A moderate, healthy ego is often crucial to success in life. It allows us to engage in competition, convince others of our strengths and surpass our past achievements. All too often, however, when we experience success, our ego becomes inflated. Our perception can get clouded as our self-image rises above our view of others. We can become so confident that we overextend ourselves and end up paying for it.

So, taming our pride is a crucial step – but how do we do that?

In this Book summary, you’ll learn where ego comes from and how it can block your road to success. You’ll pick up strategies for how to control your ego, regain humility and forgo seeking praise in favor of sharing it with others.

In this summary of Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday, you’ll also find out

• why US president Ulysses S. Grant was a great egoist;
• how Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett kept his ego in check; and
• why the New England Patriots didn’t congratulate themselves for finding one of the best quarterbacks of all time.

Content Summary

Recommendation
Take-Aways
What is Ego?
The 3 Stages of Life Where Ego is the Enemy
How to Prevent Ego from Ruining Your Life
Ego is the desire to gain recognition without working for it.
Rein in your ego by reminding yourself that there’s always more to learn.
Pride makes us deaf to warnings and blind to things we could improve.
Keep your ego in check by learning to delegate tasks and trust your team.
We owe much of our success to others, and shouldn’t hog the praise for ourselves.
When you do your best and things don’t work out, find out why so you can do better next time.
Summary
Conclusion
About the author
Genres
Table of Contents
Overview
Review/Endorsements/Praise/Award
Video and Podcast
Read an Excerpt/PDF Preview

Recommendations

Best-selling author Ryan Holiday recommends that people stop jabbering, forget their narratives, restrain their passions, learn from everything they do, accept failure and never stop working. He offers anecdotes about professional athletes, politicians and business leaders who learned hard lessons about the dangers of ego as well as tales of quiet workers who made enormous differences and remained unknown. Holiday’s conversational style reads like getting advice from a good friend. His chapters are short and easy to understand, though some entries cover similar topics. The partial bibliography directs readers to an extensive reading list on Holiday’s website. We recommend his alternative approach to people with an interest in self-improvement, not self-aggrandizement. He believes that the best way to move ahead is keep learning and to tame your ego – and he shows you how.

Take-Aways

• Ego seems necessary for success, but vesting in self-importance impedes your career.
• Being great is different from doing great things.
• Engaging in building a “personal brand” confuses accomplishing something with talking about it.
• Cultivate restraint to manage your feelings of pride or anger.
• “Clear the path” for others, and you’ll help determine the path they take.
• Ego undermines the connection and engagement with others that both allow success to grow.
• Goal visualization helps at the beginning of a project, but it can produce a misleading impression of progress.
• Maintain “a student mind-set” to keep your ego in check by acknowledging that you always have more to learn.
• Ego is “the disease of me”; this world is far greater than you.
• Abandon ego’s attachment to success and commit to a path of constant improvement.

What is Ego?

“It’s that petulant child inside every person, the one that chooses getting his or her way over anything or anyone else. The need to be better than, more than, recognized for, far past any reasonable utility—that’s ego. It’s the sense of superiority and certainty that exceeds the bounds of confidence and talent.” – Ryan Holiday

The 3 Stages of Life Where Ego is the Enemy

Aspiring

“Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.” – Lao Tzu

Ego is the enemy because it prefers talking over doing.

“It’s a temptation that exists for everyone—for talk and hype to replace action.

Our inbox, our iPhones, the comments section on the bottom of the article you just read. Blank spaces, begging to be filled in with thoughts, with photos, with stories. With what we’re going to do, with what things should or could be like, what we hope will happen.” — Ryan Holiday

Succeeding

“As success arrives, like it does for a team that has just won a championship, ego begins to toy with our minds and weaken the will that made us win in the first place.” – Ryan Holiday

Ego is the enemy because it convinces us of our ‘greatness’ and erodes our will to work for continued success.

“We stop learning, we stop listening, and we lose our grasp on what matters. We become victims of ourselves and the competition. Sobriety, open-mindedness, organization, and purpose—these are the great stabilizers. They balance out the ego and pride that comes with achievement and recognition.” – Ryan Holiday

Failing

“If success is ego intoxication, then failure can be a devastating ego blow—turning slips into falls and little troubles into great unravelings. We have many names for these problems: Sabotage. Unfairness. Adversity. Trials. Tragedy.” – Ryan Holiday

Ego is the enemy because it avoids responsibility and casts blame when experiencing failure. Ego erodes relationships and erases progress by trying to save face.

