Life lessons and key advice on how you can silence your EGO.
Many of us insist the main impediment to a full, successful life is the outside world. In fact, the most common enemy lies within: our ego. Early in our careers, it impedes learning and the cultivation of talent. With success, it can blind us to our faults and sow future problems. In failure, it magnifies each blow and makes recovery more difficult. At every stage, ego holds us back.
Ego Is the Enemy draws on a vast array of stories and examples, from literature to philosophy to history. We meet fascinating figures such as George Marshall, Jackie Robinson, Katharine Graham, Bill Belichick, and Eleanor Roosevelt, who all reached the highest levels of power and success by conquering their own egos. Their strategies and tactics can be ours as well.
In an era that glorifies social media, reality TV, and other forms of shameless self-promotion, the battle against ego must be fought on many fronts.
Armed with the lessons in this book, as Holiday writes, “you will be less invested in the story you tell about your own specialness, and as a result, you will be liberated to accomplish the world-changing work you’ve set out to achieve.”
The 3 Ways to Silence Your Ego: Ego Is The Enemy Video Summary
Productivity Game & Fight Mediocrity
Key Takeaways
Ego unhealthy belief in our own importance. Ego takes a concern of self-image and turns it into an obsession. It takes confidence and turns it into arrogance. Hall of Fame basketball coach, Pat Riley calls it the “Disease of me.”
Ego is the enemy because it sabotages our long-term goals and it distracts us from achieving master in our craft. Here are 3 ways that you can notice ego working against you:
- Aspiring ego shows up when you aspire to do something. Ego gets busy, seeking out constant approval from others around us. It’s always asking, what are people thinking about me? It prefers taking about what you are going to do rather than actually doing it.
- Succeeding when we experience noteworthy success. After achieving something great that impress people, like launching a successful business or winning a championship, our Ego leads us to believe that all future endeavors are likely to be a success. Instead of remaining focused and building upon our previous success, we have the tendency to become overconfident in our abilities and take on too much.
- Failing The third way is when we experience failure or setback. At this point, ego shows up just in time to save face and dodge responsibility. In an effort to defend our ego, we lose sight of what we worked for and a row the progress we’ve made to this point.
In all 3 phases, ego distracts you from focusing on doing the work and producing something you could be proud of. If ego is the enemy, how do we defeat it?
+,-,= Method coined by UFC fight Ken Shamrock, “For each fighter to be great, they need to have someone better they can learn from. Someone lesser they can teach and someone equal they can challenge themselves against.
1. Equal (=) the first form of ego that shows up when we’re aspiring to do something great, we need to find an equal in order to defeat it. An equal is an ambitious person or peer group that is at your current skill level. An equal can also be a competitor that pushes you to improve.
Your equal should constantly challenge your abilities and force you to grow to remain equal. When you have an equal, you have no time to obsess over public opinion because doing so would be wasting your time and you would risk falling behind.
2. Plus (+) The second form of ego that shows up whenever we succeed, needs a plus to be defeated. When ego starts generating stories four greatness, we quickly need a dose of humility in order to remain focused on our ultimate goal.
Humility comes from remembering that there is always someone better than us and always something bigger than us. Your plus could be a mentor who has achieved much much more than you have. Someone whose accomplishments make your success seem rather small.
Another way to experience a plus in your life, is to reflect on the immensity of the world around you. Go for a drive on the mountains or walking along the ocean shoreline to realize how small you really are. Reflecting on someone or something, bigger than yourself is necessary to quiet the ego and avoid getting caught up in your personal story of greatness, preventing you from taking on too much and being careless with your time and resources.
3. Minus (-) To combat the third form of ego that shows up whenever we fail, we need a minus. A minus requires that you teach what you’ve learned. Having a minus forces you to look objectively at your failures and gather lessons learned to pass down.
When you have the responsibility to teach others, you spend less time complaining and more time looking for ways to improve. To find your minus, you could start mentoring someone younger, or writing a book of lessons to pass down or daily blog.
