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The ego we see most commonly goes by a more casual definition: an unhealthy belief in our own importance. Arrogance. Self-centered ambition.
The need to be better than, more than, recognized for, far past any reasonable utility—that’s ego. It’s
It’s a magnet for enemies and errors.
Without an accurate accounting of our own abilities compared to others, what we have is not confidence but delusion.
The performance artist Marina Abramović puts it directly: “If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.”
This book you hold in your hands is written around one optimistic assumption: Your ego is not some power you’re forced to satiate at every turn. It can be managed. It can be directed.
When we remove ego, we’re left with what is real. What replaces ego is humility, yes—but rock-hard humility and confidence.
Ego is stolen. Confidence is earned. Ego is self-anointed, its swagger is artifice. One is girding yourself, the other gaslighting. It’s the difference between potent and poisonous.
Where Sherman had once been cautious, he was now confident. But unlike so many others who possess great ambition, he earned this opinion.
One must ask: if your belief in yourself is not dependent on actual achievement, then what is it dependent on?
Our cultural values almost try to make us dependent on validation, entitled, and ruled by our emotions.
As Irving Berlin put it, “Talent is only the starting point.” The question is: Will you be able to make the most of it? Or will you be your own worst enemy?
One might say that the ability to evaluate one’s own ability is the most important skill of all. Without it, improvement is impossible.
Arrogance and self-absorption inhibit growth. So does fantasy and “vision.”
What is rare is not raw talent, skill, or even confidence, but humility, diligence, and self-awareness.
It’s a temptation that exists for everyone—for talk and hype to replace action.
The writer and former Gawker blogger Emily Gould—a real-life Hannah Horvath if there ever was one—realized this during her two-year struggle to get a novel published. Though she had a six-figure book deal, she was stuck. Why? She was too busy “spending a lot of time on the Internet,” that’s why. In fact, I can’t really remember anything else I did in 2010. I tumbld, I tweeted, and I scrolled. This didn’t earn me any money but it felt like work. I justified my habits to myself in various ways. I was building my brand. Blogging was a creative act—even “curating” by reblogging someone else’s post
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It was easier to talk about writing, to do the exciting things related to art and creativity and literature, than to commit the act itself.
“Mere gossip anticipates real talk, and to express what is still in thought weakens action by forestalling it.”
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.
Strategic flexibility is not the only benefit of silence while others chatter. It is also psychology. The poet Hesiod had this in mind when he said, “A man’s best treasure is a thrifty tongue.”
Talk depletes us. Talking and doing fight for the same resources.
After spending so much time thinking, explaining, and talking about a task, we start to feel that we’ve gotten closer to achieving it.
The more difficult the task, the more uncertain the outcome, the more costly talk will be and the farther we run from actual accountability.
Talking—listening to ourselves talk, performing for an audience—is almost like therapy. I just spent four hours talking about this. Doesn’t that count for something? The answer is no.
The only relationship between work and chatter is that one kills the other.
His primary means of effecting change was through the collection of pupils he mentored, protected, taught, and inspired.
To be somebody or to do something.
Appearances are deceiving. Having authority is not the same as being an authority. Having the right and being right are not the same either. Being promoted doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing good work and it doesn’t mean you are worthy of promotion (they call it failing upward in such bureaucracies). Impressing people is utterly different from being truly impressive.
love this book so far
purpose helps you answer the question “To be or to do?“
For this reason, updating your appraisal of your talents in a downward direction is one of the most difficult things to do in life—but it is almost always a component of mastery.
The pretense of knowledge is our most dangerous vice, because it prevents us from getting any better. Studious self-assessment is the antidote.
real student is also his own teacher and his own critic. There is no room for ego there.
You can’t learn if you think you already know.
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.
It is that burning, unquenchable desire to start or to achieve some vague, ambitious, and distant goal.
But too often, we proceed like this . . . A flash of inspiration: I want to do the best and biggest ______ ever. Be the youngest ______. The only one to ______. The “firstest with the mostest.” The advice: Okay, well, here’s what you’ll need to do step-by-step to accomplish it. The reality: We hear what we want to hear. We do what we feel like doing, and despite being incredibly busy and working very hard, we accomplish very little. Or worse, find ourselves in a mess we never anticipated.
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.
They can tell you all the things they’re going to do, or have even begun, but they cannot show you their progress.
How can someone be busy and not accomplish anything? Well, that’s the passion paradox.
What humans require in our ascent is purpose and realism. Purpose, you could say, is like passion with boundaries. Realism is detachment and perspective.
Purpose is about pursuing something outside yourself as opposed to pleasuring yourself.
It’s a common attitude that transcends generations and societies. The angry, unappreciated genius is forced to do stuff she doesn’t like, for people she doesn’t respect, as she makes her way in the world. How dare they force me to grovel like this! The injustice! The waste!
It’s about providing the support so that others can be good. The better wording for the advice is this: Find canvases for other people to paint on.
When you are just starting out, we can be sure of a few fundamental realities: 1) You’re not nearly as good or as important as you think you are; 2) You have an attitude that needs to be readjusted; 3) Most of what you think you know or most of what you learned in books or in school is out of date or wrong.
Imagine if for every person you met, you thought of some way to help them, something you could do for them?
The cumulative effect this would have over time would be profound: You’d learn a great deal by solving diverse problems.
Produce more than everyone else and give your ideas away
the person who clears the path ultimately controls its direction, just as the canvas shapes the painting.
Our own path, whatever we aspire to, will in some ways be defined by the amount of nonsense we are willing to deal with.