“The way through, the way to rise again, requires a reorientation and increased self-awareness. We don’t need pity—our own or anyone else’s—we need purpose, poise, and patience.” – Ryan Holiday

How to Prevent Ego from Ruining Your Life

FIND A PLUS: Who is better than me?

When you achieve noteworthy success, you need a dose of humility:

• Find people who have achieved greater success.
• Remind yourself of the ultimate goal in life: your greater purpose.
• Reflect on the immensity of the world around you (remember how small you are).

There is always someone better than you in some way. Never forget that, and never stop learning.

FIND A MINUS: Who can I teach?

When you encounter failure, the ego wants to have a pity party and seek revenge, both of which slow your progress.

Instead, identity how you can use the failure to teach others:

• Capture the lesson in a book or journal that you’ll share with your kids one day.
• Conduct a ‘lessons learned’ team meeting, and share three things you could have done differently.
• Write a blog post of your failure and share it on social media or online forum.

When you force yourself to teach others about your failure, you’re forced to adopt an objective view of failure.

FIND AN EQUAL: Who do I want to be like?

When you aspire to do great things, you need to avoid being caught up in what everyone else does. Only be concerned with what a few people you respect and aspire to be like think.

• Find someone who challenges and inspires you.
• Spend your time around people with similar goals (your inner circle; your mastermind).
• Pay attention to the criticism within your circle, but ignore the criticism from outside of your circle.

The ego prefers to talk about what it’s going to do, rather than actually do it. The pressure to keep up with people in your circle forces you to talk less and do more. Develop a strong peer group that keeps you accountable.

Ego is the desire to gain recognition without working for it.

As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words. But if that’s true, why do we love to feel popular or get praise from others, even for things we haven’t done?

We’ve got our ego to thank for that.

Ego is the desire to get fame and recognition without doing the good deeds that are required for us to deserve it. While recognition may result from being successful, many people try to become famous before they achieve success.

Consider the story of former US president Ulysses S. Grant, once a well-known general in the US Army. After the American Civil War, he ran for president and won. But while Grant may have been popular in the army, he didn’t have much experience in the political sphere. His desire to win the highest political office despite his lack of experience makes Grant the perfect example of an egoist.

Unlike ego, ambition is based on a solid foundation of real achievements. Take the example of William Tecumseh Sherman, a general serving in the military alongside Grant. Sherman was also successful in his post, but, unlike Grant, he wasn’t an egoist.

As the end of Abraham Lincoln’s second term drew near, Grant and other egoistic military leaders were determined to use their reputations to push into politics and compete for the role of president.

Sherman, on the other hand, was ambitious. While egoists chase after fame, ambitious people are driven by the will to excel in their field, regardless of whether they are congratulated and celebrated for their successes.

During talks with Lincoln, it became clear that Sherman simply wasn’t interested in becoming president. He preferred to keep working hard in his field of expertise: military leadership. He was determined to be successful without focusing on gaining recognition for it, and he also knew that success in one field didn’t necessarily mean it could be transferred over to others.

Rein in your ego by reminding yourself that there’s always more to learn.

Ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus once said, “It is impossible to learn that which one thinks one already knows.” This, again, relates to our ego. Our ego tells us that we’re too clever to learn anything new, and while this assumption is a stubborn one, we can overcome it if we learn to humble ourselves.

One way we can control our ego is by thinking of ourselves as students that never stop learning. Even if you’re incredibly good at what you do, your ego can get the better of you all too easily. You can prevent this by reminding yourself that there’s always someone who’s better than you.

Take guitarist Kirk Hammett. In 1980, he was asked by Metallica to join their band, where his musical talent would be allowed to shine. But Hammett knew that even though he’d just become a member of one of the most famous rock bands of all time, he wasn’t done learning. Hammett became a student of world-renowned guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani and, in doing so, was able to take his guitar skills to a whole new level.

Hammett was able to stay humble by working with an immensely talented peer, which is one of the best ways to rein in your ego.

If you want to remind yourself that you’ve always got more to learn, you can find yourself a highly-skilled mentor. But working with someone more talented isn’t the only way to stay grounded; you can also become a teacher.

