Ego Is the Enemy

Ego Is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday

Summary

Covers mindset, a modern summary of stoicism. Taking responsibility for oneself.

Ideas

There is an opportunity in incremental improvement. Defragmenting life, the environments you are in, daily. That work, that action accrues.
Always ask questions around the contrasting case.
Beware the eagerness of passion.

“Act with fortitude and honor,” he wrote to a distraught friend in serious financial and legal trouble of the man’s own making. “If you cannot reasonably hope for a favorable extrication, do not plunge deeper. Have the courage to make a full stop.”

This is the opposite of:

It’s interesting to watch a man with his dick in a hornet’s nest try to solve the problem by tossing his balls in as well.

— The Oatmeal (@Oatmeal) June 14, 2012

Notes

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. —RICHARD FEYNMAN

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 198.

The ego we see most commonly goes by a more casual definition: an unhealthy belief in our own importance. Arrogance. Self-centered ambition.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 212.

performance artist Marina Abramović puts it directly: “If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.”

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 240.

Humble in our aspirations Gracious in our success Resilient in our failures

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 268.

When we remove ego, we’re left with what is real.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 293.

United States military officer named William Tecumseh Sherman, who would go on to become perhaps this country’s greatest general and strategic thinker.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 338.

We will learn that though we think big, we must act and live small in order to accomplish what we seek.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 407.

^^**be action and education focused, and forgo validation and status,**^^

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 408.

Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know. —LAO TZU

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 419.

^^**The poet Hesiod had this in mind when he said, “A man’s best treasure is a thrifty tongue.”**^^

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 467.

To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That’s when you will have to make a decision.”

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 526.

“To be or to do? Which way will you go?”

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 528.

Having authority is not the same as being an authority. Having the right and being right are not the same either. 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.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 537.

“A man is worked upon by what he works on,” Frederick Douglass

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 555.

“It is impossible to learn that which one thinks one already knows,” -Epictetus

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 648.

A flash of inspiration: I want to do the best and biggest ever. Be the youngest . The only one to __. The “firstest with the mostest.” The advice: Okay, well, here’s what you’ll need to do step-by-step to accomplish it. The reality: We hear what we want to hear. We do what we feel like doing, and despite being incredibly busy and working very hard, we accomplish very little.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 710.

Notes: 1) The typical result from giving advice to people who ask what they should do.

How can someone be busy and not accomplish anything? Well, that’s the passion paradox.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 728.

The critical work that you want to do will require your deliberation and consideration.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 752.

An anteambulo proceeded in front of his patron anywhere they traveled in Rome, making way, communicating messages, and generally making the patron’s life easier.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 764.

There’s 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 move both forward simultaneously.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 795.

Instead, it’s about seeing what goes on from the inside, and looking for opportunities for someone other than yourself.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 799.

There is an old saying, “Say little, do much.” What we really ought to do is update and apply a version of that to our early approach. Be lesser, do more.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 826.

Imagine if for every person you met, you thought of some way to help them, something you could do for them?

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 827.

Notes: 1) Actionable advice

Maybe it’s coming up with ideas to hand over to your boss. Find people, thinkers, up-and-comers to introduce them to each other. Cross wires to create new sparks. Find what nobody else wants to do and do it. Find inefficiencies and waste and redundancies. Identify leaks and patches to free up resources for new areas. Produce more than everyone else and give your ideas away

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 838.

I have observed that those who have accomplished the greatest results are those who “keep under the body”; are those who never grow excited or lose self-control, but are always calm, self-possessed, patient, and polite. —BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 854.

Our own path, whatever we aspire to, will in some ways be defined by the amount of nonsense we are willing to deal with.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 895.

Take it. Eat it until you’re sick. Endure it. Quietly brush it off and work harder. Play the game. Ignore the noise; for the love of God, do not let it distract you. Restraint is a difficult skill but a critical one.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 917.

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. —ALAN WATTS

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 933.

Don’t live in the haze of the abstract, live with the tangible and real, even if—especially if—it’s uncomfortable.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 1012.

There’s no one to perform for. There is just work to be done and lessons to be learned, in all that is around us.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 1013.

Receive feedback, maintain hunger, and chart a proper course in life.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 1065.

The question to ask, when you feel pride, then, is this: What am I missing right now that a more humble person might see?

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 1076.

