us what we want to hear, when we want to hear it.

It is a short term fix with a long term consequence. Because we know how those stories end.

Not happily. Not with cheering crowds but with jeering boos. And self-loathing. And disgrace. And self-implosion.

Think Lance Armstrong training for the 1999 Tour de France or Barry Bonds debating whether to walk into the BALCO clinic. We flirt with arrogance and deceit and in the process, grossly overstate the importance of winning at all costs. Everyone is juicing, the ego says to us, you should too. There’s no way to beat them without it, we think.

Which is why we must resist the impulse towards ego in our creative pursuits. We must suppress it early on so that we can learn and work and not be distracted. When we experience success, we must learn to replace the temptations of ego with humility and discipline. Finally, we must cultivate strength, fortitude and our own standards so that when fate turns, we’re not wrecked by failure.

To put that briefly:

Humble in our aspirations

Gracious in our success

Resilient in our failures

This post first appeared on 99U.

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4 Ways To Push Through Adversity and Failure Without Ego

“The future bears down upon each one of us with all the hazards of the unknown.”  — Plutarch

There is no way around it: We will experience difficulty. We will feel the touch of failure. As Benjamin Franklin observed, those who “drink to the bottom of the cup must expect to meet with some of the dregs.” Or as the 49ers coach Bill Walsh says, “Almost always, your road to victory goes through a place called ‘failure.’”

All great men and women went through difficulties to get to where they are, all of them made mistakes. They found within those experiences some benefit—even if it was simply the realization that they were not infallible and that things would not always go their way. They found that self ­awareness was the way out and through—if they hadn’t, they wouldn’t have gotten better and they wouldn’t have been able to rise again.

For us to follow their example and push through failure we can be sure of one thing we’ll want to avoid. Ego. Unless we use this moment as an opportunity to understand ourselves and our own mind better, ego will seek out failure like true north. Unless we learn, right here and right now, from our mistakes.

During times of adversity, we need to keep in mind the four principles below to help us get back up on our feet and do so without ego, which when unleashed will only make things worse.

Alive time or dead time?

According to bestselling author Robert Greene, there are two types of time in our lives: dead time, when people are passive and waiting, and alive time, when people are learning and acting and utiliz­ing every second. Every moment of failure, every moment or situation that we did not deliberately choose or control, presents this choice: Alive time. Dead time.

During times of failure the ego in all of us wants to complain about how the situation sucks. How it’s unfair. How we’d rather be doing just about anything else. And it’s this attitude that creates dead time we can never get back. In this way, ego is the mortal enemy of alive time.

It’s easy to be angry, to be aggrieved, to be depressed or heartbroken. Ego says: I don’t want this. I want ______. I want it my way. But this accomplishes nothing!

Let us say, the next time we find ourselves stuck: This is an opportunity for me. I am using it for my purposes. I will not let this be dead time for me. The dead time was when we were controlled by ego.

Alive time. Dead time. Which will it be?

Focus on what you can control.

Failure and rejection can be a miserable place. How do you carry on? How do you take pride in yourself and your work?

The famous coach John Wooden’s advice to his players gives the answer: Change the definition of success. “Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-­satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.”

That’s it. Your effort, doing the best, is what you can control. This is what you need to focus on.

Do your work. Do it well. Then “let go and let God.“ That’s all there needs to be. Recognition and rewards — ­those are just extra. Rejection, that’s on them, not on us.

In other words, the less attached we are to outcomes the better. When fulfilling our own standards is what fills us with pride and self-­respect. When the effort — not the results, good or bad — is enough. With ego, this is not nearly sufficient — it wants recognition and validation.

Warren Buffett has said the same thing, making a distinction between the inner scorecard and the external one. Your potential, the absolute best you’re capable of — that’s the metric to measure yourself against. Your own standards. Winning is not enough. People can get lucky and win. People can be assholes and win. Anyone can win. But not everyone is the best possible version of themselves.

