PNTV: Ego Is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday (#296)

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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today, another great book, Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday. Ego is the Enemy. No subtitle necessary. This is an awesome book. Another one of my favorites of 2016. Ryan's last book was the Obstacle Is the Way on ancient Stoic philosophy applied to modern life. That was one of my favorite books of 2015. This is one of my favorite books of 2016. I got an advanced copy. Thank you, Penguin Random House. The book is coming out very soon. Check it out. We've got a link to it below. Pre order it. I. I think you're going to love it. If you have intense ambition, you want to do great things in the world, you may notice that a little part of you, Ryan calls it our ego, which we're going to define in a moment, gets in the way sometimes. He says that ego is the enemy. We need to deal with that if we want to do our life's work and attain the mastery we're capable of and make the contribution we're capable of making. My copy of the book is literally all marked up. A handful of my favorite big ideas here in the Philosopher's note. Five big ideas we'll look at briefly here. So first let's define ego. A lot of different ways to define it. I talk about this in different contexts in the note. Ryan's definition is very straightforward. He says basically, the ego is an unhealthy belief in your own importance. Ego is the unhealthy belief in your own importance. He talks about the fact that we can look at psychoanalytic theory where we have the ego we which checks your id, your impulses and your superego, your conditioning, Right? And I make the case in the note that it's a nuanced conversation if you want to get into all the different ways we can define ego. And ironically, you need a somewhat strong ego by the psychoanalytic definition to tame the unhealthy ego that we're going to talk about today. So you need to have a strong sense of self, a strong sense of mastery, either if you want to tame the parts of you that are getting in the way from you doing what you're here to do. That's the ego defined, an unhealthy belief in your own importance. You need to have some degree, a very healthy degree of belief in your own abilities and importance in the world. But that goes too far. It gets to arrogance. It gets to all the Other qualities that are going to drive us off track. Ego defined the second big idea.

Here.

