Notebook for
Ego Is the Enemy (Ryan Holi_ (Z-Library)
THE PAINFUL PROLOGUE
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I’m not someone who believes in epiphanies. There is no one moment that changes a person.
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my hard- earned freedom
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“EGO IS THE ENEMY” tattooed on my right forearm.
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critical questions a person can ask themselves in life: Who do I want to be? And: What path will I take?
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Engaging with and retelling these stories has been my method of learning and absorbing them.
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Stoic philosophy and indeed all the great classical thinkers.
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Instead, I have tried to arrange these pages so that you might end in the same place I did when I finished writing it: that is, you will think less of yourself. I hope you will be less invested in the story you tell about your own specialness,
INTRODUCTION
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The first principle is that you must not fool yourself— and you are the easiest person to fool.
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But for people with ambitions, talents, drives, and potential to fulfill, ego comes with the territory.
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Modern psychologists, on the other hand, use the word “egotist” to refer to someone dangerously focused on themselves and with disregard for anyone else.
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The ego we see most commonly goes by a more casual definition: an unhealthy belief in our own importance. Arrogance. Self- centered ambition.
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It’s the sense of superiority and certainty that exceeds the bounds of confidence and talent.
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It repulses advantages and opportunities. It’s a magnet for enemies and errors. It is Scylla and Charybdis.
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Especially for successful people who can’t see what ego prevents them from doing because all they can see is what they’ve already done.
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No, instead, he becomes more and more arrogant, and some people, not knowing what is underneath such an attitude, mistake his arrogance for a sense of power and self- confidence.”
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If ego is the voice that tells us we’re better than we really are, we can say ego inhibits true success by preventing a direct and honest connection to the world around us.
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The ways this separation manifests itself negatively are immense: We can’t work with other people if we’ve put up walls.
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“If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.”
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Just one thing keeps ego around— comfort. Pursuing great work— whether it is in sports or art or business— is often terrifying. Ego soothes that fear. It’s a salve to that insecurity. Replacing the rational and aware parts of our psyche with bluster and self- absorption, ego tells us what we want to hear, when we want to hear it.
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Besides the changes in technology, we’re told to believe in our uniqueness above all else. We’re told to think big, live big, to be memorable and “dare greatly.”
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We see risk- taking swagger and successful people in the media, and eager for our own successes, try to reverse engineer the right attitude, the right pose.
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Humble in our aspirations Gracious in our success Resilient in our failures
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In fact, what we see when we study these people is that they did their best work in the moments when they fought back against these impulses, disorders, and flaws. Only when free of ego and baggage can anyone perform to their utmost.
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When we remove ego, we’re left with what is real. What replaces ego is humility, yes— but rock- hard humility and confidence. Whereas ego is artificial, this type of confidence can hold weight.
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Some learn humility. Some choose ego. Some are prepared for the vicissitudes of fate, both positive and negative. Others are not. Which will you choose? Who will you be?
PART I: ASPIRE
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We build ourselves up with fantastical stories, we pretend we have it all figured out, we let our star burn bright and hot only to fizzle out, and we have no idea why. These are symptoms of ego, for which humility and reality are the cure.
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he is often equally bold who does not hesitate to pull off the mysterious veil of self- delusion,
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Like many of us, Demonicus was ambitious, which is why Isocrates wrote him, because the path of ambition can be dangerous.
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modesty, justice, and self- control;
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Unlike a Napoleon, who bursts upon the scene from nowhere and disappears in failure just as quickly, Sherman’s ascent was a slow and gradual one.
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He felt he had an honest appreciation for his own abilities and that this role best suited him.
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It was after this brief stumble— having learned from it— that Sherman truly made his mark.
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Where Sherman had once been cautious, he was now confident. But unlike so many others who possess great ambition, he earned this opinion.
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His realism allowed him to see a path through the South that others thought impossible.
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I hve no idea about the realism of the market. Don't Be quick to decide
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“Be natural and yourself and this glittering flattery will be as the passing breeze of the sea on a warm summer day.”
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those who are born with a belief in themselves and those in whom it is a slow growth dependent on actual achievement.
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their own success is a constant surprise, and its fruits the more delicious, yet to be tested cautiously with a haunting sense of doubt whether it is not all a dream.
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if your belief in yourself is not dependent on actual achievement, then what is it dependent on? The answer, too often when we are just setting out, is nothing. Ego.
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Like all of us, Sherman had to balance talent and ambition and intensity, especially when he was young.
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to be self- contained, self- motivated, and ruled by principle,
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We take it for granted that you have promise.
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“Talent is only the starting point.” The question is: Will you be able to make the most of it? Or will you be your own worst enemy? Will you snuff out the flame that is just getting going?
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accomplished great things, without ever feeling that he was in someway entitled to the honors he received.
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One might say that the ability to evaluate one’s own ability is the most important skill of all. Without it, improvement is impossible. And certainly ego makes it difficult every step of the way. It is certainly more pleasurable to focus on our talents and strengths, but where does that get us? Arrogance and self- absorption inhibit growth. So does fantasy and “vision.”
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must practice seeing yourself with a little distance, cultivating the ability to get out of your own head. Detachment is a sort of natural ego antidote.
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What is rare is not raw talent, skill, or even confidence, but humility, diligence, and self- awareness.
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For your work to have truth in it, it must come from truth. If you want to be more than a flash in the pan, you must be prepared to focus on the long term.
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We will learn that though we think big, we must act and live small in order to accomplish what we seek.
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BAsics and focus on the details of small things
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we will be action and education focused, and forgo validation and status, our ambition will not be grandiose but iterative— one foot in front of the other, learning and growing and putting in the time.
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Put in the time
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With their aggression, intensity, self- absorption, and endless self- promotion, our competitors don’t realize how they jeopardize their own efforts (to say nothing of their sanity).
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Although we share with many others a vision for greatness, we understand that our path toward it is very different from theirs.
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It’s clear what happened: his talk got out ahead of his campaign and the will to bridge the gap collapsed.
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It’s a temptation that exists for everyone— for talk and hype to replace action.
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tumbld, I tweeted, and I scrolled. This didn’t earn me any money but it felt like work. I justified my habits to myself in various ways. I was building my brand.
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In other words, she did what a lot of us do when we’re scared or overwhelmed by a project: she did everything but focus on it.