Don’t let ego hold sway and distract you with whether or not we are getting credit and validation. It’s far better when doing good work is sufficient.

Don’t make things worse.

People make mistakes all the time. This is all perfectly fine; it’s what being an entrepreneur or a creative or even a business executive is about. We take risks. We mess up. The problem is that when we get our identity tied up in our work, we worry that any kind of failure will then say something bad about us as a person. It’s a fear of taking responsibility, of admitting that we might have messed up.

Ego asks: Why is this happening to me? How do I save this and prove to everyone I’m as great as they think? It’s the animal fear of even the slightest sign of weakness.

“Act with fortitude and honor,” Alexander Hamilton once wrote to a distraught friend in serious financial and legal trouble of the man’s own making. “If you cannot reasonably hope for a favorable extrication, do not plunge deeper. Have the courage to make a full stop.”

A full stop. It’s not that you should quit everything. It’s that a fighter who can’t tap out or a boxer who can’t recognize when it’s time to retire gets hurt. Seriously so. You have to be able to see the bigger picture. Are you going to make it worse? Or are you going to emerge from this with your dignity and character intact? Are you going to live to fight another day?

Always love.

One of ego’s worst traits is the tendency to turn a minor inconvenience or insult into a massive sore. The wound festers, becomes infected, and can borderline kill us with the hatred and anger bubbling up. Hatred is ego embodied.

In failure or adversity, it’s so easy to hate. Hate defers blame. It makes someone else responsible. It’s a distraction too; we don’t do much else when we’re busy getting revenge or investigating the wrongs that have supposedly been done to us. Does this get us any closer to where we want to be? No. It just keeps us where we are — or worse, arrests our development entirely.

You know what is a better response to an attack or a slight or something you don’t like? Love. That’s right, love. For the neighbor who won’t turn down the music. For the parent that let you down. For the bureaucrat who lost your paperwork. For the group that rejects you. For the critic who attacks you. The former partner who stole your business idea. The bitch or the bastard who cheated on you. Love.

We find that what defines great leaders is that instead of hating their enemies, they feel a sort of pity and empathy for them. Think of Martin Luther King Jr., over and over again, preaching that hate was a burden and love was freedom. Love was transformational, hate was debilitating. “Hate,” he said “is a cancer that gnaws away at the very vital center of your life and your existence. It is like eroding acid that eats away the best and the objective center of your life.”

***

These are the behaviors and standards we need to embrace and commit to to be able to handle adversity. We will choose alive time and not let any moment go to waste. We will focus only on what we can control: exerting maximum effort at being our best selves. We will act with dignity and decorum and emerge with our character intact.

The difficulty that we are experiencing now? It is not a position we chose for ourselves, but we can push through with strength and purpose, not ego. In other words, we will not let ego turn a temporary failure into a permanent one. That’s a choice we can make.

This post appeared originally on Entrepreneur 

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The post 4 Ways To Push Through Adversity and Failure Without Ego appeared first on RyanHoliday.net.

5 Deadly Kinds of Ego That Prey Upon Your Success

“The worst disease which can afflict business executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it’s egotism.”  — Harold Geneen

You worked hard, you made some smart bets and here you are, successful. Maybe someone acquired your startup for an unbelievable sum. Maybe you’re an athlete and your team just won a championship. Maybe you’re a filmmaker and received a grant to have your film made. Maybe you just won a coveted award in your field.

After we give ourselves proper credit, our ego wants us to think, I’m special. I’m better. The rules don’t apply to me. We become entitled, controlling, paranoid, selfish, even delusional.

As Aristotle observed, “it is hard to bear the results of good fortune suitably.”

When success arrives, ego begins to toy with our minds and weaken what made us win in the first place. This is the worst thing that can happen, because things get harder as we become more successful. In sports, the schedule gets harder after a winning season, the bad teams get better draft picks, and the salary cap makes it tough to keep a team together. Taxes go up the more you make.

If you want to survive those new challenges, you must learn to fight these five manifestations of ego.

