Ego Is The Enemy

Ryan Holiday has written, in my opinion, one of the greatest books of all time on success mindset. There are too many good points to summarize, so I notated below my favorite snippets from the book to give you a taste of why this should be in yours and every person’s library who seeks the mindset that separates the successful from those who simply fantasize about it. Like most things in life, success is about perspective as much as (if not more so than) it is about doing the right things.

WHY IS EGO THE ENEMY?

Ego is the enemy of what you want and of what you have; of mastering your craft. Of real creative insight. Of working well with others. Of building loyalty and support. Of longevity. Of repeating and retaining your success. It repulses advantages and opportunities. It's a magnet for enemies and errors.

Sure, ego has worked for some. Many of history's most famous men and women were notoriously egotistical. But so are many of its greatest failures. Far more of them, in fact. But here we are with a culture that urges us to roll the dice. To make the gamble, ignoring the sticks.

DANGERS IN THE BEGINNING OF THE JOURNEY:

Most of us are in these stages in a fluid sense – we are aspiring until we succeed, we succeed until we fail, or until we aspire to more, and after we fail we can begin to aspire or succeed again.

In the beginning of the journey, we are setting up to do something. We have a goal, a calling, a new beginning. Every great journey begins here – and far too many of us never reach our intended destination. Ego more often than not is the culprit. We build ourselves up with fantastical stories, we pretend we have it all figured out, we let our star burn bright and hot only to fizzle out, and we have no idea why. These are symptoms of ego, for which humility and reality are the cure.

One must ask: if your belief in yourself is not dependent on actual achievement, then what is it dependent on? The answer, too often when we are just setting out, is nothing. Ego. And this is why we so often see precipitous rises followed by calamitous falls.

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? Will you sniff out the flame that is just getting going?

Arrogance and self absorption inhibit growth. So does fantasy and vision. In this phase, you must practice seeing yourself with a little distance, cultivating the ability to get out of your own head. Detachment is a sort of natural ego antidote. It's easy to be emotionally invested and infatuated with your own work. Any and every narcissist can do that. What is rare is not raw talent, skill, or even confidence, but humility, diligence, and self-awareness. 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 and forgo validation and status, our ambition will not be grandiose but iterative, one foot in front of the other, learning and growing and putting in the time.

THE DANGERS OF TALKING TOO MUCH

It is a temptation that exists for everyone – for talk and hype to replace action. At the beginning of a new path, we are excited and nervous. So we seek to comfort ourselves externally instead of inwardly.

Many valuable endeavors we undertake are painfully difficult, whether it's coding a new start up or mastering a craft. But talking, talking is always easy. We seem to think that silence is a sign of weakness. That being ignorant is tantamount to death. And for the ego, this is true. So we talk, talk, talk as though our life depends on it. In actuality, silence is strength – particularly early on in any journey.

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 strong.

‘Talking’ and ‘doing’ fight for the same resources. Research shows that while goal visualization is important, after a certain point our mind begins to confuse it with actual progress. The same goes for verbalization. After spending so much time thinking, explaining, and talking about a task, we start to feel that we've gotten closer to achieving it.

Talking - listening to ourselves talk, performing for an audience – it's almost like therapy. I just spent four hours talking about this. Doesn't that count for something? The answer is no. 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 are deep in the middle of it.

The question is, when faced with your particular challenge – whether it is researching in a new field, starting a business, producing a film, securing a mentor, advancing an important cause, do you think the respite of talk or do you face the struggle head on?

PURSUING PURPOSE OVER PASSION

Purpose helps you answer the question, "to be or to do?” quite easily. If what matters is you - your reputation, your inclusion, your personal use of life – your path is clear: tell people what they want to hear. Seek attention over the quiet but important work. Say yes to promotions and generally follow the track that talented people take in the industry or field you've chosen. Pay your dues, check the boxes, put in your time, and leave things essentially as they are. Chase your fame, your salary, or title and enjoy them as they come. "A man is worked upon by what he works on," Frederick Douglass once said. He would know. What you choose to do with your time and what you choose to do for money works on you. If your purpose is something larger than you – to a cause, to prove something to yourself – then suddenly everything becomes both easier and more difficult. Easier in the sense that you know now what it is you need to do and what is important to you. The other "choices" wash away, as they aren't really choices at all. They are distractions. It's about the doing, not the recognition. Easier in the sense that you don't need to compromise. Harder because each opportunity – no matter how gratifying or rewarding - must be evaluated through some strict guidelines: does this help me to do what I have set out to do? Does this allow me to do what I need to do? Am I being selfish or selfless? Setting aside selfish interest, it asks: what values does it serve? What principles govern my choices? Do I want to be like everyone else or do I want to be something different? In other words, it's harder because everything can seem like a compromise.