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In fact, many valuable endeavors we undertake are painfully difficult, whether it’s coding a new startup or mastering a craft. But talking, talking is always easy.
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In actuality, silence is strength— particularly early on in any journey.
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“Mere gossip anticipates real talk, and to express what is still in thought weakens action by forestalling it.”
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Most people are decent at hype and sales. So what is scarce and rare? Silence.
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Silence is the respite of the confident and the strong.
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“Never give reasons for you what think or do until you must. Maybe, after a while, a better reason will pop into your head.”
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Strategic flexibility is not the only benefit of silence while others chatter. It is also psychology. The poet Hesiod had this in mind when he said, “A man’s best treasure is a thrifty tongue.”
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Even talking aloud to ourselves while we work through difficult problems has been shown to significantly decrease insight and breakthroughs. After spending so much time thinking, explaining, and talking about a task, we start to feel that we’ve gotten closer to achieving it.
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That's So me
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Success requires a full 100 percent of our effort, and talk flitters part of that effort away before we can use it.
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particularly when we feel overwhelmed or stressed or have a lot of work to do.
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“Void,” Marlon Brando, a quiet actor if there ever was one, once said, “is terrifying to most people.”
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Which is so damaging for one reason: the greatest work and art comes from wrestling with the void, facing it instead of scrambling to make it go away.
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whether it is researching in a new field, starting a business, producing a film, securing a mentor, advancing an important cause— do you seek the respite of talk or do you face the struggle head- on?
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It’s a song, it’s a speech, it’s a book— the volume of work may be light, but what’s inside it is concentrated and impactful.
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They ignore the impulse to seek recognition before they act. They don’t talk much. Or mind the feeling that others, out there in public and enjoying the limelight, are somehow getting the better end of the deal. (They are not.) They’re too busy working to do anything else. When they do talk— it’s earned.
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Plug that hole— that one, right in the middle of your face— that can drain you of your vital life force. Watch what happens. Watch how much better you get.
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“To be or to do? Which way will you go?”
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In every case, they can quickly redirect us from doing to being. From earning to pretending. Ego aids in that deception every step of the way. It’s why Boyd wanted young people to see that if we are not careful, we can very easily find ourselves corrupted by the very occupation we wish to serve.
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How do you prevent derailment? Well, often we fall in love with an image of what success looks like.
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Appearances are deceiving. Having authority is not the same as being an authority. Having the right and being right are not the same either.
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Impressing people is utterly different from being truly impressive.
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DUTY, HONOR, COUNTRY.
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PRIDE, POWER, GREED.
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There’s a quip from the historian Will Durant, that a nation is born stoic and dies epicurean. That’s the sad truth Boyd was illustrating, how positive virtues turn sour.
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lot of people want to change the world, and it’s good that they do. You want to be the best at what you do. Nobody wants to just be an empty suit. But in practical terms, which of the three words Boyd wrote on the chalkboard are going to get you there? Which are you practicing now? What’s fueling you?
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What is your purpose? What are you here to do? Because purpose helps you answer the question “To be or to do?“ quite easily.
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“A man is worked upon by what he works on,”
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What you choose to do with your time and what you choose to do for money works on you. The egocentric path requires, as Boyd knew, many compromises.
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It’s about the doing, not the recognition.
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Do I want to be like everyone else or do I want to do something different?
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Obviously Like everyone else
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Although it’s never too late, the earlier you ask yourself these questions the better.
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Think about this the next time you start to feel entitled, the next time you conflate fame and the American Dream.
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In fact, Satriani explained that what separated Hammett from the others was his willingness to endure the type of instruction they wouldn’t. “He was a good student. Many of his friends and contemporaries would storm out complaining thinking I was too harsh a teacher.”
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There is a sort of ego ceiling imposed— one knows that he is not better than the “master” he apprentices under. Not even close.
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An education can’t be “hacked”; there are no shortcuts besides hacking it every single day. If you don’t, they drop you.
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We don’t like thinking that someone is better than us. Or that we have a lot left to learn. We want to be done. We want to be ready. We’re busy and overburdened. For this reason, updating your appraisal of your talents in a downward direction is one of the most difficult things to do in life— but it is almost always a component of mastery. The pretense of knowledge is our most dangerous vice, because it prevents us from getting any better. Studious self- assessment is the antidote.
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he calls plus, minus, and equal. Each fighter, to become great, he said, needs to have someone better that they can learn from, someone lesser who they can teach, and someone equal that they can challenge themselves against.
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to get real and continuous feedback about what they know and what they don’t know from every angle. It purges out the ego that puffs us up, the fear that makes us doubt ourselves, and any laziness that might make us want to coast.
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“False ideas about yourself destroy you. For me, I always stay a student. That’s what martial arts are about, and you have to use that humility as a tool. You put yourself beneath someone you trust.”
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This begins by accepting that others know more than you and that you can benefit from their knowledge, and then seeking them out and knocking down the illusions you have about yourself.
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The need for a student mind- set doesn’t stop with fighting or music. A scientist must know the core principles of science and the discoveries occurring on the cutting edge.
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To become great and to stay great, they must all know what came before, what is going on now, and what comes next. They must internalize the fundamentals of their domain and what surrounds them, without ossifying or becoming stuck in time. They must be always learning. We must all become our own teachers, tutors, and critics.
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The temptation is to think: I’ve made it. I’ve arrived. They tossed the other guy because he’s not as good as I am. They chose me because I have what it takes.
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A true student is like a sponge. Absorbing what goes on around him, filtering it, latching on to what he can hold. A student is self- critical and self- motivated, always trying to improve his understanding so that he can move on to the next topic, the next challenge. A real student is also his own teacher and his own critic. There is no room for ego there.
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It is not all that different for the rest of us. Are we not fighting for or against something? Do you think you are the only one who hopes to achieve your goal? You can’t possibly believe you’re the only one reaching for that brass ring.
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The reality is that, though they were confident, the act of being an eternal student kept these men and women humble.
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You can’t learn if you think you already know. You will not find the answers if you’re too conceited and self- assured to ask the questions. You cannot get better if you’re convinced you are the best.
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that is, it thinks we are spectacular, perfect, genius, truly innovative. It dislikes reality and prefers its own assessment.
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To become what we ultimately hope to become often takes long periods of obscurity, of sitting and wrestling with some topic or paradox. Humility is what keeps us there, concerned that we don’t know enough and that we must continue to study. Ego rushes to the end, rationalizes that patience is for losers (wrongly seeing it as a weakness), and assumes that we’re good enough to give our talents a go in the world.
