Ego Is the Enemy

by Ryan Holiday

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. —RICHARD FEYNMAN

The ego we see most commonly goes by a more casual definition: an unhealthy belief in our own importance. Arrogance. Self-centered ambition.

Humble in our aspirations Gracious in our success Resilient in our failures

William Penn observed, “Buildings that lie so exposed to the weather need a good foundation.”

Only when free of ego and baggage can anyone perform to their utmost.

Among men who rise to fame and leadership two types are recognizable—those who are born with a belief in themselves and those in whom it is a slow growth dependent on actual achievement.

Second being William Tecumseh Sherman

Where Isocrates and Shakespeare wished us to be self-contained, self-motivated, and ruled by principle, most of us have been trained to do the opposite. Our cultural values almost try to make us dependent on validation, entitled, and ruled by our emotions.

Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know. —LAO TZU

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.

We talk to fill the void and the uncertainty. “Void,” Marlon Brando, a quiet actor if there ever was one, once said, “is terrifying to most people.”

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

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

Today, books are cheaper than ever. Courses are free. Access to teachers is no longer a barrier—technology has done away with that. There is no excuse for not getting your education, and because the information we have before us is so vast, there is no excuse for ever ending that process either.

Remember, “zealot” is just a nice way to say “crazy person.”

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.

What humans require in our ascent is purpose and realism. Purpose, you could say, is like passion with boundaries. Realism is detachment and perspective.

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

Be an anteambulo. Clear the path for the people above you and you will eventually create a path for yourself.

Remember that anteambulo means clearing the path—finding the direction someone already intended to head and helping them pack, freeing them up to focus on their strengths.

a critical lesson in football politics: that if he wanted to give his coach feedback or question a decision, he needed to do it in private and self-effacingly so as not to offend his superior.

Imagine if for every person you met, you thought of some way to help them, something you could do for them? And you looked at it in a way that entirely benefited them and not you.

The cumulative effect this would have over time would be profound: You’d learn a great deal by solving diverse problems.

if you pick up this mantle once, you’ll see what most people’s egos prevent them from appreciating: the person who clears the path ultimately controls its direction, just as the canvas shapes the painting.

I have observed that those who have accomplished the greatest results are those who “keep under the body”; are those who never grow excited or lose self-control, but are always calm, self-possessed, patient, and polite. —BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

It is a timeless fact of life that the up-and-coming must endure the abuses of the entrenched.

Living clearly and presently takes courage. Don’t live in the haze of the abstract, live with the tangible and real, even if—especially if—it’s uncomfortable. Be part of what’s going on around you. Feast on it, adjust for it.

There’s no one to perform for. There is just work to be done and lessons to be learned, in all that is around us.

A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you. —C. S. LEWIS

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.

Game slaughtered by words cannot be skinned.

The question to ask, when you feel pride, then, is this: What am I missing right now that a more humble person might see? What am I avoiding, or running from, with my bluster, franticness, and embellishments?

The best plan is only good intentions unless it degenerates into work. —PETER DRUCKER

“You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do,” was how Henry Ford put it.

Is it ten thousand hours or twenty thousand hours to mastery? The answer is that it doesn’t matter. There is no end zone.

Fac, si facis. (Do it if you’re going to do it.)

Materiam superabat opus. (The workmanship was better than the material.)

Work doesn’t want to be good. It is made so, despite the headwind.

Under Genghis Khan’s direction, the Mongols were as ruthless about stealing and absorbing the best of each culture they encountered as they were about conquest itself.

The physicist John Wheeler, who helped develop the hydrogen bomb, once observed that “as our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.”

It takes a special kind of humility to grasp that you know less, even as you know and grasp more and more.

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.

Bill Walsh understood that it was really the Standard of Performance—the deceptively small things—that was responsible for the team’s transformation and victory.

once you win, everyone is gunning for you. It’s during your moment at the top that you can afford ego the least—because the stakes are so much higher, the margins for error are so much smaller. If anything, your ability to listen, to hear feedback, to improve and grow matter more now than ever before.

We start out knowing what is important to us, but once we’ve achieved it, we lose sight of our priorities. Ego sways us, and can ruin us.

The more you have and do, the harder maintaining fidelity to your purpose will be, but the more critically you will need to.

With success, particularly power, come some of the greatest and most dangerous delusions: entitlement, control, and paranoia.

entitlement nickels and dimes other people because it can’t conceive of valuing another person’s time as highly as its own.

urgent and important were not synonyms. His job was to set the priorities, to think big picture, and then trust the people beneath him to do the jobs they were hired for.

Eisenhower

Micromanagers are egotists who can’t manage others and they quickly get overloaded.