“You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do,” was how Henry Ford put it.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 1103.

Fac, si facis. (Do it if you’re going to do it.)

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 1132.

Materiam superabat opus. (The workmanship was better than the material.)

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 1133.

Make it so you don’t have to fake it—that’s the key.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 1146.

Every time you sit down to work, remind yourself: I am delaying gratification by doing this. I am passing the marshmallow test. I am earning what my ambition burns for. I am making an investment in myself instead of in my ego. Give yourself a little credit for this choice, but not so much, because you’ve got to get back to the task at hand: practicing, working, improving.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 1148.

Myth becomes myth not in the living but in the retelling. —DAVID MARANISS

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 1360.

This is what happens when you start to think about what your rapid achievements say about you and begin to slacken the effort and standards that initially fueled them.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 1403.

It’s time to sit down and think about what’s truly important to you and then take steps to forsake the rest.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 1494.

So why do you do what you do? That’s the question you need to answer. Stare at it until you can. Only then will you understand what matters and what doesn’t.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 1506.

One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important. —BERTRAND RUSSELL

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 1517.

With success, particularly power, come some of the greatest and most dangerous delusions: entitlement, control, and paranoia.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 1528.

“He who indulges empty fears earns himself real fears,” wrote Seneca,

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 1581.

It is not enough to have great qualities; we should also have the management of them. —LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 1588.

If I am not for myself who will be for me? If I am only for myself, who am I? —HILLEL

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 1660.

Remind yourself how pointless it is to rage and fight and try to one-up those around you.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 1794.

DON’T BE DECEIVED BY RECOGNITION YOU HAVE GOTTEN OR THE AMOUNT OF MONEY IN YOUR BANK ACCOUNT.”

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 1844.

The evidence is in, and you are the verdict. —ANNE LAMOTT

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 1877.

Generosity, which we all admire, must stop short of either profligacy and parsimony in order to be of any use.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 1888.

Failure and adversity are relative and unique to each of us.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 1948.

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

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 1948.

Gilgamesh: He will face a battle he knows not, he will ride a road he knows not.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 1961.

We must deal with the situation in order to move past it. We’ll need to accept it and to push through it.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 2010.

Goethe once observed, the great failing is “to see yourself as more than you are and to value yourself at less than your true worth.”

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 2038.

Plutarch finely expressed, “The future bears down upon each one of us with all the hazards of the unknown.”

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 2056.

As they say, this moment is not your life. But it is a moment in your life. How will you use it?

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 2103.

Booker T. Washington most famously put it, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” Make use of what’s around you. Don’t let stubbornness make a bad situation worse.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 2119.

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

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 2122.

how do you intend to endure tough times?

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 2165.

the less attached we are to outcomes the better.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 2167.

This, too, can bear;—I still Am Belisarius!

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 2182.

If we persist in wanting, in needing, we are simply setting ourselves up for resentment or worse.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 2199.

If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way. —EMILE ZOLA

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 2202.

katabasis—or “a going down.”

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 2216.

Duris dura franguntur. Hard things are broken by hard things.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 2221.

William A. Sutton observed some 120 years ago that “we cannot be humble except by enduring humiliations.”

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 2224.

It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. —MARCUS AURELIUS

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 2277.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 2327.

You must get back to first principles and best practices.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 2352.

But not everyone is the best possible version of themselves.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 2394.

The economist (and philosopher) Adam Smith had a theory for how wise and good people evaluate their actions: There are two different occasions upon which we examine our own conduct, and endeavour to view it in the light in which the impartial spectator would view it: first, when we are about to act; and secondly, after we have acted.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 2398.

When we are about to act, the eagerness of passion will seldom allow us to consider what we are doing, with the candour of an indifferent person. . . . When the action is over, indeed, and the passions which prompted it have subsided, we can enter more coolly into the sentiments of the indifferent spectator.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 2402.

There is something of a civil war going on within all of our lives. There is a recalcitrant South of our soul revolting against the North of our soul. And there is this continual struggle within the very structure of every individual life. —MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 2539.

Bismarck that says, in effect, any fool can learn from experience. The trick is to learn from other people’s experience.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 2602.

Every day for the rest of your life you will find yourself at one of three phases: aspiration, success, failure.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 2617.

You must sweep the floor every minute of every day. And then sweep again.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 2619.

[Kindle Edition]. loc. 1147.