Ego Is the Enemy

by Ryan Holiday

Vince Lombardi

“A team, like men, must be brought to its knees before it can rise again.” So yes, hitting bottom is as brutal as it sounds.

President Obama described it as he neared the end of his tumultuous, trying terms. “I’ve been in the barrel tumbling down Niagara Falls and I emerged, and I lived, and that’s such a liberating feeling.”

smile fondly at the bloody claw prints that marked your journey up the walls.

We take risks. We mess up.

American Apparel’s founder Dov Charney is an example. After losses of some $300 million and numerous scandals, the company offered him a choice: step aside as CEO and guide the company as a creative consultant (for a large salary), or be fired. He rejected both options and picked something much worse.

Ego kills what we love. Sometimes, it comes close to killing us too.

“If you cannot reasonably hope for a favorable extrication, do not plunge deeper. Have the courage to make a full stop.”

Let’s say you’ve failed and let’s even say it was your fault. Shit happens and, as they say, sometimes shit happens in public. It’s not fun. The questions remain: Are you going to make it worse? Or are you going to emerge from this with your dignity and character intact? Are you going to live to fight another day?

Because you will lose in life. It’s a fact. A doctor has to call time of death at some point. They just do.

This is characteristic of how great people think. It’s not that they find failure in every success. They just hold themselves to a standard that exceeds what society might consider to be objective success. Because of that, they don’t much care what other people think; they care whether they meet their own standards. And these standards are much, much higher than everyone else’s.

Ego can’t see both sides of the issue. It can’t get better because it only sees the validation. Remember, “Vain men never hear anything but praise.” It can only see what’s going well, not what isn’t.

Winning is not enough. People can get lucky and win. People can be assholes and win. Anyone can win. But not everyone is the best possible version of themselves.

discipline

You know what is a better response to an attack or a slight or something you don’t like? Love. That’s right, love. For the neighbor who won’t turn down the music. For the parent that let you down. For the bureaucrat who lost your paperwork. For the group that rejects you. For the critic who attacks you. The former partner who stole your business idea.

You could at the very least try to let it go. You could try to shake your head and laugh about it.

The soul that is within me no man can degrade. I am not the one that is being degraded on account of this treatment, but those who are inflicting it upon me.”

hate was a burden and love was freedom.

“We begin to love our enemies and love those persons that hate us whether in collective life or individual life by looking at ourselves.”

We must strip ourselves of the ego that protects and suffocates us, because, as he said, “Hate at any point is a cancer that gnaws away at the very vital center of your life and your existence. It is like eroding acid that eats away the best and the objective center of your life.”

Their ego and shortsightedness contains its own punishment.

The question we must ask for ourselves is: Are we going to be miserable just because other people are?

promise you it didn’t make him bitter.”

Not everyone is capable of responding that way. At various points in our lives, we seem to have different capacities for forgiveness and understanding. And even when some people are able to carry on, they carry with them a needless load of resentment.

Everyone else has moved on, but you can’t, because you can’t see anything but your own way. You can’t conceive of accepting that someone could hurt you, deliberately or otherwise. So you hate.

As Benjamin Franklin observed, those who “drink to the bottom of the cup must expect to meet with some of the dregs.”

As Harold Geneen put it, “People learn from their failures. Seldom do they learn anything from success.” It’s why the old Celtic saying tells us, “See much, study much, suffer much, that is the path to wisdom.”

It is no easy task to go head-to-head with one’s ego.

My friend the philosopher and martial artist Daniele Bolelli once gave me a helpful metaphor. He explained that training was like 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.

corrupting them and undermining us as we set out to achieve and accomplish.

Every day for the rest of your life you will find yourself at one of three phases: aspiration, success, failure. You will battle the ego in each of them. You will make mistakes in each of them.