This is a strategy applied by martial-arts expert Frank Shamrock. He believes that in order stay humble, fighters must not only learn from the very best and train with peers at their skill level, but should also dedicate time to training beginners. This allows fighters to see the full spectrum of skill levels in their sport, while also keeping their ego in check.

Pride makes us deaf to warnings and blind to things we could improve.

Imagine what would happen if some of the world’s greatest inventors let their early achievements get to their heads. What if, for instance, Steve Jobs had rested on his laurels after creating the Apple II computer? Well, we likely wouldn’t have iPhones or iPads today. So why is it that we tend to sit back and relax after achieving success?

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.

Pride doesn’t just stop us from continuing to learn and achieve, it also makes us overly sensitive to criticism and deaf to warnings. Proud people are very prone to becoming defensive – or even aggressive – if someone tells them they aren’t as special as they think they are, because their ego rests on this falsehood.

Rather than face the fact that we’re not the best in the world at what we do, many of us are more willing to fight anything that hurts our pride and ego. Even Benjamin Franklin got caught up in his own pride at one point.

While visiting his hometown of Boston, one of the town’s most respected figures, Cotton Mather, called out to him, shouting “Stoop! Stoop!” Franklin seemed to think he was above this gesture and ignored him, which was a foolish move – he walked straight into a low door-frame, knocking his head painfully!

If we want to see past the book summaryers of pride, we should consider, in every situation, how someone more humble would perceive things.

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 some serious signs that your ego needs reining in. Try placing trust in other people’s work – you and your team will benefit from it.

As you move up your career ladder and take on more of a managerial role, conflicts with your ego may emerge. You might have been used to gaining recognition for your work, while your new role might be to oversee the work of others.

Many of us tend to hoard tasks we should really be delegating. Why? Because our ego tells us that we’re the only ones who can do them right. By practicing delegation, you’ll force yourself to trust and respect the work of others. You’ll learn that other people’s time might actually be put to better use on the tasks that you used to do, and you’ll also see how useful your time can be when dedicated to new things.

If that’s not enough to convince you, keep in mind that the the costs of refusing to delegate can be pretty hefty; in fact, they can be enough to devastate any business.

Take the story of car manufacturer John DeLorean. He left his job at General Motors to start his own company because he believed he had a better understanding of the car manufacturing business than his bosses at GM. The problem was, he had no substance or expertise to back up his assumption, and this soon became painfully clear.

In his new company, he eschewed 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. DeLorean’s endeavor eventually failed, ending in bankruptcy.

We owe much of our success to others, and shouldn’t hog the praise for ourselves.

No person is an island. So why do we love to think of our victories as ours alone? Whether we achieve success after tackling adversity or just through hard work, it’s far too easy to let accomplishments go to our heads and let ourselves believe they were all our own doing.

Take basketball players Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant. Both were world-class players with the LA Lakers, and won three consecutive championships with the Lakers in 2000, 2001 and 2002. They were a fantastic duo but, unfortunately, they both let their individual success get to their heads.

O’Neal often complained about Bryant’s shortcomings to the media, and Bryant refused to sign with the Lakers again until they traded O’Neal to another team.

What would you do in the same position? If you are suddenly asked for an interview by a magazine or gain hordes of followers on social media, it might be easy to think that you’re better than the peers who helped you along the way.

Rather than selfishly seeking out praise for yourself, why not share the accolades with others? Usually, they’ll do the same for you in return. Of course, some careers rely on the popularity of an individual, whether it’s in the form of broad readership or constant media coverage. But showing humility will always benefit your career, no matter what.

From the accountants who gave you the numbers for that winning presentation to the designer who made those striking infographics, thanking those who help you along the way will strengthen your own position. Your team will enjoy working with you and will perform better, and you’ll continue attracting new coworkers, too.

When you do your best and things don’t work out, find out why so you can do better next time.

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 a promotion or close a 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.

The next time something doesn’t go the way you expect it to, take the time to understand why. Improve your best efforts and you’ll give yourself a better chance in the future.

Summary

What Is Ego?

Anyone with ambition has ego. People who marshal their skills to meet their goals have ego. Artists, athletes, scientists and entrepreneurs achieve their objectives by harnessing the focus and desire to create and discover. But, too often, ego drives these activities. Ego is necessary for getting ahead. But “an unhealthy belief” in how important you are has the opposite impact and blocks your progress.

