This is a great self improvement book that all should read. Ego always lurks within us, and we need to fight.
Ryan Holiday has “Ego Is The Enemy” tatooed on his arm, to remind himself.
What I learnt
Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know (by Lao Tzu). Talk less.
To be or to do? Which will you be?
One day, you will come to a fork in the road. Your choice boils down to – What is your purpose?
Ego redirects us from doing to being, from earning to pretending
A martial art champion has a plus, equal and minus system. Each fighter needs someone better to learn from, someone lesser who they can teach, and someone equal so they can challenge themselves against.
When student is ready, the teacher appears.
Don’t be passionate (have purpose instead).
The canvas strategy is to help yourself, by helping others.
Adolescence is marked by a phenomenon known as imaginary audience. No one is watching you, so, get out of your own head!
Success
Ego comes into play in every stage.
Successful people seems to always collapse, from within. Can you handle success?
Don’t pretend we are living some great story. Start with a small bet, and iteratively scale your ambitious as you go.
Google didn’t start with wanting to change the world.
You cannot do this and that and everything at the same time. Life requires trade-offs, but ego does not allow it.
Human Beings are an infinitesimal of the immensity. Try to experience what the Stoics would call sympatheia – a connectedness with the cosmo. You are just a tiny dot.
Photos we see 50 years ago are in black and white. And we seem to assume the world was in black and white. We are not special.
Don’t be deceive by recognition, or the amount of money in your bank account.
Sobriety is even more important now, with so much information to be sorted through (in this interconnected world).
Failure
In life we all get stuck with dead time. It’s occurrence isn’t within our control, but it’s use, is. Choose alive time.
The effort is enough. Do your work. Do it well. Then “let go and let God”.
Or change your definition of success.
You need to draw the line and give up.
Always love. Don’t hate.
You must sweep the floor every minute of every day. Then sweep again.
