EGO IS THE ENEMY BY RYAN HOLIDAY- A SHORT NOTE TAKING | LADY TULIP

Hello Dolls & Gents, 

My companion for the past 3 days have been the phenomenal book written by Ryan Holiday: Ego Is the Enemy. I am convinced that while we are aggressively trapezing through adulthood, specifically post-COVID-19; this is the ultimate self-help book that can effortlessly make you stare at yourself in the mirror. 

I took the initiative to note down and study most of it, and now wish to share the points that hit me the hardest and facilitated honest and raw self-assessment. I hope that you too, will be able to takeaway something from this post. If you have not read the book and wish to do so, please exist this post now. 

1- Ego; an unhealthy belief in our own importance.

Your ego is not some power you’re forced to satiate at every turn. It can be managed. It can be directed.

 

2- “no adornment so becomes you as modesty, justice, and self-control; for these are the virtues by which, as all men are agreed, the character of the young is held in restraint.”

 

3- 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.

 

4- The power of being a student is not just that it is an extended period of instruction, it also places the ego and ambition in someone else’s hands. There is a sort of ego ceiling imposed—one knows that he is not better than the “master”.

 

5- The art of taking feedback is such a crucial skill in life, particularly harsh and critical feedback. We not only need to take this harsh feedback, but actively solicit it, labor to seek out the negative precisely when our friends and family and brain are telling us that we’re doing great.

 

6- In our endeavors, we will face complex problems, often in situations we’ve never faced before. Opportunities are not usually deep, virgin pools that require courage and boldness to dive into, but instead are obscured, dusted over, blocked by various forms of resistance. What is really called for in these circumstances is clarity, deliberateness, and methodological determination.

 

7- Purpose; is about pursuing something outside yourself as opposed to pleasuring yourself.

 

8- The critical work that you want to do will require your deliberation and consideration. Not passion. Not naïveté.

 

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

 

9- Do you have any idea just how much work there is going to be? Not work until you get your big break, not work until you make a name for yourself, but work, work, work, forever and ever.

 

10- You can lie to yourself, saying that you put in the time, or pretend that you’re working, but eventually someone will show up. You’ll be tested. And quite possibly, found out.

 

11- 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.

 

12- When we achieve our own, we must resist the desire to pretend that everything unfolded exactly as we’d planned. There was no grand narrative. You should remember—you were there when it happened.

13- Only you know the race you’re running. That is, unless your ego decides the only way you have value is if you’re better than, have more than, everyone everywhere. More urgently, each one of us has a unique potential and purpose; that means that we’re the only ones who can evaluate and set the terms of our lives. Far too often, we look at other people and make their approval the standard we feel compelled to meet, and as a result, squander our very potential and purpose.

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

 

15- You need to know what you don’t want and what your choices preclude. Because strategies are often mutually exclusive. 

 

16- Achieving success involved ignoring the doubts and reservations of the people around us. It meant rejecting rejection. It required taking certain risks. We could have given up at any time, but we’re here precisely because we didn’t. Persistence and courage in the face of ridiculous odds are partially irrational traits—in some cases really irrational. When it works, those tendencies can feel like they’ve been vindicated.

 

17- The demands and dream you had for a better life? The ambition that fueled your effort? These begin as earnest drives but left unchecked become hubris and entitlement. The same goes for the instinct to take charge; now you’re addicted to control. Driven to prove the doubters wrong? Welcome to the seeds of paranoia.

 

18- The sad feedback loop is that the relentless “looking out for number one” can encourage other people to undermine and fight us. They see that behavior for what it really is: a mask for weakness, insecurity, and instability. 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.

 

19- Ego needs honors in order to be validated. Confidence, on the other hand, is able to wait and focus on the task at hand regardless of external recognition.

20- Most successful people are people you’ve never heard of. They want it that way. It keeps them sober. It helps them do their jobs.

21- Ego loves this notion, the idea that something is “fair” or not. Psychologists call it narcissistic injury when we take personally totally indifferent and objective events. We do that when our sense of self is fragile and dependent on life going our way all the time. Whether what you’re going through is your fault or your problem doesn’t matter, because it’s yours to deal with right now.

22- Lacking the ability to examine ourselves, we reinvest our energy into exactly the patterns of behavior that caused our problems to begin with.

 

23- In life, there will be times when we do everything right, perhaps even perfectly. Yet the results will somehow be negative: failure, disrespect, jealousy, or even a resounding yawn from the world.

 

24- We can’t let externals determine whether something was worth it or not. It’s on us.

 

25- “The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills.”

 

26- In the end, the only way you can appreciate your progress is to stand on the edge of the hole you dug for yourself, look down inside it, and smile fondly at the bloody claw prints that marked your journey up the walls.

 

27- The problem is that when we get our identity tied up in our work, we worry that any kind of failure will then say something bad about us as a person. It’s a fear of taking responsibility, of admitting that we might have messed up. It’s the sunk cost fallacy. And so we throw good money and good life after bad and end up making everything so much worse.

28- 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.

 

29- If your reputation can’t absorb a few blows, it wasn’t worth anything in the first place.

30- 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.

31- "And why should we feel anger at the world? As if the world would notice!" —EURIPIDES.

 

32- Especially because almost universally, the traits or behaviors that have pissed us off in other people—their dishonesty, their selfishness, their laziness—are hardly going to work out well for them in the end. Their ego and shortsightedness contains its own punishment.

33- At various points in our lives, we seem to have different capacities for forgiveness and understanding. And even when some people are able to carry on, they carry with them a needless load of resentment.

 

34- “People learn from their failures. Seldom do they learn anything from success.”

35- Aspiration leads to success (and adversity). Success creates its own adversity (and, hopefully, new ambitions). And adversity leads to aspiration and more success. It’s an endless loop.