What’s in it for me? Learn to tame your worst enemy – your ego.
Your main enemy is not external. It is not bad luck or bad parents. It is not scheming opponents or the cruelties of late capitalism. Your main enemy dwells within you. Its name is ego.
We’re not talking about the psychoanalytic concept developed by Freud – the Ego with a capital E. We’re using the word “ego” as it’s more commonly understood: unhealthy self-regard, selfish ambition, straight-up arrogance.
Ryan Holiday points out that we are always in one of three stages. These three stages are: Aspire, Success, and Failure. We’re always in one, and always moving toward another. Let’s say you’re succeeding in your career. What happens next? Either you’ll encounter difficulties and fail or you’ll keep succeeding and aspire to achieve more. Or maybe you’re failing in your relationship. What happens next? Either you keep failing and then aspire to start a new relationship or you aspire to fix the one you’re in. See how this works? You’re always cycling through: Aspire. Success. Failure.
And no matter what, no matter which stage you’re in, your ego is your enemy. Some might argue that ego is necessary to get started or to stay ahead. But ego is not the same as ambition. Ego is not the same as confidence. Ego will thwart your dreams, undo your relationships, demolish the life you’ve built, and prevent you from dusting yourself off and trying to build again.
Your ego will manifest in different ways depending on which stage you’re in. But whichever form it takes, it’ll always be your enemy.
The purpose of this Blink is to help you recognize manifestations of ego so that you can resist it and prevent bad habits from forming. By the end of the Blink, you should have the tools to replace ego with ego’s opposite – humility. In the words of Ryan Holiday, you’ll have the tools to be humble in your aspirations, gracious in your success, and resilient in your failure.
Aspire: Ego prevents you from improving.
The first two chapters of this Blink will be about how ego derails you when you’re first starting out – when you’re aspiring. It doesn’t matter what you’re aspiring toward. It could be anything: learning a new skill, say, or setting out on a new career path. In this stage, your ego overestimates your abilities. It tells you that, because you’re talented, because you’re intelligent, you don’t need to put in the work. You don’t need to practice. You don’t need to put in the hours. You can get by on sheer brilliance.
But let’s recall the words of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus: “It is impossible to learn that which one thinks one already knows.”
Talent can certainly contribute to success – no doubt about it. But humility and diligence, that willingness to practice, to put in the time, are much more likely to lead you from aspiration to accomplishment.
If you overestimate your talent, you’ll never improve. If you think you have all the answers, you’ll never learn. And so, at this stage, the most important skill you can possess might be this: the ability to accurately assess your own ability.
To give you an idea of what this looks like in practice, let’s review the career of William Tecumseh Sherman, a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Sherman did achieve great fame. He was, and is, regarded as one of the greatest US generals, if not the greatest. But his rise was neither swift nor expected.
As a young officer, he moved from post to post, riding across the US on horseback. At each new posting, he acquired new knowledge. When the Civil War began, he fought. Later, when the Union Army was suffering from a leadership shortage, Sherman met with President Lincoln, who offered him a promotion. And here’s where Sherman’s sharp self-assessment comes in: he said he’d accept the promotion but that he didn’t want superior command.
Sherman had a clear-eyed understanding of his skills. Where most people would have snatched the opportunity for increased power, Sherman said no, aware that he’d be most effective where he already was.
When Sherman eventually stepped up, spearheading a strategic plan of his own, it relied entirely on his expertise, on the work he’d put in, the lessons he’d learned – not on foolhardy self-assurance. And his plan went well. By the end of the war, he was one of the most celebrated men in America.
This is the difference between confidence and ego. Confidence is founded on hard work, on accurate self-assessment, on actual achievements. Ego is foundationless. In Holiday’s words: “Ego is stolen. Confidence is earned.” All his career, Sherman left his ego at the door, and this earned him not only confidence but success.
In a bit, we’ll come back to Sherman and how he handled that success (spoiler alert: he handled it well) – but, for now, take a moment to assess yourself. Be unflinching. Be objective. Be unforgiving. This is tough. It might be a bit painful. But the point isn’t to hurt yourself; it’s to humble yourself. If you have an uninflated, unexaggerated understanding of your true abilities, you’ll be much more likely to succeed – because you’ll be prepared to put in the hard work.
Aspire: Three pointers for counteracting ego.
Especially when you’re aspiring, when you’re first getting started, hard, unglamorous work is what it’s all about. The path to greatness is paved with small actions. It’s fine to have a grand vision – to want to write a book or to master a difficult skill. But a book is written word by word, sentence by sentence. A skill is mastered hour by hour, mistake by mistake.
It takes work.
Putting in the work is the best way to counteract your ego, to replace it with confidence. It’s also the surest path to the next stage: Success.
Holiday gives eight pointers for counteracting ego in the Aspire stage. More than half of these pointers are about action, about doing something rather than trying to be someone, about being willing to put in the work. Let’s look at three of them.