“What makes us so promising as thinkers, doers, creatives and entrepreneurs, what drives us to the top of those fields, makes us vulnerable to this darker side of the psyche.”

Ego encourages lazy, self-congratulatory fantasizing. Defined as “self-centered ambition,” ego undermines the connection with others and the engagement that both allow success to grow. To assess your strengths accurately, embrace a blend of confidence and humility. Recognize that ego offers the comfort of self-satisfaction, but it’s self-absorbed and can blind you to opportunity.

Aspiring to Greatness

Greatness is often a quiet act. The late US Air Force fighter pilot and strategist John Boyd helped revolutionize modern warfare across the US armed forces, but the general public doesn’t know of him. To emphasize the difference between working for recognition and working to get something accomplished, he asked the soldiers he commanded if they wanted “to be or to do.” Just being somebody is much easier than actually getting things done.

“Ego is the enemy of what you want and of what you have: Of mastering a craft. Of real creative insight. Of working well with others. Of building loyalty and support. Of longevity. Of repeating and retaining your success.”

Though popular wisdom encourages people “to find their passion,” that can be the wrong advice. Passion leads to enthusiasm at the expense of thoughtful deliberation. Passion’s energy and excitement can hide weaknesses that will eventually appear. Instead of impatient passion, seek purpose with reasons and goals.

“We start out knowing what is important to us, but once we’ve achieved it, we lose sight of our priorities.”

Practice restraint. Anger, resentment and pride cloud your thinking. You’re not special just because you went to a good school, work hard, or came from a rich or influential family. You may dislike it when your boss is rude or your colleagues are frustrating, but being reactive and claiming that you deserve better will get you nowhere. Such behaviors stem from ego. Being restrained lets you focus on the work at hand and value the lessons that emerge along the way.

“The Canvas Strategy”

The canvas strategy builds on the notion of restraint, of being “a canvas for other people to paint on.” Shift away from the short-term satisfaction of resentment and move toward embracing the long-term enrichment of self-development. To follow the canvas strategy, keep these ideas in mind when first starting out in the world of work:

• You will probably need to improve and cultivate a better attitude.
• You “aren’t as good” as you may believe, nor as important.
• You don’t know everything, and you need to learn more than your education taught you.

“Once you win, everyone is gunning for you. It’s during your moment at the top that you can afford ego the least – because the stakes are so much higher, the margins for error so much smaller.”

Your success often will come alongside the success of others. Work to make other people’s jobs easier. While an initial sense of subservience might confound your ego, starting at the bottom gives you an opportunity to learn how something really works. Overcome your ego by finding ideas to share with your boss. Introduce people who might collaborate. Do the small tasks others avoid. When you “clear the path” for other people, you help determine the course they’ll take.

Problems with Narratives

Be someone who does things rather than someone who talks a lot. Social media encourage talk instead of productivity. Posting updates on Facebook and Twitter misleads you into focusing on speech over action. Filling boxes with text promotes the false presentation of confidence, ability and accomplishment. Don’t believe your own self-promotion. That’s your ego inflating itself.

“The more difficult the task, the more uncertain the outcome, the more costly talk will be and the farther from actual accountability.”

Gawker blogger Emily Gould described the challenge she faced in completing her novel. She had a “six-figure book deal,” but her writing bogged down because she was always posting on Tumblr or Twitter or scrolling through websites. These were distractions from the real work she had to do, but she convinced herself that it was work: she was building her personal brand. In the relentless pursuit of building, curating or refining a personal brand, people lose sight of the difference between actual accomplishments and fictional advertisements of themselves. All that posting and all that talk use up the energy you need for your real work. Some people like to mutter the thoughts that are leading them through solving a problem, but some studies suggest that talking aloud slows the process of discovery. Likewise, goal visualization helps at the beginning of a project, but after a while it produces the misleading impression of progress. When a project is hard, talk does not help.

“It takes a special kind of humility to grasp that you know less, even as you know and grasp more and more.”

Stories of success make success seem inevitable. Looking back at your own story is dangerous because you can reject all the pieces that don’t fit the narrative you want to tell. Such a narrative can offer false clarity and distract you from remembering the work that enabled you to attain your goals. Narratives of success mislead by suggesting they are conclusive, that the story ends after success. But in life, the story continues. After you succeed, everyone wants to beat you. More than ever, you must work hard to maintain the success you strived to achieve.

