Ego is the Enemy Summary — Why you should control your ego
That on which you so pride yourself will be your ruin, you who think yourself to be someone
Menanader, old Greek playwright
Any path to a life that is worthwhile is filled with rejection, adversity, hard work. Reflection and introspection can teach you who you are, other people can teach you what is possible, but only through action can you create a life worth living. Work hard at your craft. Let your results put you in a different category. You don’t need passion, which is fragile, fleeting, dynamic. You need to be driven: What do I do next? How do we overcome this obstacle? Take away your ego and start taking action.
Here is a summary of the most important lessons of Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday, in which Holiday focuses on our biggest internal opponent: our ego. Drawing on characters from Eisenhower to Malcolm X, Holiday teaches us timeless and often, at first glance, counterintuitive or seemingly contradictory lessons in staying humble, countering our ego, and building a lifestyle of resilience and success.
Expect to learn the following:
- Why you don’t need to be passionate
- Why you should talk and think less (as well as my suggestions of what to do otherwise)
- To focus less on being something and to focus more on doing something
- How to get rid of your ego and learning how it holds you back
Aspire
“If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed” — William McRaven.
Where does your belief in yourself come from? Is it from achievements? If not, it is from your ego. How to build belief in yourself? Build on small achievements. It’s the reason why soldiers make their bed in the morning, starting the day off with success and setting the foundation for a productive day.
Abhor flatterers as you would deceivers. If one was to be true, both would injure you.
The ability to evaluate one’s own ability is the greatest skill of all. Detach yourself. Is what you are writing actually beneficial? It’s easy to be emotionally invested and infatuated with our own work. So keep on working but keep this in mind.
Facts are better than dreams.
Talk, talk, talk
Talk and hype replace action. What you’re going to do. What you should do. Comment boxes, tweets, journals. Talking is always easy. Writing the book, coding a startup… The creative process is difficult, but it’s a lot easier to talk about it. Talking about it releases endorphins. It’s as if you already achieved it.
I recently did a Fundamentals of Digital Marketing online course by Google. Why did I do it? Partially because I wanted to learn about areas outside of my degree and partially because I want to put something on my LinkedIn page. The truth is, I wanted to quit so many times during the process. After all, I don’t need to be doing this — it isn’t even related to my degree! But it is in the gaining of competence or understanding in an area that one becomes more passionate, that doors never anticipated open and opportunities abound. The Spartans lived by this message: If there is no work, make it, for idleness leads to fear. It is better to act on something we have defined as important, committing 100% than to be left idle, thinking.
Talking and doing fight for the same resources.
They ignore the impulse to seek recognition before they act.
To be, or to do?
From doing to being, from earning to pretending. Pretending that the money in my bank account is mine when actually it’s all Student Finance.
Impressing people is utterly different from being impressive.
Being right is different from having the right.
A man is worked upon by what he works on — Frederick Douglas
Nimms Purja, ex-Gurkha, ex-Special Forces and world record-breaking mountaineer, lives by this philosophy: Do not worry about how you are feeling. Worry about what you are doing.
This is a powerful message, recognising the impertinence of feeling and the importance of action. Simple, but not easy. How do we put this into practice when we feel at our worst? Ask what we can do to improve the situation, what you can do next. There is always a next.
What is the ultimate message of this? Focus more on what actions you can take now to achieve your goals and less on dreams. You can create the best LinkedIn profile or give the best first impression but your ability in that given area will inevitably be tested: in the interview, when handed the job, etc. Focus less on appearing useful and start actually being useful.
This relates to the saying: “How can you expect to do important work if you are not working on important things.” Define what is important to you and then carry out whatever daily tasks you need to get there. You will improve yourself and learn every single day.
Jordan Peterson goes about this by asking what there is to do that I am able to do that I am willing to do? Start by asking what work there is available immediately. Out of that work, what can I physically/mentally do? Then, the final hurdle: what am I willing to do? Maybe it feels like too much right now to declutter your desk. Okay, fine. What is a smaller task that I am willing to do? Sort out one pile? Take your rubbish from the bin under your desk? You must be kind to yourself and thus negotiate with yourself with tenderness and care. Of course, if you want to achieve high performance you must build up your strength and stamina so that you are able to perform monumental tasks. But monumental tasks are built on the foundation of excellent performance in the most basic of things. Everything can be split down into the next step. What is your next step?
Become a student
You can’t hack an education.