First up: talk less. Talk is dangerous. The thing about talk is that it consumes the same resources that work requires: time and mental energy. And the more difficult or daunting a task, the more tempting it may be to talk about it. But, of course, after all that talk, you’ll be no closer to completion, and your resources (time, energy) will be depleted. Talking about a task also creates the illusion of progress. If you spend hours and hours considering, explaining, and discussing something, you can start to think you’ve actually done the thing. So beware of excess talk. Hesiod, the Ancient Greek poet, put it well: “A man’s best treasure is a thrifty tongue.”
Next pointer: work, work, work, and enjoy the process. Work does not end with achievement. You’re not a writer because you’ve written a novel. You’re a writer because you write, day in, day out. You’re not a runner because you once ran a marathon. You’re a runner because you run multiple times per week, every week. Ego regards accomplishment as an end point: a single success means you are a success. But success is a process, the process of putting in the work. So learn to enjoy that process. Enjoy the work, not the accolades or the admiration that the work may bring you.
To sum up: talk less, work more. Talk drains your energy and eats your time and gets you nowhere. Success isn’t the work you’ve done; it’s the work you’re doing. So keep working, and enjoy the work itself, not the rewards the work brings. The work is the reward.
The third pointer is to become a student. It’s a great transition to the stage that comes after Aspire – the Success stage. So let’s move to the next chapter and talk about what being a student means.
Success: Be a perpetual student.
The ego is full of self-regard. It’ll tell you that you’re better, that you’re smarter, that you’re already an expert. When you’re aspiring, you can counteract your ego by reminding yourself that there’s always something to learn.
Take the example of Kirk Hammett. In 1983, when he was twenty years old, his life changed forever: Metallica invited him to become its lead guitarist. Hammett was already an incredible musician. Still, even though he’d just become a member of one of the most famous rock bands of all time, he knew he wasn’t done learning, that there was still work to do. So Hammett became a student of Joe Satriani, a virtuosic guitar teacher. Satriani was tough on his students. Many of them, controlled by ego, stopped studying with him, unwilling to practice in the way he instructed. Not Hammett. He studied and practiced. He worked. Twenty years later, in 2003, he was ranked as the 11th greatest guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone.
If you’ve gained recognition for your work, if you now have some impressive title, it’ll become even harder to stay humble, to resist the self-satisfied words of your ego. Hammett was already a pro when he joined Metallica. But he didn’t let his accomplishments get in the way of his development. Put differently, he didn’t let his pride prevent him from improving.
Imagine what would’ve happened if some of the world's greatest inventors let their early achievements go to their heads. What if, for instance, Steve Jobs had rested on his laurels after creating the Apple II computer? Exactly: we’d probably live in a world without iPhones or iPads.
Resting on our laurels is a result of our pride. Pride and ego aren’t the same thing, but they definitely go hand-in-hand. Pride helps us justify our ego, making us feel like a single success is a sign of how special we are. We’re too busy patting ourselves on the back to see that there’s room for improvement, or that we could achieve even greater things.
A good way to fight this is to remain a student. During the Aspire stage, you may have studied under someone. When you get to the Success stage, even if there's no teacher more knowledgeable or skilled than you, you should maintain that student mentality. Be a student of your craft. There really is always more to learn. Reminding yourself of that will keep both your pride and your ego in check, which will allow you to keep excelling while others fall by the wayside.
Success: Focus on what’s important.
What’s important to you? Not to society or your parents or whoever else you think you should impress. But to you. It’s important to figure this out because, if you don’t, your ego will lead you astray. You may begin chasing goals or pursuing positions that, beyond the status they convey, mean little to you – and that’s a recipe for disaster.
Consider the story of former US president Ulysses S. Grant. Grant fought alongside William Tecumseh Sherman in the American Civil War – and he fought well, reaching the rank of general. In fact, in terms of military success, he and Sherman stood shoulder to shoulder. They were two of the most famous people in the United States, honored by all as heroes.
Here’s where the differences begin. After the war, Grant ran for president, and he won. But while Grant may have been popular in the army, he didn’t have much experience in the political sphere. No matter. He wanted to win his country’s highest political office. He thought he was the man for the job.
Now, maybe you’re thinking there’s nothing wrong with this. Grant was simply ambitious. But there’s a distinction to be drawn here.
Ambition, unlike ego, is based on a solid foundation of real achievements. Sherman, for example – he was an ambitious man. He desired success, too, and he earned it, building a strong foundation of experience within his rank before moving to the next rung on the military career ladder. He never put himself forward for a job he wasn’t sure he could do well.
But back to Grant.
He won the 1868 presidential election. His victory, however, wasn’t much of a gain for the country. His administration was ineffectual and corrupt. Grant, a truly kind and upright person, was not made for the wheeling and dealing of Washington. It took him by surprise. After two stressful and trying terms, he left office, disliked by many, seemingly baffled by his own poor performance. Later, Grant was bankrupted in a Ponzi scheme – yet again led astray by a desire (for easy money, this time) that led to nothing but ruin.
