Whether you want to admit it or not, it is likely that at times in your life your ego shows up. Whilst it is absolutely natural, learning to recognise and manage your ego is key for long-term success as Ryan Holiday explores in Ego Is The Enemy: The Fight to Master Our Greatest Opponent.

Keep on reading to find out why Ryan believes the ego is our greatest opponent and presents solutions to help you win the battle.

 

INTRODUCTION

Right at the beginning, Ryan discusses how the ego has a bad reputation and as a people love to deny that they have one. However, as he says “For people with ambitions, talents, drives and potential to fulfil, ego comes with the territory”. Now I have no doubt if you are reading this blog that you are ambitious, talented, driven and full of potential, which most likely means you also have an ego.

The ego has different definitions and to set the scene of the book Ryan shares that the definition he will be using is

“an unhealthy belief in our own importance. Arrogance. Self-centered ambition”

 

Once the definition has been clarified, Ryan goes on to share all of the different ways your Ego is your enemy, before outlining that the book will be split into three distinct areas: Aspire, Success and Failure.

 

PART I: ASPIRE

 Ryan opens this section by discussing how for a generation the focus has been “on building up everyone’s self-esteem”. He believes this has made people weak because people feel entitled, rather than focus on the work they need to do. Whilst Ryan isn’t totally against encouraging people to dream big he advices that “though we think big, we must act and live small in order to accomplish what we seek”.  

Ryan is a serial author, with a few being marketing books, and his passion for marketing is shown in his eye-catching chapter names, such as Don’t Be Passionate.

Ryan writes that

“Your passion may be the very thing holding you back from power or influence or accomplishment.
Because just as often we fail with – no because of – passion.”

 

Whilst I believe that this chapter was written purposefully to contradict the current focus on following your passion. I also think there is an element of truth with what he says. Ryan introduces a concept called the passion paradox and this is the idea that someone is busy but doesn’t accomplish anything. This is partly because passion blunts “our most critical cognitive functions”. Instead, he believes you should focus on your purpose, which he describes as “passion with boundaries”.

 

PART II: SUCCESS

Part 2 is about your ego when you are in the success phase of your life. Now, this is the ego that I think most of us can clearly identify and is the image of ego that pops into our minds when someone mentions the go.

Ryan starts with trying to emphasise exactly how dangerous your ego is. He writes “ego begins to toy with our minds and weaken the will that make us win in the first place” and then goes on to states that “Success is intoxicating, yet to sustain it requires sobriety”. What is clear is that you can work hard in the aspiration stage to reach success, but if you aren’t careful your ego will undo all of that hard work.

A chapter that really stood out to me was Always stay a student.  Ryan states that “With accomplishment comes a growing pressure to pretend that we know more than we do. To pretend we already know everything”. This is something I could totally resonate with and feel it is something that you see a lot in the world of work. However, I totally agree with Ryan when he says “If you’re not still learning, you’re already dying”. So it is vital that you don’t let your ego take over and be open to learning, not knowing the answer and asking for help.

 

PART III: FAILURE

The third stage where ego can appear in your life is during failure and Ryan makes the drastic point that “if ego is often just a nasty side effect of great success, it can be fatal during failure”. Whilst this might be slightly dramatic, I believe Ryan is trying to ensure that the reader understands that the impact of the ego can have on you during failure.

Ryan not only makes this drastic statement, but then shared stories of how other people have failed and their ego meant that they were never able to leave that state again. In fact, Ryan says “the bigger the ego the harder the fall”. And if you fall hard and your ego plays a major part in your life then it is even hard to admit defeat and then move back into the aspire stage.

 

FINAL THOUGHTS

Overall, I thought the concept for the book was great, but I did at times struggle with the book. The book feels very masculine and a number of concepts are repeated across the different parts. However, where I do think it provides great value is in challenging a reader to look at how the Ego turns up at different phases of your life. It is easy to think you don’t have an Ego and maybe you aren’t someone who is successful and screaming from the mountain how successful you are. But maybe you have failed and you let you Ego keep you trapped in failure for longer than you should have done. Or maybe you have achieved a certain degree of success and are working within your realms of knowledge rather than pushing yourself to keep on learning.

To summarise, if you are new to reading, don’t pick this up, but if you are an avid reader I still think it is worth a read and at 219 pages it won’t take you too long.

If you like the sound of Ego Is The Enemy you can buy a copy for yourself here.

This book was read as part of PropelHer’s Book, which is a women-only non-fiction book club. If you are an ambitious women who want to read books to support your personal growth then you can find out more about PropelHer’s Book Club at www.propelher.co.uk.