Ego Is the Enemy¶
Metadata¶
- Author: Ryan Holiday
- ASIN: B015NTIXWE
- ISBN: 1781257027
- Reference: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015NTIXWE
- Kindle link
Highlights¶
We must begin by seeing ourselves and the world in a new way for the first time. Then we must fight to be different and fight to stay different—that’s the hard part. — location: 185 ^ref-36676
“If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.” — location: 238 ^ref-6016
Just one thing keeps ego around—comfort. — location: 239 ^ref-31436
the ability to evaluate one’s own ability is the most important skill of all. Without it, improvement is impossible. And certainly ego makes it difficult every step of the way. It is certainly more pleasurable to focus on our talents and strengths, but where does that get us? Arrogance and self-absorption inhibit growth. So does fantasy and “vision.” — location: 397 ^ref-60692
practice seeing yourself with a little distance, cultivating the ability to get out of your own head. Detachment is a sort of natural ego antidote. — location: 400 ^ref-16210
What is rare is not raw talent, skill, or even confidence, but humility, diligence, and self-awareness. — location: 401 ^ref-27963
though we think big, we must act and live small in order to accomplish what we seek. — location: 404 ^ref-16701
action and education focused, — location: 405 ^ref-56300
In that vivid imagination of his, he had already acted out the part of ‘I, Governor of California,’ . . . so why bother to enact it in real life?” — location: 425 ^ref-40867
happened: his talk got out ahead of his campaign and the will to bridge the gap collapsed. — location: 428 ^ref-4695
talk and hype to replace action. — location: 430 ^ref-60587
what a lot of us do when we’re scared or overwhelmed by a project: she did everything but focus on it. — location: 445 ^ref-31333
If you decide you want to do something, you may not get promoted and you may not get the good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won’t have to compromise yourself. You will be true to your friends and to yourself. And your work might make a difference. 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.” — location: 519 ^ref-39143
If what matters is you—your reputation, your inclusion, your personal ease of life—your path is clear: Tell people what they want to hear. — location: 546 ^ref-28833
Do I need this? Or is it really about ego? Are you ready to make the right decision? Or do the prizes still glitter off in the distance? — location: 569 ^ref-46528
willingness to endure the type of instruction they wouldn’t. — location: 596 ^ref-5047
there would be weekly lessons, that these lessons must be learned, and if they weren’t, that Hammett was wasting everyone’s time and needn’t bother to come back. — location: 598 ^ref-30231
hone his ability to do more with fewer notes, — location: 602 ^ref-52351
An education can’t be “hacked”; there are no shortcuts besides hacking it every single day. If you don’t, they drop you. — location: 606 ^ref-17669
to become great, he said, needs to have someone better that they can learn from, someone lesser who they can teach, and someone equal that they can challenge themselves against. — location: 615 ^ref-51565
overinvesting, underinvesting, acting before someone is really ready, breaking things that required delicacy—not — location: 713 ^ref-7544
they cannot show you their progress. Because there rarely is any. — location: 720 ^ref-52291
burning ourselves out or blowing ourselves up isn’t going to hurry the journey along. — location: 731 ^ref-8973
Purpose is to and for. (I must do __. I was put here to accomplish _. I am willing to endure ___ for the sake of this.) — location: 732 ^ref-55667
Purpose is about pursuing something outside yourself as opposed to pleasuring yourself. — location: 733 ^ref-4825
Usually they get started with small steps, complete them, and look for feedback on how the next set can be better. — location: 738 ^ref-36228
Make it about what you feel you must do and say, not what you care about and wish to be. — location: 747 ^ref-64581
When you are just starting out, we can be sure of a few fundamental realities: 1) You’re not nearly as good or as important as you think you are; 2) You have an attitude that needs to be readjusted; 3) Most of what you think you know or most of what you learned in books or in school is out of date or wrong. — location: 784 ^ref-39826
Franklin saw the constant benefit in making other people look good and letting them take credit for your ideas. — location: 800 ^ref-1830
said. “You gave him an assignment and he disappeared into a room and you didn’t see him again until it was done, — location: 806 ^ref-59255
