Ego is the Enemy

Ryan Holiday is a guy who became very successful at a very young age (he’s still very young, he’s actually 4 months younger than I am). He dropped out of college when he was 19, was the director of marketing at American Apparel at age 21, and has the distinction of having published four books before turning 30.

Some of his true value, however, comes from the fact that he does his homework. Reading Ego is the Enemy, you can tell that he has spent hours steeped in research, mining both modern and ancient history for the timeless principles of wisdom that can help us today.

In reading his book you can see that he is perfectly comfortable drawing from the Stoic wisdom of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, but will also pull from the annals of American History, looking at the example of people like Benjamin Franklin and George C. Marshall. He even looks to more modern figures such as football coaches Bill Walsh and Bill Belichick to make some of his points.

This book provided a sense of rootedness. Sometimes you can read books where it seems like the author is so preocupied by saying something new that it’s unlikely they will say anything lasting. This book is different. You come away feeling as though you have wrestled with principles that are timeless and will be able to help you for years to come.

Here are my notes:

• “I’m not someone who believes in epiphanies. There is no one moment that changes a person. There are many.”
• “The ego we see most commonly goes by a more casual definition: an unhealthy belief in our own importance. Arrogance. Self-centered ambition.”
• “Ego is stolen. Confidence is earned.”
• “We will learn that though we think big, we must act and live small in order to accomplish what we seek.”
• “Almost universally, the kind of performance we give on social media is positive. It’s more ‘Let me tell you how well things are going. Look how great I am.’ It’s rarely the truth: ‘I’m scared. I’m struggling. I don’t know.'”
• “Writing, like so many creative acts, is hard. Sitting there, staring, mad at yourself, mad at the material because it doesn’t seem good enough and you don’t seem good enough.”
• “Most people are decent at hype and sales. So what is scarce and rare? Silence. The ability to deliberately keep yourself out of the conversation and subsist without validation. Silence is the respite of the confident and strong.”
• “Talk depletes us. 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 with verbalization.” (How many people know the guy who is always talking about the book he is going to write but has never put pen to paper? That guy thinks he is making progress).
• “Success requires a full 100 percent of our effort, and talk flitters  part of that effort away before we can use it.”
• “The greatest work and art comes from wrestling with the void, facing it instead of scrambling to make it go away.”
• “The only relationship between work and chatter is that one kills the other.”
• “To be or to do, which way will you go?” -John Boyd. (i.e. you can try to be something or someone, or you can try to do something worth doing).
• “Being promoted doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing good work and it doesn’t mean you are worthy of promotion (they call it failing upward in such bureaucracies).”
• “Impressing people is utterly different from being truly impressive.”
• “Purpose is about pursuing something outside your self, as opposed to pleasing yourself.”
• “Passion is form over function. Purpose is function, function, function.”
• “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 effect this would have over time would be profound: You’d learn a great deal by solving diverse problems. You’d develop a reputation for being indispensable. You’d have countless new relationships. You’s have an enormous bank of favors to call upon down the road.”
• The imaginary audience. This is a concepts that adolescents especially struggle with: “they’re convinced their every move is being watched with rapt attention by the rest of the world.”
• “Our imagination–in many senses an asset–is dangerous when it runs wild.”
• “You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.” – Henry Ford
• “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 an endless process.”
• “One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.” – Bertrand Russell.
• “Both entrepreneurship and art require the creation of something where nothing existed before.”
• “The height of cultivation runs to simplicity.” -Bruce Lee
• “The only way out is through.”
• According to Robert Greene, there are two kinds of time: alive time and dead time. Dead time is when you are passive and waiting, and alive time is when you are learning and acting and utilizing every second. Every situation that you find yourself in that you did not choose still presents you with a choice: will you use it as alive time or dead time?
• Reporter: “What’s your alma mater?” Malcom X: “Books.”
• The less attached you are to outcomes the better. Fulfilling your own standards is what should fill you with pride and self respect.
• “Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do…sanity means tying it yo your own actions.” -Marcus Aurelius
• “The only real failure is abandoning your principles.”
• “Most of us can’t handle uncomfortable self-examination.”
• “Perfecting the personal regularly leads to success as a professional, but rarely the other way around.”
• There are three phases that you are continually going through in life: aspiration, success, and failure. It’s critical to battle your ego in all three.

Overall I highly recommend this book, primarily because I see it as a healthy counter-balance to a lot of other books that I recommend.

A lot of the messaging in the self-help space is believe in yourself, bet on yourself, invest in yourself…etc. I don’t have a problem with any of that, but it’s critical to balance that out with messages like: be wary of yourself, don’t get too caught up in yourself, don’t just focus on yourself, etc.

You can find the book here: