Ego Is the Enemy

by Ryan Holiday

It’s a type of storytelling in which eventually your talent becomes your identity and your accomplishments become your worth.

stressed and overworked, having handed much of my hard-earned freedom away because I couldn’t say no to money and the thrill of a good crisis.

desire for recognition.

word “egotist” to refer to someone dangerously focused on themselves and with disregard for anyone else.

the proverbial “sick man ignorant of the cause of his malady.” Especially for successful people who can’t see what ego prevents them from doing because all they can see is what they’ve already done.

performance artist Marina Abramović puts it directly: “If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.”

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.

Some of us do this more than others. But it’s only a matter of degree.

Many of history’s most famous men and women were notoriously egotistical.

“Buildings that lie so exposed to the weather need a good foundation.”

ascent was a slow and gradual one.

If you want to be more than a flash in the pan, you must be prepared to focus on the long term.

We will learn that though we think big, we must act and live small in order to accomplish what we seek. Because we will be action and education focused,

one foot in front of the other, learning and growing and p...

Facts are better than dreams, as Churchill put it.

Writing, like so many creative acts, is hard. Sitting there, staring, mad at yourself, mad at the material because it doesn’t seem good enough and you don’t seem good enough. In fact, many valuable endeavors we undertake are painfully difficult, whether it’s coding a new startup or mastering a craft. But talking, talking is always easy.

related

silence is strength—particularly early on in any journey.

And that’s what is so insidious about talk. Anyone can talk about himself or herself. Even a child knows how to gossip and chatter. Most people are decent at hype and sales. 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.

“A man’s best treasure is a thrifty tongue.”

Doing great work is a struggle. It’s draining, it’s demoralizing, it’s frightening—not always, but it can feel that way when we’re deep in the middle of it.

We talk to fill the void and the uncertainty.

do you seek the respite of talk or do you face the struggle head-on?

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

you won’t have to compromise yourself.

ghetto colonel because of his frugal lifestyle.

willingness to endure the type of instruction they wouldn’t.

Frank Shamrock has a system he trains fighters in that he calls plus, minus, and equal. Each fighter, to become great, he said, needs to have someone better that they can learn from, someone lesser who they can teach, and someone equal that they can challenge themselves against. The purpose of Shamrock’s formula is simple: to get real and continuous feedback about what they know and what they don’t know from every angle.

“False ideas about yourself destroy you. For me, I always stay a student. That’s what martial arts are about, and you have to use that humility as a tool. You put yourself beneath someone you trust.”

Why? To become great and to stay great, they must all know what came before, what is going on now, and what comes next. They must internalize the fundamentals of their domain and what surrounds them, without ossifying or becoming stuck in time. They must be always learning. We must all become our own teachers, tutors, and critics.

cerdas memilih mengelompokkan

A real student is also his own teacher and his own critic. There is no room for ego there.

The reality is that, though they were confident, the act of being an eternal student kept these men and women humble.

Epictetus says. You can’t learn if you think you already know. You will not find the answers if you’re too conceited and self-assured to ask the questions. You cannot get better if you’re convinced you are the best.

“When student is ready, the teacher appears.”

wasn’t driven by passion, but by reason.

about being in control and doing your job and never being “passion’s slave.”

apathetic.

drunkenness of passion.

be busy and not accomplish anything? Well, that’s the passion paradox.

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

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

maladies

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.

Obeisance is the way forward.

He learned how to be a rising star without threatening or alienating anyone.

Greatness comes from humble beginnings; it comes from grunt work. It means you’re the least important person in the room—until you change that with results.

ilikethis

Find what nobody else wants to do and do it. Find inefficiencies and waste and redundancies. Identify leaks and patches to free up resources for new areas.

Those who have subdued their ego understand that it doesn’t degrade you when others treat you poorly; it degrades them.

.

do nothing. Take it. Eat it until you’re sick. Endure it. Quietly brush it off and work harder. Play the game. Ignore the noise; for the love of God, do not let it distract you. Restraint is a difficult skill but a critical one. You will often be tempted, you will probably even be overcome. No one is perfect with it, but try we must.

.