if he wanted to give his coach feedback or question a decision, he needed to do it in private and self-effacingly so as not to offend his superior. — location: 809 ^ref-23004
“I’m looking,” Rickey told him, “for a ball player with the guts not to fight back.” — location: 863 ^ref-2089
he needed one who wouldn’t let his ego block him from seeing the bigger picture. — location: 866 ^ref-959
Jackie’s path called for him to put aside both his ego and in some respects his basic sense of fairness and rights as a human being. — location: 878 ^ref-60971
He understood that certain forces were trying to bait him, to ruin him. Knowing what he wanted and needed to do in baseball, it was clear what he would have to tolerate in order to do it. He shouldn’t have had to, but he did. — location: 884 ^ref-33238
When you want to do something—something big and important and meaningful—you will be subjected to treatment ranging from indifference to outright sabotage. Count on it. — location: 896 ^ref-25739
you must do nothing. Take it. Eat it until you’re sick. Endure it. Quietly brush it off and work harder. — location: 907 ^ref-14352
the tightrope he walked would tolerate only restraint and had no forgiveness for ego. Honestly, not many paths do. — location: 920 ^ref-40016
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. — location: 1003 ^ref-36597
If you’re doing the work and putting in the time, you won’t need to cheat, you won’t need to overcompensate. — location: 1037 ^ref-5720
he once shouted at a bank officer who refused to lend him money, “Some day I’ll be the richest man in the world!” — location: 1044 ^ref-23841
Receive feedback, maintain hunger, and chart a proper course in life. — location: 1054 ^ref-50439
having an idea is not enough; — location: 1087 ^ref-34423
We are petrified, as the Reverend Dr. Sam Wells put it, that if we are humble, we will end up “subjugated, trodden on, embarrassed and irrelevant.” — location: 1149 ^ref-10996
Success is intoxicating, yet to sustain it requires sobriety. — location: 1270 ^ref-15185
As we first succeed, we will find ourselves in new situations, facing new problems. — location: 1308 ^ref-20127
“Humility engenders learning because it beats back the arrogance that puts blinders on. — location: 1318 ^ref-6979
because they consistently observe and listen, the humble improve. They don’t assume, ‘I know the way.’” — location: 1320 ^ref-36511
wreck. The second we let the ego tell us we have graduated, learning grinds to a — location: 1329 ^ref-17585
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 and endless process. — location: 1334 ^ref-45188
it’s not enough simply to want to learn. As people progress, they must also understand how they learn and then set up processes to facilitate this continual education. Otherwise, we are dooming ourselves to a sort of self-imposed ignorance. — location: 1342 ^ref-31206
The Standard of Performance was about instilling excellence. — location: 1367 ^ref-13528
the deceptively small things—that was responsible for the team’s transformation and victory. — location: 1382 ^ref-33960
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. — location: 1388 ^ref-55597
The founding of a company, making money in the market, or the formation of an idea is messy. — location: 1398 ^ref-17662
warns startups against having bold, sweeping visions early on. — location: 1407 ^ref-654
we might think that success in the future is just the natural next part of the story—when really it’s rooted in work, creativity, persistence, and luck. — location: 1418 ^ref-57490
Instead of pretending that we are living some great story, we must remain focused on the execution—and on executing with excellence. — location: 1424 ^ref-29681
All of us waste precious life doing things we don’t like, to prove ourselves to people we don’t respect, and to get things we don’t want. — location: 1455 ^ref-61145
When “you combine insecurity and ambition,” the plagiarist and disgraced journalist Jonah Lehrer said when reflecting back on his fall, “you get an inability to say no to things.” — location: 1481 ^ref-28069
One cannot be an opera singer and a teen pop idol at the same time. Life requires those trade-offs, but ego can’t allow it. — location: 1489 ^ref-60530
Driven to prove the doubters wrong? Welcome to the seeds of paranoia. — location: 1531 ^ref-2455
In its frenzy to protect itself, paranoia creates the persecution it seeks to avoid, making the owner a prisoner of its own delusions and chaos. — location: 1568 ^ref-23875
When we’re aspiring or small time, we can be idiosyncratic, we can compensate for disorganization with hard work and a little luck. That’s not going to cut it in the majors. In fact, it’ll sink you if you can’t grow up and organize. — location: 1587 ^ref-40078