Unlike Sherman – who was never interested in becoming president, who preferred to keep working hard in his field of expertise – Grant couldn’t figure out what mattered to him. Sherman knew that his success in one field couldn’t necessarily be transferred to another, and he was fine with that. Grant did what so many of us do: he achieved some success and immediately wanted more, not considering whether the more he desired was of any importance to him personally.
Not that he’s alone here. We all do this, all the time. We get caught up in the race. We forget that we determine where the finish line is. This is ego incarnate: the need to have – to have more power, more money, more exciting experiences – without considering whether the power, the money, the experiences will get us closer to what matters to us.
So what’s important to you? Maybe you want more time with your family. Or maybe you really do want more money. Both are fine. What’s important is that you know. Pursuing your goal, whatever it is, will require tradeoffs – and ego allows no tradeoffs.
The key to getting what you’re after is knowing what you’re after. Once you know that, you can ignore everything that might get in your way.
Success: Keep your ego in check by learning to delegate tasks and trust your team.
Do you have trouble trusting teammates or coworkers? Ever feel like you can’t give them tasks to do because they just wouldn’t do as good a job as you? These are telling signs that your ego probably needs to be reined in a bit. Try placing trust in other people’s work. You and your team will benefit from it.
As you move up the career ladder and take on more of a managerial role, you’ll probably run up against your ego. Maybe you’re used to getting recognition for your work. But now, in your new role, you don’t get much credit; you oversee the work of others, and they get the credit.
Fight the temptation to do the work that you should be delegating. That voice in your head, telling you that only you know how to do things correctly? That’s your ego. Resist it. Delegate those tasks. And appreciate the benefits of delegation. You may discover that others are just as capable of handling everything you used to have on your plate, and you’ll suddenly have time to dedicate to new things. Trust others. Respect their work. And put your newfound time to use.
Still not convinced that delegation is a good thing? Well, keep in mind that the costs of refusing to delegate can be pretty hefty – so hefty, in fact, that they can ruin entire businesses.
Take the story of car manufacturer John DeLorean. Believing that he had a better understanding of the car manufacturing business than his bosses at General Motors, DeLorean left his job at GM to start his own company. The problem was, this belief wasn’t based on much. Didn’t have the expertise or the experience. He didn’t have the managerial skills. All of which soon became painfully clear.
In his new company, he tossed out the stable top-down responsibility structures that made GM thrive. Instead, DeLorean – and his ego – had to have a say in every single decision, a dictatorial style of management that was unsustainable, to say the least. The story ends as you might suspect.
DeLorean’s endeavor failed, ending in bankruptcy.
Failure: Find out why you failed.
If one of your great ideas gets rejected or you don’t get the job you applied for, it’s natural to feel frustrated. After all, our egos tell us that we’re entitled to receive rewards – but the world doesn’t always work in accordance with our plans.
Sometimes we don’t get that promotion or close that sure deal, even though we did our best. So how do we confront this?
Rather than feeling disappointed, we can start by acknowledging the work we’ve done and recognize that we can’t always control the outcome of that work, or people’s opinions of us. An unexpected result should be welcomed as an opportunity to honestly reflect on our performance.
And on the other side, we should remember that lucky breaks are not the same as success that comes from hard work. So, again, we have to be honest with ourselves about our performance.
Take the example of the New England Patriots football team. They selected Tom Brady in the sixth round of an entry draft, and he turned out to be one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history, leading the Patriots to four Super Bowl titles.
However, instead of congratulating themselves for having found such a great player in such unexpected circumstances, the Patriots were determined to improve their scouting program, so they would identify talent like Tom Brady again. They didn’t celebrate they’re lucky break. They returned to the drawing board.
The next time something doesn’t go the way you expect it to – and even when something just so happens to go well, out of sheer luck – take the time to understand why. Improve your best efforts and you’ll give yourself a better chance in the future.
Final summary
The key message in this Blink is simple: avoid ego, avoid it now, avoid it in the future, avoid it always. Aspiration is the path to success – and also, potentially, to obstacles. Success will bring with it new obstacles, though it should also generate new ambitions. And obstacles are paths to new aspirations and new successes. The loop never ends. If you fail, use that failure as an opportunity to learn, to improve, to move on stronger and more prepared. Ego is the only thing stopping you.
All the giants of history faced obstacles, faced difficulties. They all made mistakes. But they turned those obstacles to their advantage, or learned from them – even if the only lesson was that no one is mistake-proof and that the world doesn’t alway bend to one’s will.
If they hadn’t learned, if they hadn’t had the self-awareness and humility to take the lesson to heart, they would never have improved or have gone on to achieve great things. The only thing that’s stopping you from following a similar path, from thriving no matter which phase you find yourself in – Aspire, Success, or Failure – is ego.
You can aspire without ego. You can succeed without ego. You can fail with strength – but never with ego. Ego is the enemy.