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As we sit down to proof our work, as we make our first elevator pitch, prepare to open our first shop, as we stare out into the dress rehearsal audience, ego is the enemy— giving us wicked feedback, disconnected from reality. It’s defensive, precisely when we cannot afford to be defensive. It blocks us from improving by telling us that we don’t need to improve. Then we wonder why we don’t get the results we want, why others are better and why their success is more lasting.
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Our teachers in life are not only those we pay, as Hammett paid Satriani. Nor are they necessarily part of some training dojo, like it is for Shamrock. Many of the best teachers are free. They volunteer because, like you, they once were young and had the same goals you do. Many don’t even know they are teaching— they are simply exemplars, or even historical figures whose lessons survive in books and essays. But ego makes us so hardheaded and hostile to feedback that it drives them away or puts them beyond our reach.
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“When student is ready, the teacher appears.”
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She had purpose. She had direction. She wasn’t driven by passion, but by reason.
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Wooden wasn’t about rah- rah speeches or inspiration. He saw those extra emotions as a burden. Instead, his philosophy was about being in control and doing your job and never being “passion’s slave.”
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Neither of them were driven by excitement, nor were they bodies in constant motion. Instead, it took them years to become the person they became known as. It was a process of accumulation.
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our endeavors, we will face complex problems, often in situations we’ve never faced before. Opportunities are not usually deep, virgin pools that require courage and boldness to dive into, but instead are obscured, dusted over, blocked by various forms of resistance. What is really called for in these circumstances is clarity, deliberateness, and methodological determination.
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The advice: Okay, well, here’s what you’ll need to do step- by- step to accomplish it. The reality: We hear what we want to hear. We do what we feel like doing, and despite being incredibly busy and working very hard, we accomplish very little. Or worse, find ourselves in a mess we never anticipated.
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The tragic end to the Into the Wild story is the result of youthful naiveté and a lack of preparation.
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same mistakes: overinvesting, underinvesting, acting before someone is really ready, breaking things that required delicacy—
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for discipline, for mastery, for strength and purpose and perseverance.
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How can someone be busy and not accomplish anything? Well, that’s the passion paradox.
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The waste is often appalling in retrospect; the best years of our life burned out like a pair of spinning tires against the asphalt.
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What humans require in our ascent is purpose and realism. Purpose, you could say, is like passion with boundaries. Realism is detachment and perspective.
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When we are young, or when our cause is young, we feel so intensely— passion like our hormones runs strongest in youth— that it seems wrong to take it slow. This is just our impatience. This is our inability to see that burning ourselves out or blowing ourselves up isn’t going to hurry the journey along.
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Slow and steady work on it
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More than purpose, we also need realism. Where do we start? What do we do first? What do we do right now? How are we sure that what we’re doing is moving us forward? What are we benchmarking ourselves against?
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Passion is form over function. Purpose is function, function, function.
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The critical work that you want to do will require your deliberation and consideration. Not passion. Not naïveté.
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It’d be far better if you were intimidated by what lies ahead— humbled by its magnitude and determined to see it through regardless. Leave passion for the amateurs. Make it about what you feel you must do and say, not what you care about and wish to be.
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Instead of being pained by such a system, what if he’d been able to come to terms with it? What if— gasp— he could have appreciated the opportunities it offered? Nope. It seemed to eat him up inside instead.
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It’s a common attitude that transcends generations and societies. The angry, unappreciated genius is forced to do stuff she doesn’t like, for people she doesn’t respect, as she makes her way in the world. How dare they force me to grovel like this! The injustice! The waste!
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When someone gets his first job or joins a new organization, he’s often given this advice: Make other people look good and you will do well. Keep your head down, they say, and serve your boss. Naturally, this is not what the kid who was chosen over all the other kids for the position wants to hear. It’s not what a Harvard grad expects— after all, they got that degree precisely to avoid this supposed indignity.
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The better wording for the advice is this: Find canvases for other people to paint on. Be an anteambulo. Clear the path for the people above you and you will eventually create a path for yourself.
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There’s one fabulous way to work all that out of your system: attach yourself to people and organizations who are already successful and subsume your identity into theirs and move both forward simultaneously. It’s certainly more glamorous to pursue your own glory— though hardly as effective. Obeisance is the way forward.
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once even publishing in his competitor’s paper in order to undermine a third competitor— for Franklin saw the constant benefit in making other people look good and letting them take credit for your ideas.
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taught him a critical lesson in football politics: that if he wanted to give his coach feedback or question a decision, he needed to do it in private and self- effacingly so as not to offend his superior.
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You can see how easily entitlement and a sense of superiority (the trappings of ego) would have made the accomplishments of either of these men impossible.
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He certainly wouldn’t have taken his first job for free, and he wouldn’t have sat through thousands of hours of film if he cared about status.
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Greatness comes from humble beginnings; it comes from grunt work. It means you’re the least important person in the room— until you change that with results.
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Imagine if for every person you met, you thought of some way to help them, something you could do for them? And you looked at it in a way that entirely benefited them and not you.
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That’s what the canvas strategy is about— helping yourself by helping others. Making a concerted effort to trade your short- term gratification for a longer- term payoff.
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To tell yourself that every second not spent doing your work, or working on yourself, is a waste of your gift.
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The canvas strategy is there for you at any time. There is no expiration date on it either. It’s one of the few that age does not limit— on either side, young or old. You can start at any time— before you have a job, before you’re hired and while you’re doing something else, or if you’re starting something new or find yourself inside an organization
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Because if you pick up this mantle once, you’ll see what most people’s egos prevent them from appreciating: the person who clears the path ultimately controls its direction, just as the canvas shapes the painting.
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have observed that those who have accomplished the greatest results are those who “keep under the body”; are those who never grow excited or lose self- control, but are always calm, self- possessed, patient, and polite.—BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
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Our own path, whatever we aspire to, will in some ways be defined by the amount of nonsense we are willing to deal with.
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Oh, you went to college? That doesn’t mean the world is yours by right. But it was the Ivy League? Well, people are still going to treat you poorly, and they will still yell at you. You have a million dollars or a wall full of awards? That doesn’t mean anything in the new field you’re trying to tackle.