The power of being a student is not just that it’s an extended period of instruction, but that it places the ego and ambition in other people’s hands.
There are no short cuts. Think about your goals. How have they changed in the past year? No wonder you’re not achieving your goals if they are changing so much. However, note that as you get older you learn more about what you want in life — my views on life let alone goals have changed considerably in the past year so do not worry too much about this. Nevertheless, a common attribute of the most successful is committing everything to a goal, putting in all their energy. Just take a look at athletes like Dame Kelly Holmes who devoted herself to the running cause. No doubt Kelly had talent but take a look at the likes of Rio Ferdinand, Steph Houghton, who are all firm believers that talent is insufficient. Scott Jurek had average running talent yet became one of the world’s greatest ultrarunners. Why? His mindset. Scott was able to endure pain and the constant doubts and questioning during his races. He worked harder than anyone else.
High performance is 20% talent, 80% mindset
“It is impossible to learn that which one thinks one already knows”, Epictetus says.
Don’t be passionate
Is passion really life’s most important force? Perhaps not. Perhaps it is the cause of our unsuccess.
Passion typically masks a weakness. It’s breathlessness and impetuousness and franticness are poor substitutes for discipline for mastery with strength and purpose and perseverance.
We need realism. Where do we start? What do we do first? What we do right now? Are we sure that what we’re doing is moving us forward? What are we benchmarking ourselves against? Asking what or how questions allows us to decipher next steps and move forward. Asking why questions allows us to continue thinking and stay in the past. There are exceptions to this rule of course: why allows us to understand how problems arise so we can solve them, but ultimately this rule stands.
Purpose is about pursuing something outside yourself as opposed to pleasuring yourself.
It is not wrong to take it slow. To build on yourself over time, day upon day, week upon week, year upon year, and then on the catalogue of all that experience to achieve something.
Hire professionals and use them. Ask questions. What could go wrong? Ask for examples. How could it be better next time?
This iterative approach is, indeed, far less exciting than the passionate approach: flying 4,000 miles to surprise someone, gaining a six-pack abs in 30 days, etc., but it is more effective. James Clear, an expert on habit formation, supports the iterative approach. Improve 1% each day. It’s all about the incremental gains. Start small, James says, smaller than you think. 5 minute run a day. Then increase each day by a minute.
When asked “How long does it take to form a habit?”, James replied along the lines of, “How long do you expect to live?”.
Follow the canvas strategy
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
Attach yourself to people and organisations who are already successful and subsume your identity into theirs and move both forward simultaneously. It’s certainly more glamorous to pursue your own glory but hardly as effective. Obeisance is the way forward
What am I doing right now? Trying to pursue my own glory.
Greatness from humble beginnings; it comes from grunt work. It means you are the least important person in the room dash until you change that with results.
Be lesser, do more
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 effects this would have over time would be profound: you learn a great deal by solving diverse problems
Restrain yourself
You’ll think to yourself: I’m better than this, I deserve more.
But it doesn’t matter whether you have a million dollars, a wall full of awards. That doesn’t mean anything in the new field you’re trying to tackle. Don’t react. Take it.
Quietly brush it off and work harder.
The up and coming must endure the abuse of the entrenched. You’re not able to change the system until after you’ve made it.
Restraint is a difficult skill but a critical one. You will often be tempted; you will probably even be overcome. The tightrope you walk will tolerate only restraint and has no forgiveness for ego.
Don’t tell yourself a story
Stop being attached to the results.
A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts, so he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusions.
Stop performing. There’s no one to perform for. Reign your imaginations in.
Avoid pride through feedback.
You who think yourself to be someone — Menanader, old Greek playwright
It is not enough to have ideas. You must work until you are able to recreate the experience effectively in words on the page. As the saying goes, “ideas are useless without execution”.
You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do. This is called talking the talk but not walking the walk. Being all mouth and no trousers.
Always stay a student
When you are not practicing. remember someone somewhere is practicing, and when you meet him, he will win — Ed Macauley
Fake it til’ you make it? There will be a point where you’re tested, and you will be found out.
Quit thinking you’re special. If you don’t put in the work, what do you expect?
It’s an idea repeated in self-deception — stop worrying about what others are doing for you and start focusing on what you can do for others? It’s continual, continued effort.
Understand how you learn.
Keep your identity small. Relates to the rule of power written in Robert Greene's ‘The 48 Laws of Power’: Always say less than necessary. Make it about the work and the principles behind it. Not about a glorious vision that makes a good headline. Start extremely small and scale your ambitions as you go.
