Ego is the Enemy: The Fight to Master Our Greatest Opponent

by Ryan Holiday

Purpose is about pursuing something outside yourself as opposed to pleasuring yourself.

“Man is pushed by drives,” Viktor Frankl observed. “But he is pulled by values.” Ruled by or ruling? Which are you? Without the right values, success is brief.

To know what you like is the beginning of wisdom and of old age. —

All of us waste precious life doing things we don’t like, to prove ourselves to people we don’t respect, and to get things we don’t want.

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.

the end, we all face becoming the adult supervision we originally rebelled against.