Ego doesn't allow for proper incubation either. To become what we ultimately hope to become often takes long periods of obscurity, of sitting and wrestling with some topic or paradox. Humility is what keeps us there, concerned that we don't know enough and that we must continue to study. Ego rushes to the end, rationalizing  that patience is for losers (wrongly seeing it as a weakness), and assumes that we are good enough to give our talents a go in the world. Blocks us from improving by telling us that we don't need to improve. Then we wonder why we don't get the results we want, why others are better and why their success is more lasting.

Here's what many people haven't told you: your passion may be the very thing holding you back from power or influence or accomplishment. Because just as often, we fail with - no, because of - passion.

John Wooden wasn't about rah-rah speeches or inspiration. He saw those extra emotions as a burden. Instead, his philosophy was about being in control and doing your job and never being “passion's slave.”

In our endeavors, we will face complex problems, often in situations we've never faced before. Opportunities are not usually deep, virgin pools that require courage and boldness to dive into, but instead are obscured, dusted over, blocked by various forms of resistance. What is really called for in these circumstances is clarity, deliberateness, and methodical determination. But because we only seem to hear about the passion of successful people, we forget that failures share the same trait.

Passion typically masks a weakness. It's 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 and others and yourself, because while the origins of passion may be earnest and good, its effects are comical and then monstrous. Passion is seen in those who can tell you in great detail who they intend to become and what their success will be like – they might even be able to tell you specifically when they intend to achieve it or describe to you legitimate and sincere worries they have about the burdens of such accomplishments. They can tell you all the things they are going to do or have even begun but they cannot show you their progress. Because there rarely is any. How can someone be busy and not accomplish anything? Well, that's the passion paradox. 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. Dogs, God bless them, are passionate. But that doesn't mean they accomplish much.

Purpose, you could say, is like passion with boundaries. When we are young, we feel so intensely. This is just our impatience. This is our inability to see that burning ourselves out or blowing ourselves up isn't going to hurry the journey along.

Passion is ‘about.’ I am so passionate about ____. Purpose is ‘to’ and ‘for.’ I must do ____. I was put here to accomplish ____. I am willing to endure ____ for the sake of this. Actually, purpose deemphasizes the ‘I.’ Purpose is about pursuing something outside yourself as opposed to pleasing yourself. More than purpose, we also need realism. Where do we start? What do we do first? What do we do right now?

Passion is form over function. Purpose is function, function, function. The critical work that you want to do will require your deliberation and consideration. Not passion. Not naïveté. It would be far better if you were intimidated by what lies ahead – humbled by its magnitude and determined to see it through regardless. Leave passion for the amateurs. Make it about what you feel you must do and say, not what you care about and wish to be. Then you'll do great things. Then you will stop being your old, good-intentioned but ineffective, self.

THE DANGERS OF PRIDE, AND THE IMPORTANCE OF HUMILITY 

When you are just starting out, we can be sure of a few fundamental realities: 1.) You are 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 are most of what you learned in books or in school is out of date or wrong. There is one fabulous way to work all that out of your system: attach yourself to people and organizations who are already successful and subsume your identity into theirs and both forward simultaneously. It is certainly more glamorous to pursue your own glory – though hardly as effective. Obeisance is the way forward.

Greatness comes from humble beginnings: it comes from great work. It means you are the least important person in the room - until you change that with results.

I have observed that those who have accomplished the greatest results are those who "keep under the body." They are those who never grow excited or lose self-control, but are always calm, self-possessed, patient, and polite.

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

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. Most dangerously, this tends to happen either early in life or in the process - when we are flushed with beginners conceit. Pride takes some minor accomplishment and makes it feel like a major one.