Disease of me.

Pat Riley, the famous coach and manager who led the Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat to multiple championships, says that great teams tend to follow a trajectory. When they start—before they have won—a team is innocent. If the conditions are right, they come together, they watch out for each other and work together toward their collective goal. This stage, he calls the “innocent climb.”

After a team starts to win and media attention begins, the simple bonds that joined the individuals together begin to fray. Players calculate their own importance. Chests swell. Frustrations emerge. Egos appear. The innocent climb, Pat Riley says, is almost always followed by the “disease of me.” It can “strike any winning team in any year and at any moment,” and does so with alarming regularity.

Once we’ve “made it,” our tendency is to switch to a mindset of “getting what’s mine.” Now, all of a sudden awards and recognition matter—even though they weren’t what got us here. We need that money, that title, that media attention—not for the team or the cause, but for ourselves. Because we’ve earned it.

Let’s make one thing clear: we never earn the right to be greedy or to pursue our interests at the expense of everyone else.

To think otherwise is not only egotistical and selfish, it’s counter-productive.

Entitlement.

With success, particularly power, comes entitlement, one of the greatest and most dangerous delusions. It doesn’t matter if you’re a billionaire, a millionaire, or just a kid who snagged a good job early. The complete and utter sense of certainty that got you here can become a liability if you’re not careful. The demands and dream you had for a better life? The ambition that fueled your effort? These begin as earnest drives but left unchecked become hubris and entitlement.

Entitlement assumes: This is mine. I’ve earned it. At the same time, entitlement nickels and dimes other people because it can’t conceive of valuing another person’s time as highly as its own. It delivers tirades and pronouncements that exhaust the people who work for and with us, who have no choice other than to go along.

Right before he destroyed his own billion-­dollar company, Ty Warner, creator of Beanie Babies, overrode the cautious objections of one of his employees and bragged, “I could put the Ty heart on manure and they’d buy it!” He was wrong. And the company not only catastrophically failed, he later narrowly missed going to jail.

With success and power, more often than not, we begin to overestimate our own power. Then we lose perspective. And there begins our downfall.

Control.

Entitlement comes hand in hand with the poisonous need to micromanage and control. Your ego says: it all must be done my way—even little things, even inconsequential things.

It can become paralyzing perfectionism, or a million pointless battles fought merely for the sake of exerting its say. It too exhausts people whose help we need, particularly quiet people who don’t object until we’ve pushed them to their breaking point. We fight with the clerk at the airport, the customer service representative on the telephone, the agent who examines our claim.

To what end? In reality, we don’t control the weather, we don’t control the market, we don’t control other people, and our efforts and energies in spite of this are pure waste. Efforts and energies that would have been better spent strengthening our position, are now making it worse. A smart man or woman must regularly remind themselves of the limits of their power and reach.

Paranoia.

The Oval Office tapes of Richard Nixon offer a harrowing insight into a man who has lost his grip not just on what he is legally allowed to do, on what his job was (to serve the people), but on reality itself. He vacillates wildly from supreme confidence to dread and fear. He talks over his subordinates and rejects information and feedback that challenges what he wants to believe. He lives in a bubble in which no one can say no—not even his conscience. It made for a sad and pitiful demise from one of the world’s most prestigious and powerful positions.

Paranoia, another deadly manifestation of ego when we’ve achieved success, says: I can’t trust anyone. I’m in this totally by myself and for myself. It says, I’m surrounded by fools. It says, focusing on my work, my obligations, myself is not enough. I also have to be orchestrating various machinations behind the scenes—to get them before they get me; to get them back for the slights I perceive.

In its frenzy to protect itself, paranoia creates the persecution it seeks to avoid, making the owner a prisoner of its own delusions. “He who indulges empty fears earns himself real fears,” wrote Seneca, who as a Roman statesman witnessed destructive paranoia at the highest levels.

Believing your own story.