We might think that success in the future is just the natural next part of the story when really it is rooted in work, creativity, persistence, and luck. “I will learn as I get older”, many say to themselves but yet do not extend their reach beyond the familiar.
Create the image around hard work and sincere hustle, not inspiration or pain. It is about the process.
What’s important to you?
To know what you like is the beginning of wisdom and old age. Robert Louis Stevenson
It’s absolutely critical you know who you are competing with and why. For example, money: if you don’t know how much you need, the default easily becomes more. In reality, I don’t need lots of money. Just enough to buy bikes, travel around the world. Is it really money that you want or the respect that comes with it? Is it that you don’t want people to just look through you? Or is it that you want freedom? Analyse the underlying motivations.
So figure out what is important to you. Find out why you are after what you are after. If we were to use Eisenhower’s decision matrix, this would be a quartile two task: important but not urgent.
Entitlement, control, and paranoia
Entitlement: It’s mine. I’ve earnt it. Nickels and dimes other people. Overstates our own abilities to us. Creates ridiculous expectations.
Control: It must be done all my way, even tiny, inconsequential things.
Figure out how to manage yourself. Eisenhower and the sealed envelopes: let the best man do the job. William Sherman, an American soldier, declined promotion and even running for presidency, despite being heavily encouraged to do so because he knew he was not ready. He knew that he was not the best man for the job. Can we be as humble? Can we value the quality of utility over our ego?
Beware of the disease of me
If you do everything right that is enough. Do not require appreciation, results…
Play for the name on front of the jersey and they will remember the name on the back — Tony Adams
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.
The credit? Who cares?
Stop caring if you’ll be rewarded for your work. Belisarius was blinded and forced to beg on the streets after saving Western Civilisation on at least three occasions.
Be part of something bigger than yourself.
Charisma doesn’t get results.
Self-anointed importance.
Maintain your sobriety
You don’t have to one-up everyone, always be right, always stand up for yourself. Compromise, except for the principle at hand.
We don’t need pity. We need purpose, poise, and patience.
Ego turns slips into falls and little troubles into great unravellings.
Narcissistic injury: when we take personally totally indifferent and objective events. Relates to victim mindset and the question of fault versus responsibility: you may not be your fault but it is your responsibility to deal with it as best you can. Deal with it or even thrive.
Alive time or dead time?
The occurrence of dead time is out of our control. Its use is not.
Malcolm X used every second of his time in jail learning, reading, educating himself and came out of prison an improved man. Situations are always delivered to us such that they are out of our control: Covid-19, a relationship falling apart, etc. The question is how we use the time that is given to us.
Time is money.
Dead time: I will use this time. I will choose to use this time. It will be an opportunity for me.
The effort is enough
Ego says, why did you ever try? This isn’t worth it. This isn’t fair. This is not your problem, come up with a good excuse and wash your hands of this.
Duris dura franguntur.
Hard things are broken by hard things.
A team, like men, must be brought to its knees before it can rise again.
When success begins to slip from your fingers — for whatever reason — the response is not to grip and claw so hard that you shatter it to pieces. It is to understand that you must work yourself back to the aspirational phase. You must get back to first principles and best practices.
The point is: everyone can win. But not everyone can be the best version of themselves. Winning/achieving is not enough. Measuring up to your standards is.
Look for failure even in success like the New England Patriots.
Winning or achieving is not enough. Measuring up to your standards is.
Maintain your own scorecard
“No one will know”. “What can I get away with?”. That’s ego. What do your inner standards say about right and wrong?
It is tough, after labouring so intensely, to find humanity indifferent to your achievement.
What matters is that we can respond to what life throws at us.
To sum up:
1. Live with purpose, not passion. Why do I do what I do? Figure that out. Prioritise your goals with clarity and then execute them. Follow through.
2. Always be a student. Learning is a requirement, not just in the beginning but especially then. You aren’t as good as you think you are. Everything in life has something to teach you.
3. Talk and think less: do more. Talking and thinking too much drain the energy you could be using to put into your work. Stay focused on execution.
Here is my favourite quote:
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. Ryan Holiday.
Thank you so much for reading and I hope this summary alongside my thoughts and related notes helped you figure out your next steps to developing a stronger mindset and measuring up to your standards.
As always, leave me some feedback below and follow me for three posts a week, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday (TTS).