Pride and ego say: I am an entrepreneur because I struck out on my own. I am going to win because I am currently in the lead. I am a writer because I published something. I am rich because I made some money. I am special because I was chosen. I am important because I think I should be.

The first product of self knowledge is humility. This is how we fight the ego, by really knowing ourselves. That in which you so pride yourself will be your ruin. It is the strivers who should be our peers – not the proud and the accomplished. Without this understanding, pride takes our self-conception and puts it at odds with the reality of our situation, which is that we still have so far to go, and that there is still so much to be done.

You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.

CONTROLLING WHAT YOU CAN CONTROL IS ALL IT TAKES

Is it 10,000 hours or 20,000 hours to Mastery? The answer is that it doesn't matter. There is no end zone. To think of a number is to live in a conditional future. We are simply talking about a lot of hours – that to get where we want to go isn't about brilliance, but continual effort. While that's not a terribly sexy idea, it should be an encouraging one. Because it means it is all within reach - for all of us, provided we have the constitution and humbleness to be patient and the fortitude to put in the work. Our ego wants the ideas and the fact that we aspire to do something about them to be enough. Wants the hours we spend planning or attending conferences or chatting with impressed friends to count toward the tally that success seems to require. It wants to be paid well for its time and it wants to do the fun stuff – the stuff that gets attention, credit, or glory. That's the reality. But where we decide to put our energy decides what we will ultimately accomplish.

So: do we sit down, alone, and struggle with our work? Work that may or may not go anywhere, that may be discouraging and painful? Do we love work, making a living to do work, not the other way around? Do we love practice, the way great athletes do? Or do we chase short term attention and validation – whether that's indulging in the endless search for ideas or simply the distraction of talk and chatter?

The material we've been given genetically, emotionally, financially, that's where we begin. We don't control that. We do control what we make of that material, and whether we squander it. Wouldn't it be great if work was as simple as opening a vein and letting the genius pour out? Or if you could walk into that meeting and spit brilliance off the top of your head? You walk up to the canvas, hurl paint at it, and modern art emerges, right? That is the fantasy – rather, that is the lie.

What is truly ambitious is to face life and proceed with quiet confidence in spite of the distractions. To say, "I am going to be myself, the best version of that self. I am in this for the long game, no matter how brutal it might be." To do, not be.

THE DANGERS OF EARLY SUCCESS & REVERSE-ENGINEERING OUR PATH

The roots of ego are insecurity, fear, and a dislike for brutal objectivity.

With accomplishment comes a growing pressure to pretend that we know more than we do. To pretend we already know everything; that's the worry and the risk is that thinking that we are set and secure when in reality understanding and mastery is a fluid, continual process.

Do you know how you can tell when someone is truly humble? I believe there's one simple test: because they consistently observe and listen, the humble improve. They don't assume, "I know the way." No matter what you've done up to this point, you better still be a student. If you are not still learning, you are already dying. It is not enough only to be a student at the beginning. It is a position that one has to assume for life. At every step and every juncture in life, there is the opportunity to learn, and even if the lesson is purely remedial, we must not let ego block us from hearing it again.

Like sirens on the rocks, ego sings a soothing, validating song - which can lead to a wreck. The second we let the ego tell us we have graduated, learning grinds to a halt. 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. 

If the players take care of the details, “the score takes care of itself.” The winning will happen. 

We want so desperately to believe that those who have great empires set out to build them. Why? So we can indulge in the pleasurable planning of our own empire. So we can take full credit for the good that happens and the riches and respect that come our way. Narrative is when you look back at an improbable or unlikely path to your success and say: I knew it all along. Instead of: I hoped. I worked. I got some good breaks. Or even: I thought this could happen. OF course you didn’t really know all along - or if you did, it was more faith than knowledge. But who WANTS to remember all the times you doubted yourself?

When we are aspiring we must resist the impulse to reverse engineer success from other people’s stories. When we achieve our own, we must resist the desire to pretend that everything unfolded exactly as we’d planned. There was no grand narrative. You should remember - you were there when it happened. 

There is a real danger in believing any labels that come along with a career; are we suddenly an “entrepreneur” because we accomplished one thing? These labels put you at odds not just with reality, but with the real strategy that made you successful in the first place. From that place, we might think that success in the future is just the natural next part of the story - when really it’s rooted in work, creativity, persistence, and luck. 

