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I’ve just finished Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday. Here is my book review with the lessons I’ve learned, plus inspirational quotes.
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Book Review
“Ego Is The Enemy” is a very ‘tough love’ and ‘no-bs’ book. It highlights the many different ways ego can be our downfall and how to rise above our ego through interesting real-life examples you’ve probably not heard of before. The book is relatively short, with short chapter sizes that are comfortable to read.
Lessons
1. You’re not more important than others; you’re not entitled to succeed; you’re not above certain types of work
“The ego we see most commonly goes by a more casual definition: an unhealthy belief in our own importance. Arrogance. Self-centered ambition.”
– Ryan Holiday (Ego is the Enemy)
“What is rare is not raw talent, skill, or even confidence, but humility, diligence, and self-awareness.”
– Ryan Holiday (Ego is the Enemy)
“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 (Ego is the Enemy)
Feeling above others or certain types of work is the fastest way to sabotage any attempts at succeeding in life.
Especially in the beginning stages of your journey, you often have to do dirty work to get off the ground. Maybe this comes in the form of being the coffee boy at your law firm or writing hundreds of emails asking for a chance to guest post on a popular blog.
It doesn’t matter how superior you feel. As long as you don’t have anything convincing to show for it, your entitlement will impress exactly no one.
Only your hard work will.
2. Stop talking about your actions and plans; spend your energy on doing
“In fact, many valuable endeavors we undertake are painfully difficult, whether it’s coding a new startup or mastering a craft. But talking, talking is always easy.”
– Ryan Holiday (Ego is the Enemy)
“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 for verbalization.”
– Ryan Holiday (Ego is the Enemy)
“Success requires a full 100 percent of our effort, and talk flitters part of that effort away before we can use it.”
– Ryan Holiday (Ego is the Enemy)
Planning and dreaming are fun. It makes us feel all excited and organized.
However, it gets us exactly nowhere.
Sure, we need some vague basic plan on how to proceed and where to go. But this needs to be far less elaborate than we try to tell ourselves.
All you need is a goal and a starting point. From there on, the only thing to get you towards success is action.
Stop telling people about your goals and a grand vision. Get yourself, one accountability buddy, if necessary, but beyond that, stay silent and get sh#t done!
Everything else is a waste of energy.
3. Decide what’s more important to you: To BE something or to DO something
“Appearances are deceiving. 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.”
– Ryan Holiday (Ego is the Enemy)
Being a student is easy. Studying not so much. That’s why there are many long-running students without a degree to show for their studies.
Having a blog is not the same thing as blogging. Many people have a blog they’ve abandoned after half a year of not getting anywhere. Far fewer people are blogging consistently every week for years until they succeed.
Focus more on DOING than on BEING. The latter will deceive you into thinking you are succeeding, only to have this pretty picture crumbling around you in the long term.
4. Studious self-assessment is key
“The pretense of knowledge is our most dangerous vice, because it prevents us from getting any better. Studious self-assessment is the antidote.”
– Ryan Holiday (Ego is the Enemy)
“A true student is like a sponge. Absorbing what goes on around him, filtering it, latching on to what he can hold. A student is self-critical and self-motivated, always trying to improve his understanding so that he can move on to the next topic, the next challenge. A real student is also his own teacher and his own critic. There is no room for ego there.”
– Ryan Holiday (Ego is the Enemy)
How does one become a master? He starts as a student and works his way up the ladder.
What does it mean to be a student? Being a student means learning from people more experienced than you through books, mentors, courses, school, etc.
Learning doesn’t mean knowing, so we test ourselves regularly. And if we don’t do well, we do some self-assessment to analyze the problem and try to see how we can improve.
This cycle goes on and on until, at some point, our ego sneaks in and convinces us that we have learned all there is and that we are the master now.
Perhaps that might even be true for a short while, but certainly not in the long term.
If we don’t keep up with being students, we will fall behind our competitors and the ever-changing world.
5. Passion can be the problem, not the solution
“Passion typically masks a weakness. Its breathlessness and impetuousness and franticness are poor substitutes for discipline, for mastery, for strength and purpose and perseverance. “
– Ryan Holiday (Ego is the Enemy)
“What humans require in our ascent is purpose and realism. Purpose, you could say, is like passion with boundaries. Realism is detachment and perspective.”
– Ryan Holiday (Ego is the Enemy)
We all know that work doesn’t feel like work if we are passionate about it. With passion, we are capable of giving 120% instead of our usual best.
Sadly, many people take this as an excuse for why they can’t succeed. If they would finally find their passion, they argue, everything would be different.
However, they don’t realize that passion can be a problem just as much as the solution.
Passion alone rarely suffices to get you to succeed. As soon as passion wanes, you are going to need discipline and perseverance to keep going.