In 1979, football coach and general manager Bill Walsh took the 49ers from being the worst team in football, and perhaps professional sports, to a Super Bowl victory, in just three years. Looking back, he refused to indulge in telling himself a story that it was his plan all along. It would have been delusional to think that at the time, taking over a team that bad. Instead, he created of culture of excellence and instilled what he called his “standard of performance” — the behaviors and standards necessary to win.

Narrative is when you look back at an improbable or unlikely path to your success and say: I knew it all along. Instead of: I hoped. I worked. Or even: I thought this could happen. To accept the narratives we build looking back wouldn’t be a harmless personal gratification. They don’t change the past, they do have the power to negatively impact our future.

From that point, your ego makes you think that success in the future is just the natural next part of the story — when really it’s rooted in work, creativity, persistence, and luck.

Resist indulging your ego in building narratives — instead, stay focused on the task at hand, securing your base and creating success.

***

These are all instances of ego working against us—right when we’ve made it, undermining us, knocking us off balance. With recognition, achievement and success we need to find stabilizers to balance our ego and pride.

We can’t let victory make us selfish and self-centered. We need to guard ourselves from some of the greatest and most dangerous delusions: entitle­ment, control, and paranoia. And instead of pre­tending that we are living some great story, we must remain focused on the execution and on executing with excellence.

If not, ego will take it all from us.

This piece appeared originally on Entrepreneur. 

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Here’s Everything I Wrote in 2016

2016 was a busy year of writing for me (and reading—but that’s in a different post). Not only did I publish two books, and launch the new daily newsletter for DailyStoic.com, but I wrote something like 100 articles. Back of the envelop math, that comes to roughly 2 articles per week, and ~150,000 words (all in that’s probably 275,000 words not including ghostwriting). There were times where I felt a little bit like I was stretching myself too slim, but I’m actually hoping to do more, and do even better writing in the year to come.

Anyway, in case you missed any of them or are looking for something to read, I thought I would put them here—all in one place. I also recently put up a page on this site that highlights some of my favorite posts I’ve written from the last ten or so years. You can also sign up to get the posts via email when they happen by clicking here.

More to come in 2017. Enjoy!

THOUGHT CATALOG 

If You Only Read A Few Books In 2017, Read These 

23 Things I Learned About Writing, Strategy And Life From Tim Ferriss

The Relationship Between ‘Talk’ And ‘Work’ Is That One Kills The Other

Here’s Why I Won’t Be Exploiting My Kids On Social Media

Please, Please, For The Love Of God: Do Not Start a Podcast

37 Wise & Life-Changing Lessons From The Ancient Stoics

Sorry, Offering To Work For Free Is A Really Bad Strategy (But Not For The Reasons You Think)

16 Rules That Every Kind, Smart and Compassionate Traveler Follows When They Fly

29 Lessons From The Greatest Strategic Minds Who Ever Lived, Fought, Or Led

Hey Dad, Here Are 49 More Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Vote For Donald Trump

21 Life Lessons Learned From Some Of The World’s Greatest Sports Coaches

12 Books of Aphorisms, Sayings & Moral Reminders That Belong In Every Library

25 Ways To Kill The Toxic Ego That Will Ruin Your Life

The Moments No One Wants to Experience But Everyone Needs To Succeed

29 Pieces Of Life Changing Advice I Collected By My 29th Birthday

Don’t Follow Your Passion, It’s What’s Holding You Back

There’s Only One Way To Kill The Jealousy That’s Ruining Your Life 

44 Writing Hacks From Some of the Greatest Writers Who Ever Lived

The Most Important Part of The Creative Process That Everyone Misses: A Draw-Down Period

The Best Way To Learn Is To Ask — Even The Dumb Questions 

If You Do This, You Should Be Banned From Email

Don’t Say ‘Maybe’ If You Want To Say ‘No’ 

19 Marvelous, Unbelievable Books About The Strange History of Man and Animals

The Obstacle Really Is The Way

If You Don’t Take The Money, They Can’t Tell You What To Do

15 Short, Powerful and Provocative Books Everyone Should Read

31 Ways To Get More ‘Deep Work’ Accomplished

What Books To Base Your Life On (From Someone Who Reads A Lot)

Read This If You Just Need Someone To Give You A Chance At Your Dream Job

Did You Actually Read That? The Joy of Reading Really Really Long Books

NEW YORK OBSERVER

We Are Living in a Post-Shame World—And That’s Not a Good Thing 

We Don’t Have a Fake News Problem—We Are the Fake News Problem

Want to Really Make America Great Again? Stop Reading the News.