Learning Focus

Pride is dangerous. It inhibits learning. Instead, maintain “a student mind-set” to keep your ego in check by acknowledging that you always have more to learn. Success doesn’t make you a master. Frank Shamrock, a mixed martial arts world champion, teaches that everyone needs “a plus, a minus and an equal.” Learn from someone who has more skill than you, someone who acts as a teacher. Gain from teaching someone who knows less than you, because being a professional requires understanding your task well enough to describe it to others. Working with someone at your level helps you cultivate finesse and dexterity.

“Ego needs honors to be validated. Confidence…is able to wait and focus on the task at hand regardless of external recognition.”

Maintaining a student mind-set is easier in the beginning of your career. Success brings the temptation to overestimate your knowledge. John Wheeler, a physicist who helped develop the hydrogen bomb, said, “As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.” The more you know, the more you realize you need to learn.

“The need to be better than, more than, recognized for, far past any reasonable utility – that’s ego.”

Jazz great Wynton Marsalis once told an aspiring musician to be humble, explaining that humility is evident in those who don’t believe they already know everything. As you learn, discover the processes that enable you to learn most effectively. Repeat those procedures to ensure your continuous education.

“A smart man or woman must regularly remind themselves of the limits of their power and reach.”

The “theory of disruption” proposes that every industry will eventually encounter a change that no one predicted. When that happens, established business models – already too comfortable with their familiar approach – won’t respond effectively because they’ve stopped learning and growing. Newcomers are more agile; since they’re still in a learning mind-set, they see an opportunity to fill a market need and take advantage of it. They study their competitors to learn which changes would help them grow.

“Standard of Performance”

Professional football coach Bill Walsh established a Standard of Performance as general manager of the San Francisco 49ers. Over the course of three years, he took a team that earned ratings as one of the worst in the league and made it a Super Bowl champion. People told the story of this climb by saying Walsh had a vision of the team’s Super Bowl win and executed it. He refused to buy into that narrative. Instead, Walsh described how he focused on what the team members needed to do, when they needed to do it and how they should do it.

“Impressing people is utterly different from being truly impressive.”

Walsh instilled a sense of excellence by insisting on small behavioral rules: Players must stand while on the practice field; coaches must appear in tucked-in shirts and ties; the locker room must be clean. Bill Walsh expected the team to perform well on the field and off. After winning the Super Bowl, the team had two terrible years because the players became overconfident and self-satisfied. The team had to accept that the Standard of Performance was their route to victory before they started to win again and became recurring champions.

Accept Failure

Mistakes are inevitable. Being an entrepreneur or creative person requires taking risks, and risks don’t always work out. The problem isn’t failing. The problem is identifying with failure. Ego believes that the only options are success or failure. That is ego confusion. Failure isn’t indicative of who you are, only of what you did. Ego tries to prove that failure is, or will become, success.

“Unless we use this moment as an opportunity to understand ourselves and our own mind better, ego will seek out failure like true north.”

When Dov Charney was the CEO of American Apparel, his practices cost the company some $300 million and the reputational damage of multiple scandals. When the board asked Charney to step aside, he refused. He then wasted a fortune on a useless lawsuit to vindicate himself. He lost, and faced public humiliation when the media published details that the case revealed about his behavior.

“At every step and every juncture in life, there is the opportunity to learn – and even if the lesson is purely remedial, we must not let ego block us from hearing it again.”

Steve Jobs was fired from Apple, the company he founded, because of his huge ego. Jobs was angry and fought the company’s decision, but he didn’t let it ruin him. He sold all but one share of Apple and decided to try again. Learning from his management failures, he funded the animation company Pixar and slowly rebuilt his reputation. He eventually returned to Apple, and made it an even better company than he could have built before learning such hard life lessons.

“You can’t learn if you think you already know.”

As with Jobs, failure is an opportunity to learn. When success begins to wane, don’t attach yourself even more tightly to your job, project or goal. Recognize that something went wrong; try to identify how your behavior contributed to that error and begin to change.

Check Yourself

When people first succeed, they may indulge in wild behavior. Success can transform that confusion and erratic conduct into self-assurance and bravery. If your success came from a surprising guess, recognize that you didn’t know what would lead to success. When others applaud your greatness, stay sober.

