Easier in the sense that you know now what it is you need to do and what is important to you. If your purpose is something larger than you-to accomplish something, to prove something to yourself-then suddenly everything becomes both easier and more difficult. Impressing people is utterly different from being truly impressive. Being promoted doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing good work and it doesn’t mean you are worthy of promotion. Having the right and being right are not the same either. Having authority is not the same as being an authority.
The more difficult the task, the more uncertain the outcome, the more costly talk will be and the farther we run from actual accountability.Īppearance is deceiving. Talking and doing fight for the same resources. In actuality, silence is strength-particularly early on in any journey. Those who know do not speak, those who speak do not know. What is rare is not raw talent, skill, or even confidence, but humility, diligence, and self-awareness. It’s easy to be emotionally invested and infatuated with your own work. Detachment is a sort of natural ego antidote. You must practice seeing yourself with a little distance, cultivating the ability to get out of your own head. It is certainly more pleasurable to focus on our talents and strengths, but where does that get us? Arrogance and self-absorption inhibit growth. And certainly ego makes it difficult every step of the way. One might say that the ability to evaluate one’s own ability is the most important skill of all. Constantly train your intellect, for the greatest thing in the smallest compass is a sound mind in a human body. The best thing which we have in ourselves is good judgment. Be slow in deliberation, but be prompt to carry out your resolves. It’s the difference between potent and poisonous.īe affable in your relations with those who approach you, and never haughty for the pride of the arrogant even slaves can hardly endure. One is girding yourself, the other is gaslighting. Ego is self-anointed, it swagger is artifice. Whereas ego is artificial, this type of confidence can hold weight. What replaces ego is humility, yes-but rock-hard humility and confidence. When we remove ego, we’re left with what is real. How are we supposed to reach, motivate, or lead other people if we can’t relate to their needs-because we’ve lost touch with our own? Without an accurate accounting of our own abilities compared to others, what we have is not confidence but delusion. If ego is the voice that tells us we’re better than we really are, we can say ego inhibits true success by preventing a direct and honest connection to the world around us. Precisely what makes us so promising as thinkers, doers, creatives, and entrepreneurs, what drives us to the top of those fields, makes us vulnerable to this darker side of the psyche. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, your worst enemy already lives insides you: your ego.
#Ryan holiday ego is the enemy full#
The result is an inspiring and timely reminder that humility and confidence are our greatest friends when confronting the challenges of a culture that tends to fan the flames of ego, a book full of themes and life lessons that will resonate, uplift and inspire.The first principle is that you must not fool yourself-and you are the easiest person to fool. Drawing on an array of inspiring characters and narratives from literature, philosophy and history, the book explores the nature and dangers of ego to illustrate how you can be humble in your aspirations, gracious in your success and resilient in your failures. In Ego is the Enemy, Ryan Holiday shows us how and why ego is such a powerful internal opponent to be guarded against at all stages of our careers and lives, and that we can only create our best work when we identify, acknowledge and disarm its dangers. Its name? Ego, and it is the enemy - of ambition, of success and of resilience. Every great philosopher has warned against it, in our most lasting stories and countless works of art, in all culture and all ages. It's made adversity unbearable and turned struggle into shame. It's evaporated great fortunes and run companies into the ground. It's wrecked the careers of promising young geniuses. 'Inspiring yet practical' Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power 'This is a book I want every athlete, aspiring leader, entrepreneur, thinker and doer to read' George Raveling, Nike's Director of International Basketball 'Ryan Holiday is one of his generation's finest thinkers' Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art It's that important' Derek Sivers, author of Anything You Want A powerful meditation on the nature and dangers of ego, from the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Stillness is the Key, and Obstacle is the Way - over 1 million copies sold