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It doesn’t matter how talented you are, how great your connections are, how much money you have. When you want to do something— something big and important and meaningful— you will be subjected to treatment ranging from indifference to outright sabotage. Count on it.
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Those who have subdued their ego understand that it doesn’t degrade you when others treat you poorly; it degrades them.
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Instead, you must do nothing. Take it. Eat it until you’re sick. Endure it. Quietly brush it off and work harder. Play the game. Ignore the noise; for the love of God, do not let it distract you. Restraint is a difficult skill but a critical one. You will often be tempted, you will probably even be overcome. No one is perfect with it, but try we must.
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It’s a sad fact of life that new talents are regularly missed, and even when recognized, often unappreciated. The reasons always vary, but it’s a part of the journey.
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Because sadly, this trait, the inability to get out of one’s head, is not restricted to fiction. Twenty- four hundred years ago, Plato spoke of the type of people who are guilty of “feasting on their own thoughts.”
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“instead of finding out how something they desire might actually come about, [they] pass that over, so as to avoid tiring deliberations about what’s possible. They assume that what they desire is available and proceed to arrange the rest, taking pleasure in thinking through everything they’ll do when they have what they want, thereby making their lazy souls even lazier.”
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Real relrelationship takes effort. Not just wishing
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Because he could never get out of his own head. He was in love with his vision of himself as the head of a grand army.
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We tend to think that ego equals confidence, which is what we need to be in charge. In fact, it can have the opposite effect.
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Out of the right speaker in your inner ear will come the endless stream of self- aggrandizement, the recitation of one’s specialness,
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Out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self- loathing,
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Anyone— particularly the ambitious— can fall prey to this narration, good and bad. It is natural for any young, ambitious person (or simply someone whose ambition is young) to get excited and swept up by their thoughts and feelings. Especially in a world that tells us to keep and promote a “personal brand.” We’re required to tell stories in order to sell our work and our talents, and after enough time, forget where the line is that separates our fictions from reality.
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Yeah it is very important that you know these things. Your resume is not the truth.
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He’s not that different from the rest of us. We’re all full of anxieties, doubts, impotence, pains, and sometimes a little tinge of crazy. We’re like teenagers in this regard.
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adolescence is marked by a phenomenon known now as the “imaginary audience.” Consider a thirteen- year- old so embarrassed that he misses a week of class, positive that the entire school is thinking and murmuring about some tiny incident that in truth hardly anyone noticed.
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teenage girl who spends three hours in front of the mirror each morning, as if she’s about to go on stage. They do this because they’re convinced that their every move is being watched with rapt attention by the rest of the world.
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Even as adults, we’re susceptible to this fantasy during a harmless walk down the street. We plug in some headphones and all of a sudden there’s a soundtrack. We flip up our jacket collar and consider briefly how cool we must look.
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It’s the opening credits montage. It’s a scene in a novel. It feels good— so much better than those feelings of doubt and fear and normalness— and so we stay stuck inside our heads instead of participating in the world around us. That’s ego, baby.
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What successful people do is curb such flights of fancy. They ignore the temptations that might make them feel important or skew their perspective.
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All of us are susceptible to these obsessions of the mind— whether we run a technology startup or are working our way up the ranks of the corporate hierarchy or have fallen madly in love. The more creative we are, the easier it is to lose the thread that guides us.
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Our imagination— in many senses an asset— is dangerous when it runs wild. We have to rein our perceptions in. Otherwise, lost in the excitement, how can we accurately predict the future or interpret events?
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How can we appreciate the present moment? How can we be creative within the realm of practicality?
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Living clearly and presently takes courage. Don’t live in the haze of the abstract, live with the tangible and real, even if— especially if— it’s uncomfortable. Be part of what’s going on around you. Feast on it, adjust for it. There’s no one to perform for. There is just work to be done and lessons to be learned, in all that is around us.
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A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.
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pride is a sin because it is a lie— it convinces people that they are better than they are, that they are better than God made them. Pride leads to arrogance and then away from humility and connection with their fellow man.
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“The first thing, Kurnos, which gods bestow on one they would annihilate, is pride.”
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Pride blunts the very instrument we need to own in order to succeed: our mind. Our ability to learn, to adapt, to be flexible, to build relationships, all of this is dulled by pride. Most dangerously, this tends to happen either early in life or in the process— when we’re flushed with beginner’s conceit. Only later do you realize that that bump on the head was the least of what was risked.
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Pride takes a minor accomplishment and makes it feel like a major one. It smiles at our cleverness and genius, as though what we’ve exhibited was merely a hint of what ought to come. From the start, it drives a wedge between the possessor and reality, subtly and not so subtly changing her perceptions of what something is and what it isn’t. It is these strong opinions, only loosely secured by fact or accomplishment, that send us careering toward delusion or worse.
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At one time or another, we all indulge this sort of gratifying label making.
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Game slaughtered by words cannot be skinned.
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Let’s call that attitude what it is: fraud. If you’re doing the work and putting in the time, you won’t need to cheat, you won’t need to overcompensate.
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“Because you have got a start,” he’d say aloud or write in his diary, “you think you are quite a merchant; look out or you will lose your head— go steady.”
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Your dsa is not as good as you think
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because their pride worked against them, and made other people hate them too.
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All of this was why Rockefeller knew he needed to rein himself in and to privately manage his ego.
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“Are you going to be a fool? Are you going to let this money puff you up?” (However small it was.) “Keep your eyes open,” he admonished himself. “Don’t lose your balance.”
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“I had a horror of the danger of arrogance. What a pitiful thing it is when a man lets a little temporary success spoil him, warp his judgment, and he forgets what he is!”
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“vain men never hear anything but praise.”
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Receive feedback, maintain hunger, and chart a proper course in life. Pride dulls these senses. Or in other cases, it tunes up other negative parts of ourselves: sensitivity, a persecution complex, the ability to make everything about us.
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You can survive some months. Go deep into things and learn
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“If you can’t swallow your pride, you can’t lead.”
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“Even the tallest mountains have animals that, when they stand on it, are higher than the mountain.”
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What we cultivate less is how to protect ourselves against the validation and gratification that will quickly come our way if we show promise. What we don’t protect ourselves against are people and things that make us feel good— or rather, too good. We must prepare for pride and kill it early— or it will kill what we aspire to. We must be on guard against that wild self- confidence and self- obsession. “The first product of self- knowledge is humility,”
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This is how we fight the ego, by really knowing ourselves.
