It’s an amazing book. I read it this weekend and couldn’t put it down. The concept that Ryan Holiday discussed isn’t new. If you read enough self-help, chances are that you must have come across what he has to say before. Nonetheless, his writing is so good, clear and easy to digest. I took a lot of notes and below are just a few of them.
I learned about the detrimental influence of ego before. But over time, I drifted back to its claw and let it consume myself again.
I resisted silence. I succumbed to having to speak something all the time.
I based my happiness and self-esteem on the recognition, not the work itself.
I found myself lazy and complacent
I found myself in the “imaginary audience” like Ryan described.
This book is a timely and needed wake-up call. I am under no illusion that I’ll keep my ego in check from now on. I’ll need to revisit this book again in the future for sure. “Every day we must sweep”.
The performance artist Marina Abramovic puts it directly: “If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity”
When we remove ego, we’re left with what is real. What replaces ego is humility, yes – but rock-hard humility and confidence. Whereas ego is artificial, this type of confidence can hold weight. Ego is stolen. Confidence is earned. Ego is self-anointed, its swagger is artifice. One is girding yourself, the other gaslighting. It’s the difference between potent and poisonous.
In fact, many valuable endeavors we undertake are painfully difficult, whether it’s coding a new startup or mastering a craft. But talking, talking is always easy.
We seem to think that silence is a sign of weakness. That being ignored is tantamount to death (and for the ego, this is true). So we talk, talk, talk as though our life depends on it. In actuality, silence is strength
If your purpose is something larger than you – to accomplish something, to prove something to yourself – then suddenly everything becomes both easier and more difficult. Easier in the sense that you know now what it is you need to do and what is important to you. The other “choices” wash away, as they aren’t really choices at all. They’re distractions. It’s about the doing, not the recognition.
Passion is form over function. Purpose is function, function, function. The critical work that you want to do will require your deliberation and consideration. Not passion. Not naïveté.
It’d be far better if you were intimidated by what lies ahead – humbled by its magnitude and determined to see it through regardless. Leave passion for the amateurs.
We don’t like thinking that someone is better than us. Or that we have a lot left to learn. We want to be done. We want to be ready. We’re busy and overburdened. For this reason, updating your appraisal of your talents in a downward direction is one of the most difficult things to do in life – but it is almost always a component of mastery.
As the psychology David Elkind has famously researched, adolescence is marked by a phenomenon known now as the “imaginary audience”. Even as adults, we’re susceptible to this fantasy during a harmless walk down the street. We plug in some headphones and all of a sudden there’s a soundtrack. We flip up our jacket collar and consider briefly how cool we must look. We replay the successful meeting we’re heading toward in our head. The crowds part as we pass. We’re fearless warriors, on our way to the top. That’s ego.
Living clearly and presently takes courage. Don’t live in the haze of the abstract. 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.
You will be unappreciated. You will be sabotaged. You will experience surprising failures. Your expectations will not be met. You will lose. You will fail.
How do you carry on then? How do you take pride in yourself and your work? John Wooden’s advice to his players says it: Change the definition of success.
In the end, the only way you can appreciate your progress is to stand on the edge of the hold you dug for yourself, look down inside it, and smile fondly at the bloody claw prints that marked your journey up the walls
He who will do anything to avoid failure will almost certainly do something worth of a failure. The only real failure is abandoning your principles. 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
He explained that training was like sweeping the floor. Just because we’ve done it once, doesn’t mean the floor is clean forever. Every day the dust comes back. Every day we must sweep
Minh Quang Duong 