They have three phases, three parts of the book. Ryan talks about the three phases of our aspire, success and failure. He separates the book in these three different sections with little mini chapters in each of them. Aspire, success, failure. Those three phases of our lives we're constantly re entering, right? And the ego shows up in different ways in each of those phases. In the aspire phase, we often say to ourselves, okay, so if I want to attain mastery, I really want to master my craft. How long is it going to take? Is it 10,000 hours? Is it 20,000 hours? What is it? Can I do it in a thousand hours? That's your ego talking, right? Can I get. I'm good enough, I can do this fast, right? Ryan says, forget that question. The answer is it's not 10,000 hours to get to mastery. It's not 20,000 hours. It's an infinite number of hours. It's never going to end. You are going to be on the path of getting a little bit better, mastering your craft just a tiny bit more today for the rest of your life if you want to do truly great work. Now, of course, the ego comes in and says, no, no, no, I don't need to do that. I'm ready. Let's go. I can master this like that. I've read a couple books or I've done a 200 hour yoga certification. I'm now ready. You know. Well, Cal Newport tells us, be so good they can't ignore you. Adopt a craftsman mindset rather than thinking that you can do something like that. And the passion mindset of doing what you love to do and everything else will follow. We're not going to talk about it here. I talk about it in the note. One of the other chapters is on forget passion. Focus on purpose. Don't be passionate. Be purpose driven. Be humble and strive to show up and get a little bit better day in and day out. Again, you need to have a certain level of humility to be willing to show up and just do the work day in and day out. So quit asking yourself, is it 10,000 or is it 20,000 hours? It's infinite hours. And check out our episode and note on Anders Ericsson's peak in which he talks about his research on deliberate practice. And in the 10,000 hour rule, Anders Ericsson says isn't a rule. It was a convenient phrase that Malcolm Gladwell adopted. But the individuals, even that he cited, the violinists that Gladwell cited put in 10,000 hours to get to a point where they were thought they might be able to be great. It wasn't a measure of their current level of greatness. And they had to put in at least another 10,000 hours to get that. 10,000, 20,000. How about infinite? Third, big idea is related. So often in our culture we're told, hey, just fake it till you make it. Ryan tells us, how about you take a different tact? How about you make it so you don't need to fake it? And he says, think about a doctor faking it. You don't want a doctor faking. You don't want a bull rider faking it. You don't want a quarterback faking it. You want them doing the work so they make it and, and don't need to fake it. Again, the ego is going to tell us, ah, just fake it. Cut some corners, do this. We want to control that and do the work we need to do such that we actually make it and quit needing to fake it. Fourth big idea is euthymia. This is a Greek word. And Ryan cites Seneca, who says that the basic idea of euthymia is, is to identify what your path is, to figure out what you're here to do in this world. Why do you do what you do? Ryan challenges us. He says, stare at that question. Why do you do what you do? Stare at that question until you have an answer. When you come up with that answer, you're gonna have a sense of what your path is. And euthymia is the ancient ideal of staying true to your path, ignoring all the other options, ignoring everybody else who's doing things in different ways. And you may think, oh, they're ahead of me, or whatever. Stay true to your path. Ignore the distractions, ignore the comparisons. That's euthymia. Now, that word euthymia in English is translated as tranquility. When you have that clarity and that courage and that consistency to stay on your true path over a long run, you have a certain level of tranquility. You're not worried about how someone else is doing because it's their life and you're not in a race with them. You're focused on being who you are, and what you're here to do is what occupies your attention. Positive psychologists echo this wisdom. They say that the happiest people. Sonia Lyubomirsky, the How of Happiness. She makes the explicit point that happy people do not spend a lot of time comparing themselves to other people. When they think of other people, they're not thinking, oh, wow, they did this or ha, ha ha, they messed up that they're celebrating them. Wow, that person's really talented at that. Congratulations. I'm inspired by that. I'm going to go do more of what I'm here to do. We want to have that attitude, Euthymia. Clarity, courage, consistency of being on purpose leads to tranquility. It's a quality we want to cultivate. Could counterpoint to the ego. And then the fifth idea is his last. Ryan's last words in the book, he cites a friend of his who's a martial artist and a philosopher. He says, look, training is kind of like sweeping, sweeping the gym. You don't sweep the gym once and then you're done. Hey, yeah, I had a great sweeping session. I had a great training session. I listened to this or I read this book or I attended that workshop and I just got it. Boom, done again. That's your unhealthy belief in your own importance and power, your ego talking that tells you that it should be easy and, and you can do it like that. His friend said, no, no, no. Life and training and mastery is much more like sweeping the gym floor, which you need to do every day. And Ryan says the dust is always accumulating and we want to have the humility to sweep. He says, every single moment of every single day. And then again and again and again. In the note, I say, that broom that we sweep with could be called arete again. This is what the Greeks said. The Greek said, if you want happiness, show up and sweep day in and day out. If this is what you're capable of being and that's what you're doing, I don't need to sweep today. Capable, actual. And there's a gap. That's where regret and anxiety and disillusionment exists. Close that gap by living with Arete, where what you're actually doing is what you're capable of doing in that moment. It's not a once and done kind of thing, but you do it again and again and again. That's where a sense of true flourishing and joy comes in. You do that while living your true path. You're going to feel Euthymia, the tranquility that comes from that confidence. And then when you've made it, you don't need to fake it. Put in the effort. 10,000, 20,000. How about infinite number of hours of mastering yourself and your craft and deal with that unhealthy belief in your own importance. Win the battle with that enemy. That is a super quick look at this great book again. I highly recommend it. It's quick reading, super smart, inspiring, practical, grounded wisdom. Can't wait to interview Ryan about it as well. And there you go. Thank you. Ryan, what was your favorite big idea? Think about it. How does your ego get in the way of your process? What can you do to master yourself a little bit more starting today? Get on that and make it another awesome day. More soon. See you.

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Hi, this is Brian.

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