Instead of pretending we are living some great story, we must remain focused on the execution - and on executing with excellence. We must shun the false crown and continue on what got us here. Because that’s the only thing that will keep us here. 

According to Seneca, the greek work “euthymia” is one we should think of often; it is the sense of our own path and how to stay on it without getting distracted by all the others that intersect it. In other words, it's not about beating the other guy. It’s not about having more than the others. It’s about being what you are, and being as good as possible at it, without succumbing to all the things that draw you away from it. It’s about going where you set out to go. About accomplishing the most that you’re capable of in what you choose. That’s it. No more and no less.

THE INEVITABILITY OF FAILURE AND HOW TO USE IT 

Almost without exception, this is what life does: it takes our plans and dashes them to pieces. Sometimes once, sometimes lots of times. 

If success is ego intoxication, then failure can be a devastating ego blow - turning slips into falls and little troubles into great unraveling. If ego is often just a nasty side effect of great success, it can be fatal during failure. We have many names for these problems: Sabotage. unfairness. Adversity. Trials. Tragedy. No matter the label, it’s a trial. We don’t like it, and some of us are sunk by it. Others seem to be built to make it through. In either case, it’s a trial each person must endure. “He will face a battle he knows not, he will ride a road he knows not.” 

At any given moment, there is the chance of failure or setbacks. Almost always, the road to success goes through a place called failure. We’ll need to accept it AND push through it. 

We think that failure only comes to egomaniacs who were begging for it. The reality is that while yes, often people set themselves up to crash, good people fail (or other people fail them) all the time too. Life isn’t fair. Ego loves this notion, the idea that something is “fair” or not. Psychologists call it narcissistic injury when we take personally totally indifferent and objective events. We do that when your sense of self is fragile and dependent on life going our way all the time. 

Failure always arrives uninvited, but through our ego, far too many of us allow it to stick around. 

What about you? Will your ego betray you when things get difficult? Or can you proceed without it? 

Absorbing the negative feedback, ego says: I knew you couldn’t do it. Why did you ever try? It claims: This isn’t worth it. This isn’t fair. This is somebody else’s problem. Why don’t you come up with a good excuse and wash your hands of this? It tells us we shouldn’t have to put up with this. It tells us we are not the problem. That is, it adds self-injury to every injury you experience. 

The great failing is “to see yourself as more than you are and to value yourself at less than your true worth.” 

Humble and strong people don’t have the same trouble with these troubles that egotists do. There are fewer complaints and far less self-immolation. Instead, there’s stoic - even cheerful - resilience. Pity isn’t necessary. Their identity isn’t threatened. They can get by without constant validation. This is what we are aspiring to - much more than mere success. What matters is that we can respond to what life throws at us. And how we make it through. 

There are two types of time in our lives: dead time, when people are passive and waiting, and alive time, when people are learning and acting and utilizing every second. Every moment of failure, every moment or situation that we did not deliberately choose or control, presents this choice: Alive time. Dead time. 

Yes, it would feel much better in the moment to be angry, to be aggrieved, to be depressed or heartbroken. When injustice or the capriciousness of fate are inflicted on someone, the normal reaction is to yell, to fight back, to resist. You know the feeling - I don’t want this. I want ____. I want it my way. This is shortsighted. 

That’s what so many of us do when we fail or get ourselves into trouble. Lacking the ability to examine ourselves, we reinvest our energy into exactly the patterns of behavior that caused our problems to begin with. It comes in many forms. Idly dreaming about the future. Plotting our revenge. Finding refuge in distraction. Refusing to consider that our choices are a reflection of our character. We’d rather do basically anything else. 

But if we said: This is an opportunity for me. I am using it for my purposes. I will not let this be dead time for me. The dead time was when we were controlled by ego. Now - now we can live. 

In life, we all get stuck with dead time. Its occurrence isn’t in our control. Its use, on the other hand, is. Booker Washington said, “Cast your bucket where you are.” Make use of what’s around you. Don’t let stubbornness make a bad situation worse. 

What matters to an active man is to do the right thing; whether the right thing comes to pass should not bother him. 

In life, there will be times when we do everything right, perhaps even perfectly. Yet the results will somehow be negative: failure, disrespect, jealousy, or even a resounding yawn from the world. 