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What am I missing right now that a more humble person might see? What am I avoiding, or running from, with my bluster, franticness, and embellishments? It is far better to ask and answer these questions now, with the stakes still low, than it will be later.
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It’s worth saying: just because you are quiet doesn’t mean that you are without pride. Privately thinking you’re better than others is still pride. It’s still dangerous. “That on which you so pride yourself will be your ruin,”
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We are still striving, and it is the strivers who should be our peers— not the proud and the accomplished.
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pride takes our self- conception and puts it at odds with the reality of our station, which is that we still have so far to go, that there is still so much to be done.
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spent a lifetime battling against his pride, because he wanted to do much and understood that pride would made it much harder.
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At the end, this isn’t about deferring pride because you don’t deserve it yet. It isn’t “Don’t boast about what hasn’t happened yet.” It is more directly “Don’t boast.” There’s nothing in it for you.
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“I can’t manage to say what I want, and yet I’m full of ideas.” Mallarmé’s response cuts to the bone. “It’s not with ideas, my dear Degas, that one makes verse. It’s with words.” Or rather, with work.
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“You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do,”
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“That germ of an idea,” she told him, “does not make a sculpture which stands up. It just sits there. So the next stage, of course, is the hard work.”
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Sure, you get it. You know that all things require work and that work might be quite difficult. But do you really understand? Do you have any idea just how much work there is going to be?
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Is it ten thousand hours or twenty thousand hours to mastery? The answer is that it doesn’t matter. There is no end zone. To think of a number is to live in a conditional future.
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Our ego wants the ideas and the fact that we aspire to do something about them to be enough. Wants the hours we spend planning and attending conferences or chatting with impressed friends to count toward the tally that success seems to require. It wants to be paid well for its time and it wants to do the fun stuff— the stuff that gets attention, credit, or glory. That’s the reality. Where we decide to put our energy decides what we’ll ultimately accomplish.
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So: Do we sit down, alone, and struggle with our work? Work that may or may not go anywhere, that may be discouraging or painful? Do we love work, making a living to do work, not the other way around? Do we love practice, the way great athletes do? Or do we chase short- term attention and validation— whether that’s indulging in the endless search for ideas or simply the distraction of talk and chatter?
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“When you are not practicing, remember, someone somewhere is practicing, and when you meet him he will win.”
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You can lie to yourself, saying that you put in the time, or pretend that you’re working, but eventually someone will show up. You’ll be tested. And quite possibly, found out.
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if you could walk into that meeting and spit brilliance off the top of your head? You walk up to the canvas, hurl your paint at it, and modern art emerges, right? That is the fantasy— rather, that is the lie.
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Every time you sit down to work, remind yourself: I am delaying gratification by doing this. I am passing the marshmallow test. I am earning what my ambition burns for. I am making an investment in myself instead of in my ego. Give yourself a little credit for this choice, but not so much, because you’ve got to get back to the task at hand: practicing, working, improving.
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Work is pushing through the pain and crappy first drafts and prototypes. It is ignoring whatever plaudits others are getting, and more importantly, ignoring whatever plaudits you may be getting. Because there is work to be done. Work doesn’t want to be good. It is made so, despite the headwind.
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is in precisely this gap that ego can seem comforting. Who wants to look at themselves and their work and find that it does not measure up?
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Cover up hard truths with sheer force of personality and drive and passion. Or, we can face our shortcomings honestly and put the time in. We can let this humble us, see clearly where we are talented and where we need to improve, and then put in the work to bridge that gap. And we can set upon positive habits that will last a lifetime.
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Yeah that I must do these 3-4 months. Prepre for interviews
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We flirt with arrogance and deceit, and in the process grossly overstate the importance of winning at all costs. Everyone is juicing, the ego says to us, you should too. There’s no way to beat them without it, we think.
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Of course, what is truly ambitious is to face life and proceed with quiet confidence in spite of the distractions.
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You have a chance to do this yourself. To play a different game, to be utterly audacious in your aims. Because what comes next is going to test you in ways that you cannot begin to understand. For ego is a wicked sister of success.
PART II: SUCCESS
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This whole para is awesome
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SUCCESS
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“That we have made a hero out of Howard Hughes,” a young Joan Didion wrote, “tells us something interesting about ourselves.”
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Without virtue and training, Aristotle observed, “it is hard to bear the results of good fortune suitably.”
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Sometimes ego is suppressed on the ascent. Sometimes an idea is so powerful or timing is so perfect (or one is born into wealth or power) that it can temporarily support or even compensate for a massive ego.
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We know that empires always fall, so we must think about why— and why they seem to always collapse from within.
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“The worst disease which can afflict business executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it’s egotism,”
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Here we are having accomplished something. After we give ourselves proper credit, ego wants us to think, I’m special. I’m better. The rules don’t apply to me.
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Without the right values, success is brief. If we wish to do more than flash, if we wish to last, then it is time to understand how to battle this new form of ego and what values and principles are required in order to beat
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We can’t keep learning if we think we already know everything.
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We must understand that we are a small part of an interconnected universe. On top of all this, we have to build an organization and a system around what we do— one that is about the work and not about us.
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Over the course of your own career, you will face the choices that he did— that all people do. Whether you built your empire from nothing or inherited it, whether your wealth is financial or merely a cultivated talent, entropy is seeking to destroy it as you read this.
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Can you handle success? Or will it be the worst thing that ever happened to you?
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Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.
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persistent cycle of pragmatic learning, experimental adaptation, and constant revision driven by his uniquely disciplined and focused will.”
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“as our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.”
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It takes a special kind of humility to grasp that you know less, even as you know and grasp more and more. It’s remembering Socrates’ wisdom lay in the fact that he knew that he knew next to nothing.
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With accomplishment comes a growing pressure to pretend that we know more than we do. To pretend we already know everything.
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That’s the worry and the risk— thinking that we’re set and secure, when in reality understanding and mastery is a fluid, continual process.
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“Humility engenders learning because it beats back the arrogance that puts blinders on. It leaves you open for truths to reveal themselves. You don’t stand in your own way.
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Do you know how you can tell when someone is truly humble? I believe there’s one simple test: because they consistently observe and listen, the humble improve. They don’t assume, ‘I know the way.’”
