philosophy

Book Summary of Ego Is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday

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According to author Ryan Holiday, ego is more than confidence; it’s a feeling of superiority that distorts our perception of others. This can lead to overestimating our abilities and underestimating challenges, leading to failure and negative traits like addiction and depression.

Even small amounts of ego can hinder success. Holiday identifies three ways ego can lead to failure: before success, during success, and after success. These will be explored in the following sections.

Attaining Success

Holiday believes that ego can hinder success by distorting your thoughts and preventing you from achieving your goals. To overcome this, he suggests stopping self-talk and self-centred thinking to control the influence of ego.

Stop Talking About Yourself

Holiday observes that ego often drives people to self-promote, particularly on social media, by posting their thoughts, activities, and interactions. However, he warns that this type of talk can hinder success by replacing action with mere words. Holiday identifies self-promoting talk as a hindrance to success because:

Holiday argues that self-promoting talk can hinder success by monopolizing time that should be spent working towards goals, sapping psychological energy by providing a false sense of accomplishment, and preventing necessary periods of silence for productive reflection. Research supports these claims, showing that visualization of positive outcomes can decrease enthusiasm and that meditation can improve focus by allowing for silence and freedom from distractions.

Stop Thinking About Yourself

Holiday advises against self-centered thinking as well, as egotistical thoughts can lead to self-aggrandizing ideas that hinder success. He outlines three ways that such thoughts can paralyze you: shifting focus from tasks to “greatness,” preventing action out of fear of imperfection, and creating a barrier between you and reality by ignoring facts or imagining threats.

Aim to Do Something, Rather Than Be Someone

Holiday warns that ego can hinder achievement when it drives us to prioritize recognition over accomplishment. We face a choice between being somebody (earning recognition for doing a job as expected) or doing something (accomplishing things that elevate our profession or the world).

Pursuing recognition can lead to compromising our values and betraying friends to obtain markers of success like promotions. Pursuing accomplishment may not bring superficial markers of success, but it allows us to positively impact others by contributing ideas to the world.

Become a Lifelong Student

Holiday warns that ego can hinder your progress by making you believe that you have nothing left to learn and don’t need improvement. However, the need to learn never ends, and even experts can still learn to improve.

To continue your growth as a lifelong student, Holiday suggests seeking feedback, taking on new challenges, learning from successful people in your industry, utilizing training courses and books, and becoming a mentor to someone less experienced.

Control Your Passion

Holiday challenges the notion that passion is the key to success, pointing out that it can actually hinder progress. While caring about your project is important, unchecked enthusiasm can blind you to potential problems and cause you to ignore objections and jump ahead too quickly.

Passion often masks weaknesses in a project, which can lead to failure when reality sets in. Instead of relying solely on passion, Holiday suggests being realistic and strategic in pursuing your goals.

Keep Your Head Down

Holiday suggests three things to overcome the urges of the ego:

  • Be a helper: Take humble positions that will help you learn about your business from different perspectives.
  • Keep your temper: Stay in control of your emotions and act professionally, even when mistreated.
  • Do the work: Work hard to put your ideas into practice and avoid getting caught up in grand ideas or self-promotion.

Maintaining Success

Holiday offers advice on how to handle success and the challenges that come with it. One of the main challenges is navigating your ego, which can cause you to behave poorly and ultimately lose the success you’ve achieved.

To prevent this, Holiday recommends staying a lifelong student, keeping your priorities in focus, and avoiding letting your success destroy itself. Don’t become complacent and always be open to new lessons, ask yourself if new opportunities will advance your ultimate goal, and beware of feelings of entitlement and the need to control others.

Recovering From Failure

After exploring how ego can hinder success, let’s see how it can also lead you astray in times of defeat. Failure is inevitable, but how you react to it will determine your future success. Ego is especially dangerous during this stage because it can make it difficult to react rationally and can make failure permanent.

However, with the proper attitude, you can turn failure into eventual success. Holiday suggests turning “dead time” into “alive time” by using non-productive periods to prepare for your next step, letting your “low moment” transform you by honestly assessing what went wrong, redefining success to focus on efforts rather than outcomes, and cutting your losses instead of falling into the “sunk cost fallacy”.

Resist Feeling Hatred

Holiday warns that blaming and anger are ways that ego can hinder recovery from failure. When we fail, our ego wants to blame someone else, but this only prolongs our suffering. Hatred accomplishes the opposite of what we hope – it exposes our bad side and makes people lose sympathy. Love, on the other hand, is transformational.