he was often late or preoccupied. — location: 1605 ^ref-14888
our ego precludes serving any larger mission we’re a part of. — location: 1689 ^ref-27198
“You’re becoming who you are going to be and so you might as well not be an asshole.” — location: 1691 ^ref-4715
We have to stand up for ourselves, right? But do we? So often, this is just ego, escalating tension more than dealing with it. — location: 1806 ^ref-12895
She makes it about the situation, not about herself, as people in power often do. — location: 1837 ^ref-47726
We know what decisions we must make to avoid that ignominious, even pathetic end: protecting our sobriety, eschewing greed and paranoia, staying humble, retaining our sense of purpose, connecting to the larger world around us. — location: 1888 ^ref-39927
maybe a downturn is exactly what’s coming next. Worse, maybe you caused it. Just because you did something once, doesn’t mean you’ll be able to do it successfully forever. — location: 1897 ^ref-15802
increased self-awareness. We don’t need pity—our own or anyone else’s—we need purpose, poise, and patience. — location: 1907 ^ref-45336
We don’t need pity—our own or anyone else’s—we need purpose, poise, and patience. — location: 1907 ^ref-11090
That’s the point. Failure and adversity are relative and unique to each of us. Almost without exception, this is what life does: it takes our plans and dashes them to pieces. Sometimes once, sometimes lots of times. — location: 1929 ^ref-45143
It turns out that the long hard slog she endured, the mistakes she made, the repeated failures, crises, and attacks were all leading somewhere. — location: 1979 ^ref-51989
In order to taste success again, we’ve got to understand what led to this moment (or these years) of difficulty, what went wrong and why. — location: 1990 ^ref-28533
We must deal with the situation in order to move past it. We’ll need to accept it and to push through it. — location: 1991 ^ref-24460
How a mix of acceptance, humility, and strength powered the transformation. — location: 2069 ^ref-26623
Dead time isn’t only dead because of sloth or complacency. — location: 2084 ^ref-31216
He might have felt alive doing it, even as he was slowly killing himself. — location: 2085 ^ref-5982
Lacking the ability to examine ourselves, we reinvest our energy into exactly the patterns of behavior that caused our problems to begin with. — location: 2089 ^ref-33348
Refusing to consider that our choices are a reflection of our character. — location: 2091 ^ref-47558
With the right motives we’re willing to proceed. With ego, we’re not. — location: 2138 ^ref-63365
What if your boss or your clients don’t understand? — location: 2145 ^ref-18918
Face the symptoms. Cure the disease. Ego makes it so hard—it’s — location: 2240 ^ref-52682
he started a new company and threw his whole life into it. He tried to learn as best he could from the management mistakes at the root of his first failure. — location: 2284 ^ref-33383
He worked until he’d not only proven himself again, but significantly resolved the flaws that had caused his downfall to begin with. — location: 2286 ^ref-10117
Most trouble is temporary . . . unless you make that not so. Recovery is not grand, it’s one step in front of the other. Unless your cure is more of the disease. — location: 2316 ^ref-50945
transitory, not statements about your value as a human being. When success begins to slip from your fingers—for whatever reason—the response isn’t to grip and claw so hard that you shatter it to pieces. It’s to understand that you must work yourself back to the aspirational phase. You must get back to first principles and best practices. — location: 2328 ^ref-15045
Killing what you love because you can’t bear to part from it is selfish and stupid. If your reputation can’t absorb a few blows, it wasn’t worth anything in the first place. — location: 2333 ^ref-46651
“They cannot degrade Frederick Douglass. The soul that is within me no man can degrade. I am not the one that is being degraded on account of this treatment, but those who are inflicting it upon me.” — location: 2446 ^ref-33833
At various points in our lives, we seem to have different capacities for forgiveness and understanding. — location: 2471 ^ref-3232
even when some people are able to carry on, they carry with them a needless load of resentment. — location: 2472 ^ref-405
This obsession with the past, with something that someone did or how things should have been, as much as it hurts, is ego embodied. — location: 2479 ^ref-22438
love is right there. Egoless, open, positive, vulnerable, peaceful, and productive. — location: 2485 ^ref-35170
perfecting the personal regularly leads to success as a professional, but rarely the other way around. — location: 2587 ^ref-11849