Ego is the Enemy Essay

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Introduction

In this essay I will be sharing my thoughts about the book “Ego is the Enemy” by Ryan Holiday. While doing so I’ll be sharing some of my own stories and how I believe they apply to the contents of the book. Enjoy!

Note: My essay does not follow the chronological order of the book.

Looking for Approval and Failure

At the beginning of the book the author starts talking about one great general from the Civil War and how he accomplished a lot by not letting the recognition of other people drive his decisions.

This reminds me a lot about a specific time in my life. When I was 20 years old I got an internship at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). I remember that my family and friends were so proud of me, they said things like you’re so smart, you’re going to accomplish a lot of great things, and stuff like that. And of course as I was younger and didn’t know anything about letting your ego grow. I started believing most of the things that I was told, that I was really smart and that I was meant to achieve greatness.

Little did I know what was awaiting for me in Texas. The person that was in charge of me didn’t even know that I was arriving, he just found the first thing that came and assigned it to me. I was sad because I didn’t feel like I was learning. I had gone so far from home, to a place where I felt useless.

And the worse thing was thinking about everything that my family and friends told me before leaving, thinking about how much they believed in me and how I let them down. I remember one night just staring at my roof thinking, this is it? I’m a fraud? A big failure? Of course now I realize that no, I’m not a fraud or a failure, the conditions were just not right, and failing is part of life. The problem was that I let my ego grow so much that when I started failing I felt like I was the worst person in the world.

In the end things worked out from my perspective, I learned a lot, it is just that the things I learned were not technical stuff. I learned about life, failure and about myself.

The Mindset of a Student

When I was at university I remember thinking stuff like “I’m a fifth semester student how can I NOT know that??” I thought that because I was in some position I was supposed to know stuff. Oh how wrong I was…

The book talks a lot about this, in order to be able to learn you should be able to admit that you don’t know stuff. If you believe that you know everything you won’t be teachable. A great way to do this is having a mentor (or mentors). Because from the moment that you have a mentor you’re admitting to yourself that you don’t know things and that you have things to learn.

The mindset that I had in the example was pure ego. It was thinking that because I was X I was supposed to be Y, and in reality things don’t work that way. You can have as many titles as you want and still you will have gaps in your knowledge. Be humble and accept that there are things that you don’t know.

Passion and Purpose

The author says that we often rely on passion to accomplish things, and I personally was part of this for a long time. I actually remember hearing motivational speeches and thinking that I had the world in the palm of my hand. But as the author mentions, this is just pure ego, these are just stories that we tell to ourselves to think that we’re more than we actually are.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t know what you’re worth or anything like that. It’s great to have self esteem. But if you want to run the long race, and go all the way you need more than passion. You need to be objective, to know where you are standing and where you want to go. Passion is just a temporary substitute to discipline and perseverance.

I remember the passion that I felt eventually wore off. And then I was left with nothing, I had not built any habit to take me the long way, I was back at square 1 once that passion was gone.

Meditate on the immensity

Realizing that we’re part of something a lot bigger than ourselves is a good way to put our feet into the ground. You can feel that you are irrelevant because you’re tiny in the grand scheme of things, but you can also feel very important and very lucky because you had the chance to be a part of everything in the universe.

Personally, the times that I have felt more in peace with myself and with others is when I acknowledge that I’m just part of something incredibly huge. And the fact that I get to be a part of that is great.

For what often comes next, ego is the enemy When you achieve success, the natural thing to happen is that things will get harder. People start to believe that you’re supposed to win and that can put more pressure on you, it’s no coincidence that we always root for the underdog. In order to keep doing things you want to achieve, keep sobriety and put ego aside.

I haven’t reached a huge success in order to feel like I have everything figured out. But I think that it’s good that I already know that when I achieve something, things are likely to get even harder. So with this mentality I can keep having a student mentality and maintain humility.

The effort is enough

This is a very stoic approach from the author. Basically it means that you shouldn’t put your emotions in the outcomes, but in the work itself. You will never be able to control the outcome, you can influence it, but not control it. That’s when the effort comes in, you can take a lot of action towards a certain outcome, but a million random things can happen.

So when you give everything you have and still fail, there’s only one thing you can do. Pick yourself up and feel proud about your effort. Because if you put everything in it, you know that it wasn’t up to you.

You’re not always supposed to win. Thinking that you are is an indicator of your ego. This takes me to the next topic.

Sh!t Happens…

This is actually what I got from several chapters of the book and I interpreted it this way.

Bad things are going to happen. Relationships are going to fail, you will get rejected, you will fail to accomplish what you set your mind to, unexpected things will mess with your plans.

I’m not trying to be pessimistic but that’s just part of life, thinking otherwise is unrealistic. I’m not saying that you should always be focusing on the negative. Instead I’m saying that when you know that bad things happen to everyone you can embrace the good and the bad that comes.

Ego can prevent us from taking this approach, because if you’re so special, How does this horrible thing can be happening to me? Why am I so unlucky? If you follow this approach you will end up blaming everyone else for your problems, and you will fail to see what things you can do to improve.

Maintain your own scorecard

It’s better to judge yourself with your own standards, other people have what they called objective success, and if you fall for it you will think you have made it and stop improving.

Also it can lead you to moral gray areas because you will be dictating your behaviors towards what other people applaud you for, so if you don’t see any negative feedback from the people you won’t think is bad. Instead you have to be the inner judge and keep your own scoreboard. This will make you a better moral person and a person who is always inching towards real improvement.

Final thoughts

First I want to say that I liked the book and will recommend it. I think that what the book is aiming for is an ideal, I’m not saying that is wrong, but I think that ego is a part of human nature. We all have it and always will on some level, trying to get rid of ego in a complete way is impossible in my opinion.

The author mentions something similar, he says that controlling the ego is like cleaning. When we clear the dust it will eventually come back to us. So does ego.

I also find it funny how he uses a lot of examples about people involved in wars and conquests to promote as good examples regarding ego. Isn’t war one of the most egotistic things about humans? I know that he intended to isolate some specific behavior, but I still have some conflict with the war examples. I think there are better people to look up to, than people who were involved in murders.

Other than that I found the book very interesting and applicable to real life, like some of the examples that I mentioned throughout the essay. I think it helped me realize the cause for some of my behaviors in the past.