Even if we feel it’s undeserved, loving someone who has wronged us allows us to gain perspective and understand the forces at play. This way, we avoid placing blame and can emerge from failure as a stronger person.

Book Summary of 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson

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Humans crave order and meaning to cope with the uncertain world. Religion served this purpose throughout history, but secularism has created a void that nihilism and empty ideologies fill. Jordan Peterson argues that there is genuine meaning and good in existence.

Real evil exists, and good opposes it by preventing harm. Therefore, living a life that produces good creates meaning and makes your existence significant. Your actions, health, and relationships matter.

Rule 1: Improve your posture for increased respect from others.

Your brain has a monitoring system that gauges your place in society based on how you perceive others and how they treat you. Positive treatment elevates your status, while negative treatment lowers it.

Slouching signals defeat and low status, leading to poor treatment and reinforcing your low status. Improving your posture can start a positive cycle by getting others to treat you better and making you feel better, resulting in a higher status.

Rule 2: Treat yourself as you would treat others.

People may take better care of their pets than themselves. Similarly, self-sabotage occurs when you neglect your health or break promises to yourself.

According to Peterson, self-loathing leads to this behavior, as you may believe you’re not worth helping. Instead, you must acknowledge your important role in the world and prioritize self-care. As Nietzsche said, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”

Rule 3: Build a supportive social circle.

Surround yourself with supportive people who genuinely want you to succeed. By pushing each other to greater heights, everyone’s life improves.

Avoid cynical individuals who drag you down and those who refuse to take responsibility for their actions. Don’t waste time on people who don’t want to improve as they can’t be helped.

Rule 4: Set your own goals and measure yourself against them, not against others.

Mass media makes it easy to compare yourself to the best in every field and feel inferior. However, modern society is complex, and everyone has different goals, making comparisons pointless. Instead, identify your goals and work towards achievable daily actions.

If something is beyond your control, focus on something else. End each day a little better than it started. By doing this, you will stop obsessing over other people’s success and focus on your own path.

Rule 5: As parents – Teach your children to follow societal rules.

As children test boundaries, it’s a parent’s role to teach them what is acceptable in society. Without proper feedback, children may learn incorrect behaviors, leading to poor adjustment and rejection by society.

Setting rules with minimal force is crucial to prevent this. Remember, society will punish them less mercifully than you will.

Rule 6: Take responsibility for solving problems before blaming external factors.

Blaming others for misfortunes is easy, but before doing so, ask yourself if you’ve taken advantage of every opportunity. Stop any wrong actions and speaking cowardly things. Speak and do only those things you can be proud of.

Rule 7: Pursue what’s meaningful to you, and find purpose in life.

Doing good gives your life purpose and overcomes feelings of emptiness. It satisfies your desires for long-term success and makes your life valuable.

Consider, what can you do to make the world a little better? Take notice and repair what you can. Reflect on your true self and work towards becoming who you’re meant to be.

Rule 8: Be true to yourself. Don’t lie to others or to yourself.

Don’t lie to others or yourself, it goes against your beliefs and creates inner turmoil. Avoid lying about your job, relationships, abilities, bad habits, or future.

Define your personal truth and act accordingly, this reduces anxiety and gives you a direction. Always act in ways that align with your internal voice. A lie can ruin all the truth it touches.

Rule 9: Listen attentively to others, learn from them, and earn their trust.

People verbalize their memories and emotions to think clearly and solve problems. As a listener, you can help by serving as a voice of reason or simply by being present.

Summarizing the speaker’s message is an effective listening technique that forces you to genuinely understand and avoid misinterpreting their words. Assume that the speaker has reached thoughtful conclusions based on their own experiences.

Rule 10: Define your problem clearly for an easier solution.

Anxiety stems from the unknown; specificity turns chaos into something manageable. Treat every problem in your life with the same clarity you would a cancer diagnosis. Be precise about what is wrong and what you want.

In conflicts, specify exactly what is bothering you to prevent resentment from building up and causing harm.

Rule 11: Accept the existence of inequality.

Peterson rejects the postmodern view that gender is purely a social construct and that there are no inherent differences between males and females. Instead, he calls for recognition of natural differences and preferences between the sexes, as denying them can lead to unintended consequences.

For instance, he argues against excessive protection of young boys, as they have a natural desire for risk-taking and competitiveness that should be allowed to develop.

Rule 12: Find moments of joy in life’s hardships.

Life is difficult and suffering is inevitable. Instead of hating the universe for it, accept that it’s part of existence and love someone despite their limitations. Find joy in the small things that make life worth living, like watching a girl splash into a puddle, enjoying a good coffee, or petting a cat.