We are all faced with this same challenge in the pursuit of our own goals: Will we invest time and energy even if an outcome is not guaranteed? With the right motives we’re willing to proceed. With ego, we’re not. We have only minimal control over the rewards for our work and effort - other people’s validation, recognition, rewards. So what are we going to do? Not be kind, not work hard, not produce, because there is a chance it wouldn’t be reciprocated? C’mon. Think of all the activists who will find that they can only advance their cause so far. The leaders who are assassinated before their work is done. The inventors whose ideas were “ahead of their time.” According to society’s main metrics, these people were not rewarded for their work. Should they have not done it? Yet in ego, every one of us has considered doing precisely that. If that is your attitude, how are you going to endure in tough times? 

It’s far better when doing good work is sufficient. In other words, the less attached we are to outcomes the better. When fulfilling our own standards is what fills us with pride and self respect. When the effort - not the results, good or bad - is enough. With ego, this is not nearly sufficient. No, we need to be recognized. We need to be compensated. Especially problematic is the fact that, often, we get that. We are praised, we are paid, and we start to assume that the two things always go together. The “Expectation Hangover” inevitably ensues.

You will be unappreciated. You will be sabotaged. You will experience surprising failures. Your expectations will not be met. You will lose. You will fail. How do you carry on then? How do you take pride in yourself and your work? John Wooden’s advice to his players says it: Change the definition of success. “Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do your best to become the best that you are capable of “becoming.” “Ambition,” Marcus Aurelius reminded himself, “means tying your well-being to what other people say or do…Sanity means tying it to your own actions.” Do your work. Do it well. Then “let go and let God.” That’s all there needs to be. Recognition and rewards - those are just extra. Rejection, that’s on them, not us. 

The world is indifferent to what we humans “want.” If we persist in wanting, in needing, we are simply setting ourselves up for resentment or worse. Doing the work is enough. 

DRAW THE LINE

Most trouble is necessary…unless you make that not so. Recovery is not grand, it’s one step in front of the other. Unless your cure is more of the disease. Only ego thinks embarrassment or failure are more than what they are. History is full of people who suffered abject humiliations yet recovered to have long and impressive careers. 

When we lose, we have a choice: Are we going to make this a lose-lose situation for ourselves and everyone involved? Or will it be a lose….And then win? Because you will lose in life. It’s a fact. A doctor has to call time of death at some point. They just do. 

At any given time in the circle of life, we may be aspiring, succeeding or failing. With Wisdom, we understand that these positions are transitory, not statements about your value as a human being. When success begins to slip from your fingers - for whatever reason - the response isn’t to grip and claw so hard that you shatter it to pieces. It’s to understand that you must work yourself back to the aspirational phase. You must get back to first principles and best practices. 

He who will do anything to avoid failure will almost certainly do something worthy of a failure. The only real failure is abandoning your principles. Killing what you hope for because you can’t bear to part from it is selfish and stupid. If your reputation can’t absorb a few blows, it wasn’t worth anything in the first place. 

A reminder: You’re not as good as you think. You don’t have it all figured out. Stay focused. Do better. 

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. For us, the scorecard can’t be the only scorecard. There is a distinction between the external scorecard and the internal scorecard. Your potential, the absolute best you’re capable of - that’s the metric to measure yourself against. Your standards are. 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. 

A person who judges himself based on his own standards doesn’t crave the spotlight the same way as someone who lets applause dictate success. A person who can think long term doesn’t pity herself during short-term setbacks. A person who values the team can share credit and subsume his own interests in a way that most others can’t.

FOR EVERYTHING THAT COMES NEX,  EGO IS THE ENEMY

I don’t like work - no man does - but I like what is in the work - the chance to find oneself. 

There is no way around it - We will experience difficulty. We will feel the touch of failure. As Ben Franklin observed, those who “drink to the bottom of the cup must expect to meet with some of the dregs.” But what if those dregs weren’t so bad? 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. What you face right now could be, should be, can be such a path. Wisdom or ignorance? Ego is the swing vote. Aspiration leads to success (and adversity). Success creates its own adversity (and, hopefully, new ambitions). And adversity leads to aspiration and more success. It’s an endless loop.