Ego Is the Enemy

by Ryan Holiday

One must ask: if your belief in yourself is not dependent on actual achievement, then what is it dependent on? The answer, too often when we are just setting out, is nothing. Ego. And this is why we so often see precipitous rises followed by calamitous falls.

Our cultural values almost try to make us dependent on validation, entitled, and ruled by our emotions. For a generation, parents and teachers have focused on building up everyone’s self-esteem.

So what is scarce and rare? Silence. The ability to deliberately keep yourself out of the conversation and subsist without its validation. Silence is the respite of the confident and the strong.

“Never give reasons for what you think or do until you must. Maybe, after a while, a better reason will pop into your head.”

The only relationship between work and chatter is that one kills the other.

Let the others slap each other on the back while you’re back in the lab or the gym or pounding the pavement.

Plug that hole—that one, right in the middle of your face—that can drain you of your vital life force. Watch what happe...

The power of being a student is not just that it is an extended period of instruction, it also places the ego and ambition in someone else’s hands.

The pretense of knowledge is our most dangerous vice, because it prevents us from getting any better. Studious self-assessment is the antidote.

You cannot get better if you’re convinced you are the best.

Find canvases for other people to paint on. Be an anteambulo. Clear the path for the people above you and you will eventually create a path for yourself.

You’re not nearly as good or as important as you think you are; 2) You have an attitude that needs to be readjusted;

Most of what you think you know or most of what you learned in books or in school is out of date or wrong.

A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts, so he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusions.

Pride blunts the very instrument we need to own in order to succeed: our mind. Our ability to learn, to adapt, to be flexible, to build relationships, all of this is dulled by pride.

You know a workman by the chips they leave. It’s true. To judge your progress properly, just take a look at the floor.

Whether you built your empire from nothing or inherited it, whether your wealth is financial or merely a cultivated talent, entropy is seeking to destroy it as you read this.

Can you handle success? Or will it be the worst thing that ever happened to you?

Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.

If you’re not still learning, you’re already dying.

An amateur is defensive. The professional finds learning (and even, occasionally, being shown up) to be enjoyable; they like being challenged and humbled, and engage in education as an ongoing and endless process.

Far too often, we look at other people and make their approval the standard we feel compelled to meet, and as a result, squander our very potential and purpose.

So why do you do what you do? That’s the question you need to answer. Stare at it until you can. Only then will you understand what matters and what doesn’t. Only then can you say no, can you opt out of stupid races that don’t matter, or even exist. Only then is it easy to ignore “successful” people, because most of the time they aren’t—at least relative to you, and often even to themselves. Only then can you develop that quiet confidence Seneca talked about.

“He who indulges empty fears earns himself real fears,”

This is an opportunity for me. I am using it for my purposes. I will not let this be dead time for me.

In life, there will be times when we do everything right, perhaps even perfectly. Yet the results will somehow be negative: failure, disrespect, jealousy, or even a resounding yawn from the world.

The bigger the ego the harder the fall.

“He who fears death will never do anything worthy of a living man,”

He who will do anything to avoid failure will almost certainly do something worthy of a failure.

Meanwhile, love is right there. Egoless, open, positive, vulnerable, peaceful, and productive.

sweeping the floor. Just because we’ve done it once, doesn’t mean the floor is clean forever. Every day the dust comes back. Every day we must sweep.