"Ego is the enemy" by Ryan Holiday, book summary and lessons

Ego is the enemy

Summary

The author of the book “Ego is the Enemy” is Ryan Holiday. Ryan holiday considers himself a writer and a media strategist. He has a passion for philosophy & stoicism as well as marketing, business, success growth, marketing, sell awareness, and learning. Ego is the enemy is a fantastic read about how on the road to success, we mustn’t let our ego become a controlling factor in the way we act and make decisions. This book is for everyone who wants to fulfill his goals and ambitions. No matter where you are in your journey, you are your worst enemy. Your ego is the root of most of your problems. And if you can learn to understand it better, you can begin to adapt, and make progress.

First of all, we will talk about why we often get scattered as soon as the journey starts. Explaining that it's our own ego that gets in the way and holds us back. He discusses the symptoms of ego and what to do about them. The success, what to do in the pursuit of success, and how to manage it when you reach it. Finally, the concept of failure. Most of us faced failure, it's inevitable but Ryan helps to clarify what you can do to rise again.

To understand this book, this book has been divided into 5 different parts.

Part 1: Symptoms & the curing of an ego

The reason is that so many of us begin a journey, chasing new aspirations and goals but failing to follow through because our ego holding us back. It's our ego that gets in the way and prevents us from reaching our true potential.

Humility & reality

Humility and reality are the cure for the ego that living in a fantasy land that is not sustainable and does more damage than good. we humans talk too much. We use it to fill a gap and cover up our uncertainty. It's this constant need to talk that gets in the way of work. we talk, talk, talk about doing the work but actually, less of the work gets done.

The only relationship between work and chatter is that one kills the other.

We need to avoid distractions so that we face choices every day that can act as “distractions” and get in the way of our pursuit. If you can identify your purpose, and understand why you are here to truly do it, then these choices will be easier to make. It's about stepping back and asking yourself. if you really need this or if it’s something your ego wants. Each opportunity, no matter how gratifying or rewarding must be evaluated along strict guidelines. Does this help me to do what I have set out to do?

Does this allow me to do what I need to do? Am I being a selfish or selfless?

Part 2: Your ego is the enemy

The availability of education in our day and age is very common. The access we have to information, books free courses, etc. means that there are no barriers, no reason to make progress further. And the technology means that there is a never-ending stream of things to learn you should never be done. There is always room for improvement.

Your ego is the enemy.

It blocks us from improving by telling us that we don’t need to improve. That we wonder why we don’t get the results we want. Why others are better and why their success is more lasting. We are always told to have a passion, it's all about your passion, living passionately. When in fact, we need to focus on purpose and realism. Purpose can be considered as similar to passion, but with realistic expectations. What is realistic? You need realism to understand what can truly be achieved. Realism is constantly checking in and making sure what we are doing is right, is on the right track, and is moving forward. There's no space for dreaming. Whether it's your job or personal life, support other people so that other people can also be good and successful. Eliminate your ego and put others first.

Find canvases for other people to paint on. Clear the path for the people above you and you will eventually create a path for yourself.

You can guarantee that when you are working towards your goal then you will face reactions including complete indifference to total sabotage. People will go out of their way to try and make you fail. It's here that Ryan says the importance of avoiding ego is vital. Who can afford to be jerked around by impulses or believe that you are god’s gift to humanity or too important to put up with anything you don’t like? Those who have subdued their ego understand that it doesn’t degrade you when others treat you poorly, it degrades them. It's these situations where you have to be quiet, restrain yourself, and just get on with the work. don’t react because that’s when you’ll get distracted and stop focusing on the task at hand. Restraining is a difficult skill but a critical one. You will often be tempted, you will probably even be overcome. No one is perfect with it, but we must try. Don’t let your mind obsess and create abstract versions of reality. Living clearly and presently takes courage. Don’t live in the haze of the abstract. Live with the tangible and real, especially if it's uncomfortable. Be part of what's going on around. Feast on it, adjust for it.

Pride is a dangerous concept. Pride is responsible for making something that was a small achievement feel a lot bigger and more substantial than it really was.

You have to stay realistic about your achievement & what the results really are. Without this understanding, pride takes our self-conception and puts it at odds with the reality of our station which is that we still have so far to go, that there is still so much to be done. While some people are out there preaching that you can do less to succeed. You have to work hard, you have to put in the hours and make it happen. Don’t let your ego let you think you can get away with doing less, and achieving more. Work is finding yourself alone at the track when the whether keeps everyone else indoors. To work means to transcend pain and do it.

Part 3: Success

Ego is not only the issue, success is also a part of the problem. Ryan outlines that success is always so short-lived and this is because your ego shortens it. As you approach the end of a goal or are reaching success you face new temptations and new problems.

Sobriety, open-mindedness, organization, and purpose are the great stabilizers. They balance out the ego and pride that comes with achievement and recognition.

