Ego Is the Enemy

Alright. We’ll start with the definition of ego Ryan uses throughout the book: “an unhealthy belief in your own importance.”

In other Notes I push back on a lot of the Eastern ideas that we need to annihilate the ego to reach some state of enlightenment—which presupposes that we can somehow transcend ourselves before fully and healthfully mastering ourselves. (We can’t.)

For example, in Joseph Campbell’s Pathways to Bliss, I highlight this wisdom: “We hear so much talk now, particularly from the Orient, about egolessness. You are trying to smash this thing which is the only thing that keeps you in play. There’s got to be somebody up there; otherwise you’re not oriented to anything. The self, that’s the great circle, the ship, the ego is the little captain on the bridge.”

Plus: “Of course, to reach the transpersonal, you have to go through the personal: you have to have both qualities there.”

And, in Nathaniel Branden’s The Art of Living Consciously, we focus on this: “We can talk about transcending a limited self-concept. We cannot talk—rationally—about transcending the self. We can talk about transcending an overrestricted concept of ego. We cannot talk—rationally—about transcending ego (not if we understand what ego really is and don’t associate it with vanity or defensiveness).”

We’ll leave the long chat about the various definitions of ego aside for the moment and focus on Ryan’s definition that, again, our ego is an unhealthy belief in our own importance.

As he says: “It’s when the notion of ourselves and the world grows so inflated that it begins to distort the reality that surrounds us. When, as the football coach Bill Walsh explained, ‘self-confidence becomes arrogance, assertiveness becomes obstinacy, and self-assurance becomes reckless abandon.’ This is the ego, as the writer Cyril Connolly warned, that ‘sucks us down like the law of gravity.’

In this way, ego is the enemy of what you want and of what you have: Of mastering your craft. Of real creative insight. Of working well with others. Of building loyalty and support. Of longevity. Of repeating and retaining your success. It repulses advantages and opportunities. It’s a magnet for enemies and errors.”

(In short, one could say that, paradoxically, it takes a very strong, healthy ego to deal with the very strong, unhealthy aspects of ego. :)

That’s from the prelude to the first section: Aspire.

Want to be more than a flash in the pan? Think big. Live and act small.

Remember that “our ambition will not be grandiose but iterative—one foot in front of the other, learning and growing and putting in the time.”

← That’s genius.

And, that’s impossible to do if we have “an unhealthy belief in your own importance.”

Why? Because we’re already so darn great that we don’t need to remain open to learning. We’ve lost any sense of humility and perspective. And that’s not a recipe for true, sustainable awesome.

Let’s play the long game and take that precious energy *out of* self-promotion and *into* mastering ourselves and our craft one step at a time.

P.S. Reminds me of Idan Ravin, who works with the world’s elite basketball stars (see Notes on The Hoops Whisperer). He tells us: “Talent and fireworks on a few random nights in December aren’t enough; succeeding in the NBA requires consistency over an extended period of time— eighty-two regular season games, six months, a daily grind.”

So, how many hours does it take to attain mastery? Is it 10,000? 20,000? Or …. ?

How about infinite? (HAH.)

There is no end zone. Welcome to the never-ending game of continual effort.

The ego doesn’t like that game. We, committed to sustainable success and flow and joy, must.

Reminds me of Robert Greene’s genius passage from his classic book Mastery (see Notes + Interview and recall that Ryan dropped out of college at 19 to apprentice with Robert!): “In our culture, we tend to denigrate practice. We want to imagine that great feats occur naturally—that they are the sign of someone’s genius or superior talent. Getting to a high level of achievement through practice seems so banal, so uninspiring. Besides, we don’t want to have to think of the 10,000 to 20,000 hours that go into such mastery. These values of ours are oddly counterproductive—they cloak from us the fact that almost everyone can reach such heights through tenacious effort, something that should encourage us all. It is time to reverse this prejudice against conscious effort and to see the powers we gain through practice and discipline as eminently inspiring and even miraculous.”

Here’s to TENACIOUS EFFORT.

That’s from a chapter appropriately called “Don’t Be Passionate.”

Don’t be passionate?! (Gasp! :0)

Correct. Don’t be passionate.

Go beyond passion to purpose.

Know what you’re here to do and why you’re committed to doing it. Recognize how hard that is going to be. Remember the fact that you don’t start the climb up Everest at a sprint. Be on purpose. Show up daily. Be a master craftsman.

P.S. This is the essence of Cal Newport’s brilliant book So Good They Can’t Ignore You (see Notes). Cal juxtaposes the passion mindset (“What’s in it for me?”) vs. the craftsman mindset (“How can I create something meaningful?”). Our society tells us that passion is enough. It’s not.

That’s from a chapter appropriately named “Work, Work, Work.”

Yes, the theme of showing up and doing the work dominates the Aspire section. If we want sustainable success, we must show up and Do. The. Work.

Are you?

(On that note: I created a new bookmark yesterday as I was reading this book. A simple index card with (Pressfield-inspired) “TURN PRO” written on it. That was my theme for 2015. It’s one of my themes for 2016 as well.

Note to self: TURNING PRO is not a flip-the-switch, done decision. It’s a moment-to-moment + daily decision. We’ll come back to this in our final Idea as well.)

Euthymia.

My new favorite word.

Euthymia = “the sense of our own path and how to stay on it without getting distracted by all the others that intersect it.”

What is YOUR path?

→ WHY DO YOU DO WHAT YOU DO?

Let’s stare at that question until we can answer it. And then make the conscious decision to cut off other paths, embrace the inherent trade-offs in life, recognize that, as Ryan advises, we can’t (!) have it all (ego hates to embrace the constraints of reality), and then quit thinking about what others are up to as we live with euthymia.

The result of that clarity and courage and consistency?

TRANQUILITY.

P.S. Remember Sonja Lyubomirsky’s scientific wisdom that happy people aren’t thinking about other people. They’re too busy living their lives to worry about what others are doing. (And, when they DO think of others, it’s simply to celebrate their awesomeness not to compare.)

Euthymia = Tranquility.

That’s from the final section on Failure.

We WILL (!), of course (!), experience failure. That’s a given. The sooner we embrace that fact the sooner we can embrace the fact that “we are not failures, we’re just experiencing failure.”

It’s the hyper uptight, taking-itself-too-seriously ego within each of us that overidentifies with both success and failure. We need to step back and see the big picture.

Part of that big picture involves having a deep sense of TRUE hope *not* a flitting and fleeting sense of false hope.

The difference? Shane Lopez, the leading researcher studying the science of hope (see Notes on Making Hope Happen), tells us that TRUE hope is the sense that your future will be better than your present while recognizing our agency in the process and the need for us to embrace multiple pathways to get there—KNOWING it’s not going to be easy.

False hope, on the other hand, thinks it’ll be easy. When the inevitable challenges arise, we fold.

James Stockdale tells us that kind of naive optimism literally kills. (See the Notes on Courage Under Fire for more on his incredible story + wisdom.)

We need to have a deep sense of trust in our ability to persevere to create a better future AND a ruthless embrace of our current reality.

How’re you doing with that?

Those are the final words of the book.

I LOVE that image of sweeping the floor.

The dust collects quickly. We must sweep the floor of our lives every minute of every day.

And then sweep it again.

The Greeks had a word for that as well: areté.

Moment to moment to moment, we have an opportunity to step into and express the best within us. Let’s do that as we optimize, actualize and win the battle with our lower selves.