Ego Is The Enemy Summary – June 2022

Author: Ryan Holiday

Short Summary
Ego is The Enemy (2016) sheds light on the inner demon ego that hampers the creativity and success of many humans. It teaches you how to form a positive self-image while staying humble instead of becoming pompous and arrogant.
ego is the enemy summary
Source: amazon.com

Detailed Summary

If you observe the people around you closely you will notice one thing. Most of them fail to improve themselves and rise above their circumstances because they do not believe in themselves or their abilities but you also notice another group of people; those who are overconfident in their abilities and skills and have a hyped overly belief in themselves. Ego is the Enemy summary highlight this group, their attitudes, and the reasons why such people can never improve their personality and the quality of their lives. To improve the quality of your life you need to be humble and constantly work towards your goals instead of thinking that good things will just fall right in your lap.

Ego Is the Enemy Summary Key Points

Ego is your Perfect Enemy

It is in our nature as humans to find an outside factor to blame for our failures. Let us be real. It is easier for me as a student to say: ‘I got a D on a test because the teacher did not provide enough time for the preparation’ than to accept my contribution and say: ‘I failed because I was too confident that I will be able to cover the material for the test in a single day and did not prepare beforehand.’

This is how the ego works. It does not affect or influence you directly. To yourself, you might be humble and just positively confident but in fact, ego works behind the curtains of your personality. It enables a false sense of identity in yourself and you become too self-involved to even realize that it exists. What does it do? It makes you believe that you are too talented to work hard, too good to take that minor job, too perfect to practice at that sport. It makes you forget that talent without hard and smart work would not take you much far. Positive confidence in yourself, on the other hand, comes from your hard work. When you do the work, practice, and stay hopeful in your abilities is what you call real confidence and not ego.

Talk less, Do more

All of the egoistic beliefs that we form about ourselves come from talking excessively and mindlessly. ‘I’m too good, I’m too perfect’ etc etc. So, Ryan Holiday’s advice to his reader is: talk less and do more. Buckle up and put in the hard work that is required for your passions to come too. Sure you want to be a successful author of a high fantasy series. Yes, you have the talent but you will not be able to write that series if you do not put in the hard work, effort, and time. A series is built on several books, books are built on several chapters, chapters are built on passages, passages on sentences, and sentences are formed from words. So stop talking, sit, form a concrete plan, and start writing. Make it your habit to write daily. You are a writer because you write not because you write for a month and forget about writing the next. Enjoy the process without waiting for the result so that you are happier and satisfied during the journey of transforming your goals into reality too.

Cultivate the Mentality of a Learner

When does Ego speak the loudest? When you have earned that title, received an honor, or have landed your dream job. Sometimes you will become successful at the cost of your work and sometimes you will be lucky and blessed to receive something bigger. Either way as humans it becomes harder to stay humble when you have received something you deem important from a perfect job, a good spouse, or a new car to titles and honors. If you have the mentality of a student you will look at all of these accomplishments as accomplishments that are just present while you are on your journey to become a better person. If you do not have this mentality you may stop working, feel too arrogant to put in the necessary effort and feel as if you ‘deserve’ whatever next there is. This mentality can hamper your creativity and your success. So, celebrate when you are rewarded but do not let the success of anything make you well overwhelmed and overpowered.

Ego Is the Enemy Quotes

“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.” –Ryan Holiday

“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.” –Ryan Holiday

Ego Is the Enemy Summary Review

Ego is the Enemy Summary provides you will a greater outlook on success. It will teach you to not let self-pride get in the way of your personality development.

You will learn to be humble while working towards your journey instead of having your head in the sky. Ego is blinding and it works in sinister ways to make you believe you deserve everything without effort. In Ego Is the Enemy Summary you will find excellent points on identifying and fighting your worst inner enemy.

To Whom I Would Recommend Ego Is the Enemy

  • To people who want to gain a sense of confidence without becoming egoistic.
  • To the writers and artists who deem it hard to put in the necessary work every day.
  • And to everyone who thinks they have reached the maximum point of self-development and cannot improve their personalities any further.

Link: https://amzn.to/3JjSHyj