Always stay a student and never tell stories. Remain a student forever never let your ego think that you have graduated otherwise your learning will end. Always be pursuing bettering yourself, study, learn, read, make yourself uncomfortable with your lack of knowledge and challenge your assumptions. An amateur is defensive. The professionals find learning to be enjoyable. They little being challenged and humbled and engage in education as an ongoing and endless process. The risk of telling stories, and writing your own narrative. The danger is that your life becomes fiction. You fall into the trap of pretending that you live this great life. Instead, you must remember the reality, focus on the real world and work hard. Instead of pretending that we are living some great story. We must remain focused on the execution, and on executing with excellence. We must avoid the false crown and continue working on what got us here.

Identifying what is truly important to you is the first step Ryan suggests you take, Ryan suggests. If you fail to do this the success you reach, won't be as fulfilling as it could be. And the success won't last. This is especially true with money. If you don’t know how much you need, the default easily becomes. More ask yourself why you do what you do. This is the most important question you need to ask yourself.

Part 4: Limitations

Ryan recommends that you keep yourself in check regarding your limitations. It's important to regularly assess and acknowledge these. Common limitations include entitlement, control & paranoia.

Entitlement

This can be dangerous because it’s the assumption that this is yours and you have earned it. 

Control

The belief that everything must be done your way can create more problems than solutions.

Paranoia

If you think that you cannot trust anyone but yourself is isolating. It means that you are the only you can get anything done.

The concept of “looking out for number one” can make you a lonely prisoner of your own false reality. When you reach success in a venture your life changes from working more and more to making more decisions and delegating. It's important to manage yourself and others fairly and with progress in mind. Worse yet are those who surround themselves with yes-men or sycophants who clean up their messes and create a bubble in which they can’t even see how disconnected from reality they are. If you want to progress and achieve results. You must understand the goal and priorities of the organization. Then follow through with these, only then will you reap the benefits. This is when the real problems begin when a team has worked together and achieved greatness individuals that once made up the team begin to let their egos grow. They start looking out for themselves rather than the team as a whole. And this is when everything starts to unravel. Realize that you are not special, you are not better than anyone else on the team. Of course, you can want acknowledgment and want to reap the benefits but you need to balance it with the reality of the solution. The team got you there, you don’t do it alone.

“Play for the name on the front of the jersey, and they’ll remember the name of the back”

Soccer Coach Tony Adams

Realize your reality

It's hard to be humbled when you are as great as I am. 

                                             Muhammad Ali

Check-in with reality regularly. Remind yourself about the harsh realities of life, and the hardships people face. Acknowledge that there are forces beyond your control, that in these words you are pretty insignificant. Doing so will allow you to stay humble, stay accountable and stay realistic. Then you start to feel better or bigger than, go and do it again. Successful people who live modest life. They live in normal homes, wear normal clothes, and do normal things. A living simple life doesn’t mean that they aren’t successful. It means that they remain sober and can stay focused on their jobs.

Sobriety is the counterweight that must balance out success especially if things keep getting better and better.

Part 5: But what if I fail?

Instead of letting power make us delusional and instead of taking what we have for granted. We’d be better to spend our time preparing for the shifts of fate that inevitably occur in life.

Failure is inevitable, there’s no avoiding it. More often than not, you are the cause of your own failure. And It’s part of the “cycle of life” there are ups and downs. It's impossible to be continuously successful and the chances of succeeding on your first journey are increasingly real. There are numerous setbacks you can expect to face. Ego not only leaves us unprepared for these circumstances. It often contributed to their occurrence in the first place. The way through, the way to rise again, requires a reorientation and increased self-awareness.

The key to riding our failure are purpose, poise & patience.

According to Rober Greene, an influential mentor to Ryan there are two types of time. Dead Time, Live time. Dead time is when you are passive-biding time and alive time is moments of action, learning, evolving, and growing.

Every time we face failure. You can choose to proceed with alive time and deed time. Ego Is responsible for a lot. Ego is the reason we delay things. We avoid doing the things that may change our lives for the better. Ego can kill what we love. It blocks us from thinking long-term, and from sharing credit with others. Ego allows us to crave the spotlight. Ego encourages us to always thrive for more, to be greedy. You need to keep your own scorecard. That is important for the journey of being a better, less selfish person. Judge yourself based on your own standards and share credit where credit is due. Whatever is next for us we can be sure of one thing we’ll want to avoid ego. It makes all the steps hard but failure is the one it will make permanent. Unless we learn, right here and right now, from our mistakes. Unless we use this moment as an opportunity to understand ourselves & our own minds better.

That is why don’t stop learning. Focus on your passion. Don’t make it a priority to look good to others. Entitlement, control & paranoia are all limitations that will hold you back. Failure is inevitable. Purpose, poise, and patience are the key to helping you get through a failure. Your ego is always your enemy.

Thanks for reading and don’t forget to give feedback in the comments.