So never rely solely on passion on your journey to success. Don’t use a lack of passion as an excuse for giving up or not even trying.
6. Helping others helps yourself in the long-run
“Make other people look good and you will do well.”
– Ryan Holiday (Ego is the Enemy)
“Clear the path for the people above you and you will eventually create a path for yourself.”
– Ryan Holiday (Ego is the Enemy)
It sucks if someone takes credit for your hard work. It sucks if your effort is helping someone else, yet you are seemingly stuck where you’ve started.
But throwing in the towel or demanding recognition is not the solution.
Sometimes you just have to give, give, give and be patient before you start receiving.
7. Don’t let your daydreams saturate your craving for a better life
“Living clearly and presently takes courage. Don’t live in the haze of the abstract, live with the tangible and real, even if—especially if—it’s uncomfortable. Be part of what’s going on around you. Feast on it, adjust for it.”
– Ryan Holiday (Ego is the Enemy)
“The distinction between a professional and a dilettante occurs right there—when you accept that having an idea is not enough; that you must work until you are able to recreate your experience effectively in words on the page.”
– Ryan Holiday (Ego is the Enemy)
We need to visualize our goals before we can reach them. In fact, studies have proven that imagining themselves training can substitute in part for real physical training for athletes.
The visualization activates the same brain areas that would be activated if you were doing the actual activity.
As great as this is, it can backlash. If we imagine our success too often, it will saturate our craving for success because it feels like we’ve already accomplished it.
And without that craving, why would we step outside of our comfort zone?
8. You don’t always have to defend your honor
“We have to stand up for ourselves, right? But do we? So often, this is just ego, escalating tension more than dealing with it.”
– Ryan Holiday (Ego is the Enemy)
Sometimes you have to suck up some amount of mistreatment on your way to the top. Ego is the Enemy highlights a heartbreaking but very illustrative example of a black athlete who had to keep his head down in the face of harsh and very public racism to rise to the top.
You might also encounter opponents like sexists or racists that try to take a hit at you every chance they get. They try to provoke you into acting out so that you lose everything you’ve worked so hard for.
Only by remaining calm and keeping your ego in check can you rise into a place of power, in which you can defend your honor without risking your future.
Mind you, if there are ways for you to speak out against your tormentors without it damaging your climb to success, go for it! Just make sure to not do it blindly because your ego demands revenge.
9. Don’t wallow in self-pity; make use of the bad luck to the best of your abilities
“Make use of what’s around you. Don’t let stubbornness make a bad situation worse.”
– Ryan Holiday (Ego is the Enemy)
There is always something good that can be wrung out of the worst luck in some shape or form.
It’s immensely hard to see it that way, and most people let their ego lead them to comforting self-pity.
If you manage to withstand this urge, you will come out the other side much quicker and in better shape than most people.
10. Set your own standards of success, and you won’t care about outside approval or criticism
“It’s far better when doing good work is sufficient. In other words, the less attached we are to outcomes the better. When fulfilling our own standards is what fills us with pride and self-respect. When the effort—not the results, good or bad—is enough.”
– Ryan Holiday (Ego is the Enemy)
“Your potential, the absolute best you’re capable of—that’s the metric to measure yourself against. Your standards are. Winning is not enough. People can get lucky and win. People can be assholes and win. Anyone can win. But not everyone is the best possible version of themselves.”
– Ryan Holiday (Ego is the Enemy)
Nobody knows you as well as you do. You know your skills, your history, and your goals.
The metric others set for success won’t always feel like a good fit for you.
Most people might see a B in school, not as something worth many celebrations. However, if you’ve always struggled and never managed to get anything above a C, this is a huge success!
On the other hand, it’s also ok to be unhappy with an outstanding grade if you know you could have done even better.
Don’t let other people’s standards hold you back from pushing yourself to the next level.
11. Don’t aspire to mere success; aspire to thrive despite anything life throws at you
“This is what we’re aspiring to—much more than mere success. What matters is that we can respond to what life throws at us. And how we make it through.”
– Ryan Holiday (Ego is the Enemy)
There are a million ways to succeed in life. The thing about success is, however, that there is always a bit of luck involved.
You know luck in the sense of having been in the right place at the right time to take advantage of opportunities, information, or other resources.
The flipside of that is that bad luck can hit us just as much and destroy or at least diminish our success.
So while striving for success is a good goal, it would be much better to seek the strength and resourcefulness that enables you to thrive in any situation.
If you manage that, you will be wildly successful during lucky times and do well enough during unfortunate times.
Have you read Ego is the Enemy already? If so, what lesson or story stood out the most to you?
Also, I’m curious, what are you currently reading?
Share your thoughts with us!
Until next time, lovely Felicity Seeker!