Mike Cernovich Exclusive Interview: How This Right-Wing ‘Troll’ Reaches 100M People a Month

100 Things I Learned in 10 Years and 100 Reads of Marcus Aurelius’ ‘Meditations’

Interview: Inside the World of Influencer Marketing With a Don Draper of Social Video

The Timeless Link Between Writing and Running and Why It Makes for Better Work

When Will YouTube Deal With Its Audiobook and Podcast Piracy Problem?

The Biggest Threat to Your Success Is the Story You Tell Yourself About Success

The Difference Between NBA Stars and Flame-Outs Is the Secret to Success in Any Field

The 3 Ways Ego Will Derail Your Career Before It Really Begins

Doing the Work Is Enough: Stop Letting Others Dictate Your Worth

Hypocrites, Much? How Gawker Reported on Other Crippling Bankruptcies and Lawsuits

The Toxic Force That Poisoned the Uber and Lyft Battle in Austin

Peter Thiel’s Reminder to the Gawker Generation: Actions Have Consequences

Behind the Stunt: How a Fake Book Cover Got 5 Million Views

How Tim Ferriss Became the ‘Oprah of Audio’—Behind the Podcast With 70M-Plus Downloads

Meet the Man Who Sold Hundreds of Thousands of Books With Blank Pages in Them

Meet the Man Who Rejected Advertising and Still Runs a Profitable Media Site

Goodbye and Good Riddance: Sociopathy of Gawker and Gawker-Like Media Finally Exposed

Interview: After 11,000 Posts, This Blogger Reveals All the Problems With the Media

EXCLUSIVE: How This Marketer Created a Fake Best Seller—And Got a Real Book Deal

The Cause of This Nightmare Election? Media Greed and Shameless Traffic Worship

How Rumblr’s Marketing Agency Gamed the Media for $100k in Business

EXCLUSIVE: Meet the Social Media Genius Behind Dan Bilzerian and Verne Troyer

This Is the Hollowed-Out World That Outrage Culture Has Created

DAILY STOIC

3 Stoic Exercises That Will Help Create Your Best Month Yet

Stoicism Can Help Put Criticism In Perspective

How Does A Stoic Respond To Failure

Translating The Stoics: An Interview With “The Daily Stoic” Co-Author Stephen Hanselman

On Stoicism and Not Giving a F*ck: An Interview with Mark Manson

An Interview with the Master: Robert Greene on Stoicism

Stoicism In Professional Sports: An Interview with NFL Exec Michael Lombardi

Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking: An Interview with Oliver Burkeman

A Guide To The Good Life: An Interview With William B. Irvine

Philosophy for Life: An Interview With Jules Evans

Doing the Right Thing Can Cost You Everything

Who Is Marcus Aurelius? Getting To Know The Roman Emperor

Who Is Seneca? Inside The Mind of The World’s Most Interesting Stoic

Who Is Epictetus? From Slave To World’s Most Sought After Philosopher

BOING BOING

Here’s an ancient philosophy so simple even a 5-year-old could understand it

The fascinating and ego-killing existence of human wormholes

THE GUARDIAN 

How would the Stoics cope today?

THE DAILY BEAST

Gay Talese Isn’t Alone: Why Aren’t More Books Factchecked?

99U

Do You Have to Be a Jerk to Be Successful?