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It is not enough only to be a student at the beginning. It is a position that one has to assume for life. Learn from everyone and everything. From the people you beat, and the people who beat you, from the people you dislike, even from your supposed enemies.
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Too often, convinced of our own intelligence, we stay in a comfort zone that ensures that we never feel stupid (and are never challenged to learn or reconsider what we know). It obscures from view various weaknesses in our understanding, until eventually it’s too late to change course. This is where the silent toll is taken.
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That uncomfortable feeling, that defensiveness that you feel when your most deeply held assumptions are challenged— what about subjecting yourself to it deliberately?
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An amateur is defensive. The professional finds learning (and even, occasionally, being shown up) to be enjoyable; they like being challenged and humbled, and engage in education as an ongoing and endless process.
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A large part of it is because they lost the ability to learn. They stopped being students. The second this happens to you, your knowledge becomes fragile.
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it’s not enough simply to want to learn. As people progress, they must also understand how they learn and then set up processes to facilitate this continual education.
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he wasn’t focused on winning per se. Instead, he implemented what he called his “Standard of Performance.” That is: What should be done. When. How.
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These seemingly simple but exacting standards mattered more than some grand vision or power trip.
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the players take care of the details, “the score takes care of itself.” The winning would happen.
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was also humble enough to know that when victory would happen was not something he could predict.
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We want so desperately to believe that those who have great empires set out to build one. Why? So we can indulge in the pleasurable planning of ours.
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But who wants to remember all the times you doubted yourself?
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Crafting stories out of past events is a very human impulse. It’s also dangerous and untrue. Writing our own narrative leads to arrogance.
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To accept the title and the story wouldn’t be a harmless personal gratification. These narratives don’t change the past, but they do have the power to negatively impact our future.
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This is what happens when you prematurely credit yourself with powers you don’t yet have control of.
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This is what happens when you start to think about what your rapid achievements say about you and begin to slacken the effort and standards that initially fueled them.
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It’s during your moment at the top that you can afford ego the least— because the stakes are so much higher, the margins for error are so much smaller.
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The founding of a company, making money in the market, or the formation of an idea is messy. Reducing it to a narrative retroactively creates a clarity that never was and never will be there.
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explicitly warns startups against having bold, sweeping visions early on.
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“The way to do really big things seems to be to start with deceptively small things.”
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“Keep your identity small,” fits well here. Make it about the work and the principles behind it— not about a glorious vision that makes a good headline.
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A great destiny, Seneca reminds us, is great slavery.
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The same goes for any label that comes along with a career: are we suddenly a “filmmaker,” “writer,” “investor,” “entrepreneur,” or “executive” because we’ve accomplished one thing? These labels put you at odds not just with reality, but with the real strategy that made you successful in the first place.
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success in the future is just the natural next part of the story— when really it’s rooted in work, creativity, persistence, and luck.
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The same goes for us, whatever we do. Instead of pretending that we are living some great story, we must remain focused on the execution— and on executing with excellence. We must shun the false crown and continue working on what got us here.
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To know what you like is the beginning of wisdom and of old age.
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Grant had accomplished so much, but to him, it wasn’t enough. He couldn’t decide what was important— what actually mattered— to him.
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That’s how it seems to go: we’re never happy with what we have, we want what others have too. We want to have more than everyone else.
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All of us regularly say yes unthinkingly, or out of vague attraction, or out of greed or vanity. Because we can’t say no— because we might miss out on something if we did. We think “yes” will let us accomplish more, when in reality it prevents exactly what we seek.
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All of us waste precious life doing things we don’t like, to prove ourselves to people we don’t respect, and to get things we don’t want.
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Ego leads to envy and it rots the bones of people big and small. Ego undermines greatness by deluding its holder.
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It’s a cycle that goes on ad infinitum . . . while our brief time on earth— or the small window of opportunity we have here— does not.
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what if different people are running for different reasons? What if there is more than one race going on?
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certain “Gift of the Magi” irony in how badly we chase what will not be truly pleasurable. At the very least, it won’t last. If only we could all stop for a second.
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On an individual level, however, it’s absolutely critical that you know who you’re competing with and why, that you have a clear sense of the space you’re in.
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More urgently, each one of us has a unique potential and purpose; that means that we’re the only ones who can evaluate and set the terms of our lives.
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Far too often, we look at other people and make their approval the standard we feel compelled to meet, and as a result, squander our very potential and purpose.
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In other words, it’s not about beating the other guy. It’s not about having more than the others. It’s about being what you are, and being as good as possible at it, without succumbing to all the things that draw you away from
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About accomplishing the most that you’re capable of in what you choose. That’s it. No more and no less. (By the way, euthymia means “tranquillity” in English.)
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This is especially true with money. If you don’t know how much you need, the default easily becomes: more. And so without thinking, critical energy is diverted from a person’s calling and toward filling a bank account.
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Ego rejects trade- offs. Why compromise? Ego wants it all.
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The more you have and do, the harder maintaining fidelity to your purpose will be, but the more critically you will need to.
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We all occasionally find ourselves in the middle of some project or obligation and can’t understand why we’re there. It will take courage and faith to stop yourself.
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Find out why you’re after what you’re after. Ignore those who mess with your pace. Let them covet what you have, not the other way around. Because that’s independence.
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One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.
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With success, particularly power, come some of the greatest and most dangerous delusions: entitlement, control, and paranoia.
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What’s more likely, and more common, is we begin to overestimate our own power. Then we lose perspective.
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Success casts a spell over us.
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It did do thht fter placements
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It doesn’t matter if you’re a billionaire, a millionaire, or just a kid who snagged a good job early. The complete and utter sense of certainty that got you here can become a liability if you’re not careful. The demands and dream you had for a better life? The ambition that fueled your effort? These begin as earnest drives but left unchecked become hubris and entitlement. The same goes for the instinct to take charge; now you’re addicted to control. Driven to prove the doubters wrong? Welcome to the seeds of paranoia.
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You’ve got to get yourself— and your perceptions— under control.
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Ego is its own worst enemy. It hurts the ones we love too. Our families and friends suffer for it.
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A critic of Napoleon nailed it when remarking: “He despises the nation whose applause he seeks.”
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Modi
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A smart man or woman must regularly remind themselves of the limits of their power and reach.
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Entitlement assumes: This is mine. I’ve earned it. At the same time, entitlement nickels and dimes other people because it can’t conceive of valuing another person’s time as highly as its own.
