Ego Is the Enemy

by Ryan Holiday

eventually your talent becomes your identity and your accomplishments become your worth.

Here’s what those same people haven’t told you: your passion may be the very thing holding you back from power or influence or accomplishment. Because just as often, we fail with—no, because of—passion.

Passion typically masks a weakness. Its breathlessness and impetuousness and franticness are poor substitutes for discipline, for mastery, for strength and purpose and perseverance. You need to be able to spot this in others and in yourself, because while the origins of passion may be earnest and good, its effects are comical and then monstrous.

If the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results, then passion is a form of mental retardation—deliberately blunting our most critical cognitive functions.

Passion is form over function. Purpose is function, function, function.

What successful people do is curb such flights of fancy. They ignore the temptations that might make them feel important or skew their perspective.