CRACKED

5 “Geniuses” Who Drove Their Legacies Into the Ground

FAST COMPANY

The Crucial Thing Commencement Speakers Get Wrong About Success

How To Advance Your Career While You’re Stuck Doing Grunt Work

PSYCHOLOGY TODAY

Meet Your Worst Enemy

How to Beat Perfectionism, Make Progress, and Find Happiness

ENTREPRENEUR 

5 Truths of Ancient Wisdom That Will Make You a Better Entrepreneur

The 3 Ways Ego Will Derail Your Career Before It Really Begins

4 Ways To Push Through Adversity and Failure Without Ego

5 Deadly Kinds of Ego That Prey Upon Your Success

MEDIUM

7 Stoic Meditations To Get The Most Out of Today (and Life)

Here’s Why Smart People Believe The Nonsense That Trump Might Win

Here’s Why You’re The Only One Who Gets To Define What Success Is

The Maxim For Every Successful Person: ‘Always Stay A Student’

HUFFINGTON POST 

Dear Dad, Please Don’t Vote For Donald Trump

Why Ego Is the Enemy in Business and in Life

MINDBODYGREEN

How To Shut Down Your Ego + Tap Into The Immensity Of Your Potential

NEWSWEEK

What’s Wrong With Today’s Media?

INC.

58 Books That Will Make You Better, No Matter Who You Are

BUSINESS INSIDER 

The philosophy of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius is supposed to help you be more resilient and at peace — here’s how to master it in 7 days

LINKEDIN

An ancient guide to solving all work problems once and for all

The Canvas Strategy: The Quickest Way to Career Success

You’re Not Stuck, You’re Just Using Your Time Wrong

Here’s the Strategy Elite Athletes Follow to Perform at the Highest Level

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The (Very) Best Books I Read In 2016

Every year, I try to narrow down the hundred plus books I have recommended or read down to just the three or four best. I know that people are busy, and most of you don’t have time to read as much as you’d like. There’s absolutely no shame in that–what matters is that you make the time you can and that you pick the right books when you do.

They are books that I and the 70,000 readers on my reading list email have enjoyed and learned from. If they had been all that I had read over the last twelve months, I’d have considered 2016 a successful year of reading.

Anyway, let’s get to it. Read these books!

The Years of Lyndon Johnson (4 Volumes) by Robert A. Caro and The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill (3 Volumes) by William Manchester

In January, I picked up my first book in this Caro’s series on Lyndon Johnson. It wasn’t until June that I finished my fourth, but I consider finishing all of them to be one of my proudest reading achievements. (FYI, I started with The Passage of Power, then read The Path to Power, then Means of Ascent and Master of the Senate. The order didn’t seem to matter.) It’s unquestionable to me that Caro is one of the greatest biographers to ever live. His intricate, complicated, sprawling investigation into Lyndon Johnson will change how you see power, ambition, politics, personality and justice. If there is one line that sums up the whole series it’s this: It’s that power doesn’t only corrupt. That’s too simple. What power does is reveal. It’s also easy to be disillusioned by politics right now but for me, getting lost in these Lyndon Johnson books has been a helpful and educational process. Because you learn two things 1) that things have always been complicated and confusing but they tend to turn out alright 2) that our system, whatever its flaws, can still produce good results from bad men.

After the Caro series, I started William Manchester’s equally epic three volume set on Winston Churchill (Visions of Glory, Alone, Defender of the Realm) which Robert Greene gave me as a wedding present last year. Like all truly great long reads, you learn not just about the subject but every intersecting one: the history of British peerage, the Victorian era, the British Empire, Colonialism, modern warfare, international relations, evil, the nature of genius, the effects of absent parents. The book is masterfully written about a masterful man—Churchill was a soldier, a writer, a politician, a statesman, a strategist and a true great man of history. Each book in the series is equally distinct and interesting. The first is Churchill as a young, ambitious man. The second is his time in the political wilderness, when his ego has driven him from power and into writing and thinking. The third is his time back on the world’s stage, in what was perhaps the finest hour of any empire in any era. The last book is probably the best. It features the famous bulldog version of Churchill: rescuing the troops at Dunkirk, persevering through the Blitz, vowing to fight on the landing grounds and the beaches and in the streets, whatever the cost may be. The sheer determination of this man, to take an entire country on your back and defy a horde which had overrun the European continent in a matter of months…it’s almost breathtaking to think about.