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Control says, It all must be done my way— even little things, even inconsequential things. It can become paralyzing perfectionism, or a million pointless battles fought merely for the sake of exerting its say. It too exhausts people whose help we need, particularly quiet people who don’t object until we’ve pushed them to their breaking point.
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“He who indulges empty fears earns himself real fears,”
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It is not enough to have great qualities; we should also have the management of them.
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His job was to set the priorities, to think big picture, and then trust the people beneath him to do the jobs they were hired for.
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Compared to Eisenhower, he worked constantly, with very different results.
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Another executive described his management style as “chasing colored balloons”— he was constantly distracted and abandoning one project for another.
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Employees were not given enough direction, and then at other times, overwhelmed with trivial instructions.
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What ensued was chaos in which no one followed the rules, no one was accountable, and very little got done.
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Yes— in the end, we all face becoming the adult supervision we originally rebelled against.
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It was his ego and the disorganization that resulted from it that prevented the ingredients from coming together— just as it they do for so many of us.
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Days become less and less about doing and more and more about making decisions.
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It requires a certain humility to put aside some of the more enjoyable or satisfying parts of your previous job.
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It means accepting that others might be more qualified or specialized in areas in which you considered yourself competent— or at least their time is better spent on them than yours.
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It’s not always fun, but it is the job. If you don’t think big picture— because you’re too busy playing “boss man”— who will?
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Micromanagers are egotists who can’t manage others and they quickly get overloaded.
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So do the charismatic visionaries who lose interest when it’s time to execute.
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First, setting the top- level goals and priorities of the organization and your life. Then enforcing and observing them. To produce results and only results.
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If I am not for myself who will be for me? If I am only for myself, who am I?
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The problem is that victory and the passage of time have obscured the all- too- humanness of the people who were on the right side of that fight.
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For us, it’s beginning to think that we’re better, that we’re special, that our problems and experiences are so incredibly different from everyone else’s that no one could possibly understand. It’s an attitude that has sunk far better people, teams, and causes than ours. With
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It begins with his balanced relationship to rank, an obsession for most people in his line of work.
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Ego needs honors in order to be validated. Confidence, on the other hand, is able to wait and focus on the task at hand regardless of external recognition.
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Let’s make one thing clear: we never earn the right to be greedy or to pursue our interests at the expense of everyone else. To think otherwise is not only egotistical, it’s counterproductive.
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Yet this is what we regularly refuse to do; our ego precludes serving any larger mission we’re a part of. What are we going to do? Let someone get one over on us?
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“You’re becoming who you are going to be and so you might as well not be an asshole.” This is one of the most dangerous ironies of success— it can make us someone we never wanted to be in the first place.
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what separated Marshall from nearly everyone else in the military and politics is that “never did General Marshall think about himself.”
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Is that to say that managing your image isn’t important? Of course not. Early in your career, you’ll notice that you jump on every opportunity to do so. As you become more accomplished, you’ll realize that so much of it is a distraction from your work— time spent with reporters, with awards, and with marketing are time away from what you really care about.
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He had the same traits that everyone has— ego, self- interest, pride, dignity, ambition— but they were “tempered by a sense of humility and selflessness.”
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It doesn’t make you a bad person to want to be remembered. To want to make it to the top. To provide for yourself and your family. After all, that’s all part of the allure. There is a balance.
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Play for the name on the front of the jersey, he says, and they’ll remember the name on the back.
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old idea that selflessness and integrity could be weaknesses or hold someone back are laughably disproven.
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monk is a man who is separated from all and who is in harmony with all.
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A sense of belonging to something larger, of realizing that “human things are an infinitesimal point in the immensity.”
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Who am I? What am I doing? What is my role in this world? Nothing draws us away from those questions like material success— when we are always busy, stressed, put upon, distracted, reported to, relied on, apart from.
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Ego tells us that meaning comes from activity, that being the center of attention is the only way to matter.
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When we lack a connection to anything larger or bigger than us, it’s like a piece of our soul is gone. Like we’ve detached ourselves from the traditions we hail from,
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Ego blocks us from the beauty and history in the world. It stands in the way. No wonder we find success empty. No wonder we’re exhausted. No wonder it feels like we’re on a treadmill. No wonder we lose touch with the energy that once fueled us.
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“Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.”
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are small. We are also a piece of this great universe and a process.
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By removing the ego— even temporarily— we can access what’s left standing in relief. By widening our perspective, more comes into view.
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It’s sad how disconnected from the past and the future most of us really are.
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meaning that in the twenty- first century there was still a direct and daily connection to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
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As our power or talents grow, we like to think that makes us special— that we live in blessed, unprecedented times. This
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We are just like them, and always will be.
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It’s hard to be anything but humble walking alone along a beach late at night with an endless black ocean crashing loudly against the ground next to you.
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That’s what we’re after here. That’s the transcendental experience that makes our petty ego impossible.
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Feel unprotected against the elements or forces or surroundings. Remind yourself how pointless it is to rage and fight and try to one- up those around you. Go and put yourself in touch with the infinite, and end your conscious separation from the world. Reconcile yourself a bit better with the realities of life. Realize how much came before you, and how only wisps of it remain.
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Let the feeling carry you as long as you can. Then when you start to feel better or bigger than, go and do it again.
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“Fear is a bad advisor.”
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Maybe a bit of that overpoweringness is what got you where you are. But let’s ask: Is it really sustainable for the next several decades? Can you really outwork and outrun everyone forever?
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The answer is no. The ego tells us we’re invincible, that we have unlimited force that will never dissipate. But that can’t be what greatness requires— energy without end?
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Merkel is the embodiment of Aesop’s fable about the tortoise. She is slow and steady.
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Yet the rest of us want to get to the top as fast as humanly possible. We have no patience for waiting. We’re high on getting high up the ranks. Once we’ve made it, we tend to think that ego and energy is the only way to stay there. It’s not.
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He strove to escape what he called “imperialization”— the stain of absolute power that had wrecked previous emperors.
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“DO NOT BE DECEIVED BY OTHERS.” “YES SIR, YES SIR.” Today, we might add to that: “DON’T BE DECEIVED BY RECOGNITION YOU HAVE GOTTEN OR THE AMOUNT OF MONEY IN YOUR BANK ACCOUNT.”
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We have to fight to stay sober, despite the many different forces swirling around our ego.
