Ego is the Enemy — Ryan Holiday
“The only relationship between work and chatter is that one kills the other.”
Start — 9/18/16 Finish — 9/21/16
Directives:
· Humility and diligence beat out talent and confidence in the long run.
· Focus more on doing something rather than being someone. The first entails devoting time and work to something larger than yourself, while the latter involves merely building yourself up in the eyes of others.
· Always stay a student. The moment we decide that we know everything is the moment we fall from the top.
· Decide what matters to you before you set out to do something. Knowing what’s personally important will keep you from relentlessly chasing after what other people have.
· Process over outcome. Be satisfied with doing the right thing even if the right outcome doesn’t come to pass. The right thing is enough in itself, the rewards are just extra.
Notes:
· Aspire
o Proper aspiration requires consistently working to achieve a goal while simultaneously never feeling that you are in some way entitled to the honors you receive
§ Need the ability to impartially evaluate your own abilities, especially weaknesses
§ Humility and diligence over talent and confidence
o Instead of focusing on the action itself, we tend to focus on talking about the actions we’re going to take, or how things should be rather than actualizing them
§ The ability to deliberately keep yourself out of the conversation and subsist without validation is a show of strength and confidence
§ The more difficult the task, the more uncertain the outcome, the more costly talk will be and the farther we will try to eschew actually accountability
o A question to ask: do you want to be someone (and have the reputation, inclusion, personal ease that that entails) or do you want to do something (to accomplish something larger than yourself, to prove something important)?
o Subsuming your ego to someone you know to be better than yourself, to learn from them as a student, is one of the best ways to psychologically get out of your own way
§ Have someone better you can learn from, someone lesser you can teach, and someone equal you can challenge yourself against
§ The idea is to get real and continuous feedback about what you know and don’t know from every possible angle — to constantly be a student of your craft
o More than passion, what we need is purpose (pursuing something outside yourself) and realism (the steps and benchmarks needed to make progress), both of which take the focus off the self and onto tangible and achievable things
o In whatever we aspire to, our own path will in some ways be determined by the amount of nonsense and difficulty we are willing to deal with; restraint can determine what we’re able to achieve
o Pride dulls our ability to learn, to adapt, to be flexible, and to build relationships
§ It drives a wedge between ourselves and reality, falsely amplifying minor accomplishments
§ What we don’t do enough of is preparing ourselves against praise or achievement that make us feel too good — we have to subdue pride before it kills our aspirations
· Success
o It takes a special kind of humility to understand that you know less, even as you know and grasp more and more
§ To pretend that we know everything — that we’re not still students mastering a craft — is a set-up for failure
§ Whereas the amateur gets defense when they are challenged, the professional looks to be challenged and humbled because it keeps the learning process moving in the right direction
o Crafting success narratives out of past events using hindsight really only leads to stifling arrogance
o Deciding what is important to you is the first step in managing your success and not letting it drive you to endlessly chase after what other people have
§ Too often we look at other people and make their approval the standard we feel compelled to meet, squandering our potential and purpose
§ It’s not about beating everyone else, having more than everyone else, but rather deciding who you are and what you wish to do — then doing that as well as possible with the least amount of distraction
o The disease of me: beginning to think that we’re better, we’re special, or that our problems and experiences are so different from everyone else’s that no one could possibly understand
o Regularly meditating on the immensity of the world and the achievements of those that have come before you (as well as your connectedness to it all) is a good way to stop self-important thinking in its tracks
o We often think of energy, passion, and enthusiasm as drivers of success, when usually what success demands more of is sobriety, steadiness, and deliberate decision-making
· Failure
o Working through difficulty and failure requires a set of internal metrics that allow you to evaluate your progress while everyone else is too distracted by supposed/overt signs of failure or weakness
o “Dead time” (time spent being passive and not moving forward) is revived when we use it as an opportunity to do what we’ve long needed to do
§ With some self-awareness, we have to invest our energy into new patterns of behavior that won’t cause the problems we’re currently in
§ Making use of what’s around you in a bad situation is a mandatory skill, as your luck will inevitably fail you at one time or another
o Be satisfied with doing the right thing even if the right outcome doesn’t come to pass — the right thing is enough in itself, the rewards are just extra
o While failure is inevitable, putting an end to the behaviors that got us in this situation is not — only you can call for a full stop to leave with your character/dignity intact
§ Most trouble is temporary unless we make it permanent
§ Recovery is rarely grand, but rather incremental
Phrases/Quotes:
· “If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.” — Marina Abramovic
· 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 only relationship between work and chatter is that one kills the other.
· The pretense of knowledge is our most dangerous vice, because it prevents us from getting any better. Studious self-assessment is the antidote.
· We’re required to tell stories in order to sell our work and our talents, and after enough time, forget where the line is that separates our fictions from reality.
· 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.
· Find out why you’re after what you’re after. Ignore those who mess with your pace. Let them covet what you have, not the other way around. Because that’s independence.
· Remind yourself how pointless it is to rage and fight and try to one-up those around you. Go and put yourself in touch with the infinite, and end your conscious separation from the world. Reconcile yourself a bit better with the realities of life. Realize how much came before you, and how only wisps of it remain.
· With ego, doing good work 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.
Thoughts:
This was definitely a pleasant read — soothing, in a way. We have times in our lives where we really need someone to tell us directly: “Stop taking yourself so seriously. What you’re doing is not that important.” And that’s basically what this book did for me. I’d like to think of Ego is the Enemy as a modern-day Meditations; Holiday touches on stoic philosophy frequently throughout the book, and there are plenty of overlapping themes, ideas, and directives. I would say it was less geared towards guiding the reader towards broader notions of happiness or being content with our lot, and more towards recognizing this negative force in our lives (ego).
Holiday is particularly keen on using military leaders and coaches in his examples of overvaulting ambition or exemplary humility. He does throw in the occasional businessman or politician, but I suppose the characters he uses to make his points do get slightly repetitive. However, the chapters are short and sweet so I never felt like he was dragging any of his arguments on for too long. I also appreciated the very straight-forward and clear structure of the book, which was broken down into these three phases: aspiration, success, failure. We all live along one stage of this endless cycle, and ego is undoubtedly there to halt our advances in different ways each step around this circle. Holiday offers very practical and readily usable advice to shift our perspective from one of self-importance to one that is focused on process and values.
While I wouldn’t say Holiday is a particularly impressive writer, his casual and simple prose made this an easy and enjoyable read. Not to mention that there are plenty of nuggets of wisdom inside that feel like very necessary reminders. Too often we get so invested in the outcomes of our efforts that we forget what’s important is the process and the values that drive it. Too often we get tied up in ideas of who we’re supposed to be or what we’re entitled to in relation to others. And too often we forget that every time our ego screams out because we feel as though we’ve been wronged, nothing is actually accomplished. Failure is inevitable, as is our disappointment. But how we respond to it is fully up to us.