Consider Germany’s Angela Merkel, one of the most powerful women in the world. When Russian president Vladimir Putin tried to intimidate her by allowing his hunting dog to interrupt a meeting, she didn’t take it personally or react badly even though her dislike of dogs is common knowledge. In the midst of adversity, she remained “firm, clear and patient.” As Merkel once said, “You can’t solve…tasks with charisma.”

Success has the adverse effect of making people feel larger than life. Stress reinforces their sense of importance. Similarly, rebukes or failures hurt people’s inflated egos. Tame your ego by observing the vastness of the universe; “meditate on immensity.” Observe nature. Find something that allows you to connect. Let go of ego’s desire for retaliation or its efforts to reinforce its value. See how grand the world is. Ego is “the disease of me,” but the world offers much more than you.

Do things for the purpose of doing them. Let the effort be enough. When a project becomes focused on success alone, your ego is in control. Your work might incur ridicule or sabotage. Recognition may never arrive in the forms you seek: public praise, financial success or approval from the one person whose respect you want. Focus on your expectations, not someone else’s. Ego drives the desire to succeed. Let the effort you put into your work be success enough. If it’s not, then maybe this isn’t the work you should be doing.

Learn What Matters to You

Ego makes everything about the self. Genuine self-awareness diminishes ego by allowing the self to grow and change. Ask, “What’s important to you?” so that you focus on self-evaluation and not on external measures. Learn what matters to you so you can be true to yourself. Recognize that the world has much to continue teaching you. Abandon ego’s attachment to success. Commit, instead, to a path of constant improvement.

Conclusion

The key message in this book:

An ego is not something a person develops on purpose; it is a part of everyone’s personality that develops naturally, especially in conjunction with success. An unchecked ego can end up being detrimental to your success, and you should take careful steps to ensure that it doesn’t get out of control.

About the author

Ryan Holiday is one of the world’s bestselling living philosophers. His books, including The Obstacle Is the Way, Ego Is the Enemy, The Daily Stoic, and the #1 New York Times bestseller Stillness Is the Key, appear in more than forty languages and have sold more than five million copies. He lives outside Austin with his wife and two boys…and a small herd of cows and donkeys and goats. His bookstore, The Painted Porch, sits on historic Main Street in Bastrop, Texas.

Ryan Holiday is the former director of marketing at American Apparel and a best-selling author. He wrote The Obstacle Is The Way, Growth Hacker Marketing, and Trust Me, I’m Lying and co-wrote The Daily Stoic with Stephen Hanselman.

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Genres

Philosophy, Self Help, Psychology, Personal Development, Business Culture, Leadership, Productivity, History, Characteristics, Qualities, Self-Improvement, Ethics and Moral Philosophy, Theoretical, Personality and Identity Psychology, Psychoanalytical Psychology, Success, Motivation and Self-Esteem

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I. Aspire
Talk, talk, talk
To be or to do?
Become a student
Don’t be passionate
Follow the canvas strategy
Restrain yourself
Get out of your own head
The danger of early pride
Work, work, work
For everything that comes next, ego is the enemy…

Part II. Success
Always stay a student
Don’t tell yourself a story
What’s important to you?
Entitlement, control, and paranoia
Managing yourself
Beware the disease of me
Meditate on the immensity
Maintain your sobriety
For what often comes next, ego is the enemy…

Part III. Failure
Alive time or dead time?
The effort is enough
Fight club moments
Draw the line
Maintain your own scorecard
Always love
For everything that comes next, ego is the enemy…

Overview

The instant Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and international bestseller

“While the history books are filled with tales of obsessive visionary geniuses who remade the world in their image with sheer, almost irrational force, I’ve found that history is also made by individuals who fought their egos at every turn, who eschewed the spotlight, and who put their higher goals above their desire for recognition.” —from the prologue

Many of us insist the main impediment to a full, successful life is the outside world. In fact, the most’common’enemy lies within: our ego. Early in our careers, it impedes learning and the cultivation of talent. With success, it can blind us to our faults and sow future problems. In failure, it magnifies each blow and makes recovery more difficult. At every stage, ego holds us back.

Ego Is the Enemy draws on a vast array of stories and examples, from literature to philosophy to his­tory. We meet fascinating figures such as George Marshall, Jackie Robinson, Katharine Graham, Bill Belichick, and Eleanor Roosevelt, who all reached the highest levels of power and success by con­quering their own egos. Their strategies and tactics can be ours as well.