As I said, if you were to only read one thing in the next year, you could do a lot worse than either of these series. They contain dozens of books within them and will teach you about so much more than just the man they are ostensibly about. Please, please read them.

(Two bonus related recommendations: I also read Lincoln’s Virtues by William Lee Miller which was heart wrenching and amazing. I truly loved both books he wrote on Lincoln. I also wrote a paean on the joy of reading really really long books which you may enjoy)

Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight

As a general rule, most new memoirs are mediocre and most business memoirs are even worse. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight is an exception to that rule in every way and as a result, was one of my favorite books of the year and favorite business books ever. I started reading it while on the runway of a flight and figured I’d read a few pages before opening my laptop and working. Instead, my laptop stayed in my bag during the flight and I read almost the entire book in one extended sitting. Ostensibly the memoir of the founder of Nike, it’s really the story of a lost kid trying to find meaning in his life and it ends with him creating a multi-billion dollar company that changes sports forever. I’m not sure if Knight used a ghostwriter (the acknowledgements are unclear) but his personal touches are all over the book—and the book itself is deeply personal and authentic. The afterward is an incredibly moving reflection of a man looking back on his life. I loved this book. It ends just as Nike is starting to turn into the behemoth it would become, so I hold out hope that there may be more books to follow. In terms of other surprising memoirs, I found JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy to be another well-written gem and despite its popularity, When Breath Becomes Air is actually underrated. It’s make-you-cry good.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

I thought I’d read this book before but clearly they gave me some sort of children’s version. Because the one I’d read as a kid wasn’t a 1,200 page epic of some of the most brilliant, beautiful and complicated storytelling ever put to paper. What a book! When I typed out my notes (and quotes) after finishing this book, it ran some 3,000 words. I was riveted from cover to cover. I enjoyed all the stuff I missed as a kid: the Counts struggle with his faith in light of what was done to him, the Hundred Days of Napoleon’s return, his rants against technology, the criticism of newspapers, the influence of ancient philosophy, ultimately, a warning against being consumed by revenge. Please—if you’re going on a long trip or looking to check out of modern events for a while—get this book. I recommend the Penguin Classics edition.

Revenge books seemed to be a trend for me this year. I loved Michael Punke’s The Revenant, about a man who bravely challenged his fate in the wilderness just as Edmond Dantes did in prison. This year I also re-read Walker Percy’s Lancelot, a dark story of revenge and an attempt to go to the heart of evil. Less dark, but equally epic, I also loved (and raved about repeatedly) Aaron Thier’s new novel Mr. Eternity. If you read a lot of non-fiction, do yourself a favor this year and set aside some time for some serious fiction reading. You can learn just as much and be changed just as much by a truly great story as you can by any business or self-help book.

Misc.

I loved Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck. There’s a reason this book is blowing up. It’s that good. Same goes for Cal Newport’s Deep Work—this book has changed my priorities and confirmed a lot of my life and work decisions. If you haven’t built up the ability to sit quietly and work with great focus to develop deep, creative insights—the next few decades are going to be very difficult for you. I really liked John Seabrook’s study of the future of music industry (and really, all creative businesses) in his book The Song Machine; Cass Sunstein’s book The World According to Star Wars is another interesting look at the economics of creative work. If you want to be scared about the next four years, pick up Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here (because, well, it may have just happened here). To balance out that depressing book, I highly recommend David Brooks’ The Road To Character, Sebastian Junger’s Tribe and Chuck Klosterman’s What If We’re Wrong.

And of course, I’ve also got lists of my favorite books from 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011. 

Enjoy and looking forward to reading with you in 2017!

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