In an era that glorifies social media, reality TV, and other forms of shameless self-promotion, the battle against ego must be fought on many fronts. Armed with the lessons in this book, as Holiday writes, “you will be less invested in the story you tell about your own specialness, and as a result, you will be liberated to accomplish the world-changing work you’ve set out to achieve.”

Review/Endorsements/Praise/Award

“Ryan Holiday is one of his generation’s finest thinkers, and this book is his best yet.” —Steven Pressfield, author of the New York Times bestseller The War of Art

“Whether you’re starting out or starting over, you’ll find something to steal here.” —Austin Kleon, author of the New York Times bestseller Steal Like An Artist

“This is a book I want every athlete, aspiring leader, entrepreneur, thinker and doer to read. Ryan Holiday is one of the most promising young writers of his generation.” —George Raveling, Hall of Fame Basketball coach, Nike’s Director of International Basketball

“I see the toxic vanity of ego at play every day and it never ceases to amaze me how often it wrecks promising creative endeavors. Read this book before it wrecks you or the projects and people you love. Consider it as urgently as you do a proper workout regimen and eating right. Ryan’s insights are priceless.” —Marc Ecko, founder of Ecko Unltd and Complex

“I don’t have many rules in life, but one I never break is: If Ryan Holiday writes a book, I read it as soon as I can get my hands on it.” —Brian Koppelman, screenwriter and director, Rounders, Ocean’s Thirteen and Billions

“In his new book Ryan Holiday attacks the greatest obstacle to mastery and true success in life—our insatiable ego. In an inspiring yet practical way, he teaches us how to manage and tame this beast within us so that we can focus on what really matters—producing the best work possible.” —Robert Greene, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Mastery

“We’re often told that to achieve success, we need confidence. With refreshing candor, Ryan Holiday challenges that assumption, highlighting how we can earn confidence by pursuing something bigger than our own success.” —Adam Grant, author of the New York Times bestsellers Originals and Give and Take

“Once again Ryan Holiday has laid down the gauntlet for readers willing to challenge themselves with the tough questions of our time. Every reader will find truths that are pertinent to each of our lives. Ego can be the enemy if we are unarmed with the cautionary insights of history, scripture, and philosophy. As was said to St. Augustine more than a thousand years ago, ‘pick it up and read’; for to not do so is to allow the enemy to bring despair.” —Dr. Drew Pinsky, host of HLN’s “Dr. Drew On Call” and “Love Line”

“Ryan Holiday reminds us that the real success is in the journey and learning process.” —Lori Lindsey, former U.S. Women’s National Team soccer player

“I would like to rip out every page and use them as wallpaper so I could be reminded constantly of the humility and work it takes to truly succeed. In the margins of my copy, I have scrawled the same message over and over—’pre-Gold.’ Reading this inspiring book brought back me back to the humility and work ethic it took to win the Olympics.” —Chandra Crawford, Olympic Gold Medalist

“What a valuable book for those in positions of authority! It has made me a better judge.” —The Honorable Frederic Block, United States District Judge and author of Disrobed

“It’s rare that I finish a book then immediately reread it, this time with a yellow marker in hand…I can’t recommend this book highly enough.” —Kevin Rose, entrepreneur and technology investor

“In an age when self-promotion and celebrity are glorified to the hilt and ‘hero’ gets overused, Ryan Holiday’s book is a reminder that the biggest impediment to achievement is often ourselves. Holiday retells stories of the famous and not so famous that will both inspire you and stop you in your tracks. This is a book to savor by reading it in increments so the power of the examples sinks in, leaving time for healthy reflection. If the rat race of modern life has you feeling burned out, Ego is the Enemy just might help you view philosophy as anything but a relic of the ancient Greeks.” —Edith Chapin, executive editor at NPR News

“Removing the ego is a daily struggle but it feels a little easier after reading this.” –Martellus Bennett, NFL Tight End, Super Bowl Champion

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It’s wrecked the career of promising young geniuses.

It’s evaporated great fortunes and run companies into the ground.

It’s made adversity unbearable and turned struggle into shame.

It derails ambition, turns success into poison, and makes failure the most bitter taste of all.

Its name? Ego.

Ego is the enemy—of what you want to achieve, of what you have, and what you’re struggling to overcome.

It’s an internal opponent warned against by every great philosopher, in our most lasting stories and countless works of art, in every culture, in every age.

In the pages of this book, we fight to destroy it before it destroys us.

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