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“power doesn’t so much corrupt; that’s too simple. It fragments, closes options, mesmerizes.” That’s what ego does.
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German writer observed in a tribute on her fiftieth birthday that unpretentiousness is Merkel’s main weapon.
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Because there is so much information to be sorted through, so much competition, so much change, without a clear head . . . all is lost.
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No more obsessing about your image; treating people beneath you or above you with contempt; needing first- class trappings and the star treatment; raging, fighting, preening, performing, lording over, condescending, and marveling at your own awesomeness or self- anointed importance.
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“It requires a strong constitution to withstand repeated attacks of prosperity.”
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There’s an old line about how if you want to live happy, live hidden. It’s true. The problem is, that means the rest of us are deprived of really good examples. We’re lucky to see someone like Merkel in the public eye, because she is the representative of a very large, silent majority.
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Live hidden
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Most successful people are people you’ve never heard of. They want it that way. It keeps them sober. It helps them do their jobs.
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What you found is that you must manage yourself in order to maintain your success.
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Aristotle’s “golden mean”— that is, the middle ground.
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Where the line— this golden mean— is can be difficult to tell, but without finding it, we risk dangerous extremes.
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We can use the golden mean to navigate our ego and our desire to achieve.
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behind every goal is the drive to be happy and fulfilled— but when egotism takes hold, we lose track of our goal and end up somewhere we never intended.
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“If you had ever swapped places in life with me, I would be willing to bet that you would have demanded to swap back before the passage of the first week.”
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We do not have to follow in those footsteps. We know what decisions we must make to avoid that ignominious, even pathetic end: protecting our sobriety, eschewing greed and paranoia, staying humble, retaining our sense of purpose, connecting to the larger world around us.
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In life, taxes go up the more you make, and the more obligations society foists on you.
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The crowd roots for the underdog, and roots against the winners.
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Instead of letting power make us delusional and instead of taking what we have for granted, we’d be better to spend our time preparing for the shifts of fate that inevitably occur in life. That is, adversity, difficulty, failure.
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Reversals and regressions are as much a part of the cycle of life as anything else. But we can manage that
PART III: FAILURE
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The way through, the way to rise again, requires a reorientation and increased self- awareness. We don’t need pity— our own or anyone else’s— we need purpose, poise, and patience.
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It is because mankind are disposed to sympathize more entirely with our joy than with our sorrow, that we make parade of our riches, and conceal our poverty.
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That’s the point. Failure and adversity are relative and unique to each of us. Almost without exception, this is what life does: it takes our plans and dashes them to pieces. Sometimes once, sometimes lots of times.
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If success is ego intoxication, then failure can be a devastating ego blow— turning slips into falls and little troubles into great unravelings. If ego is often just a nasty side effect of great success, it can be fatal during failure.
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He will face a battle he knows not, he will ride a road he knows not.
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That’s a list of problems exhausting to read about let alone live through. Yet because of Graham’s perseverance, it shook out better than anyone could have possibly predicted.
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It turns out that the long hard slog she endured, the mistakes she made, the repeated failures, crises, and attacks were all leading somewhere.
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She could have taken the easy way a hundred times, but did not.
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“Almost always, your road to victory goes through a place called ‘failure.’”
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She’s an example of how you can do most everything right and still find yourself in deep shit.
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The reality is that while yes, often people set themselves up to crash, good people fail (or other people fail them) all the time too.
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Ego loves this notion, the idea that something is “fair” or not.
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We do that when our sense of self is fragile and dependent on life going our way all the time.
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You could say that failure always arrives uninvited, but through our ego, far too many of us allow it to stick around.
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What about you? Will your ego betray you when things get difficult? Or can you proceed without it? When we face difficulty, particularly public difficulty (doubters, scandals, losses), our friend the ego will show its true colors.
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All the changes, all the work that went into that first year, and to end up in the exact same spot as the incompetent coach who preceded you? That’s how most of us would think. And then we’d probably start blaming other people.
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he “had to look for evidence elsewhere” that it was turning around. For him, it was in how the games were being played, the good decisions and the changes that were being made inside the organization.
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At rock bottom those victories must have felt like a long way off, which is why you have to be able to see past and through.
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the great failing is “to see yourself as more than you are and to value yourself at less than your true worth.”
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What both Graham and Walsh were doing was adhering to a set of internal metrics that allowed them to evaluate and gauge their progress while everyone on the outside was too distracted by supposed signs of failure or weakness. This is what guides us through difficulty.
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We know that everyone experiences failure and adversity, that we’re all subject to the rules of gravity and averages. What does that mean? It means we’ll face them too.
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Humble and strong people don’t have the same trouble with these troubles that egotists do. There are fewer complaints and far less self- immolation. Instead, there’s stoic— even cheerful— resilience. Pity isn’t necessary.
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Their identity isn’t threatened. They can get by without constant validation.
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This is what we’re aspiring to— much more than mere success. What matters is that we can respond to what life throws at us.
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(Live without wasted time.)
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According to Greene, there are two types of time in our lives: dead time, when people are passive and waiting, and alive time, when people are learning and acting and utilizing every second. Every moment of failure, every moment or situation that we did not deliberately choose or control, presents this choice: Alive time. Dead time.
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All these words he’d never known existed before were transferred to his brain.
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Later, a reporter asked Malcolm, “What’s your alma mater?” His one word answer: “Books.”
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He reflected that months passed without his even thinking about being detained against his will.
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They also aren’t aware of how common this is in history, how many figures took seemingly terrible situations— a prison sentence, an exile, a bear market or depression, military conscription, even being sent to a concentration camp— and through their attitude and approach, turned those circumstances into fuel for their unique greatness.
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Not that these opportunities always come in such serious situations.
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Yes, it would feel much better in the moment to be angry, to be aggrieved, to be depressed or heartbroken. When injustice or the capriciousness of fate are inflicted on someone, the normal reaction is to yell, to fight back, to resist. You know the feeling: I don’t want this. I want ______. I want it my way. This is shortsighted.
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Dead time is revived when we use it as an opportunity to do what we’ve long needed to do.
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As they say, this moment is not your life. But it is a moment in your life. How will you use it?
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It comes in many forms. Idly dreaming about the future. Plotting our revenge. Finding refuge in distraction. Refusing to consider that our choices are a reflection of our character. We’d rather do basically anything else.
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But what if we said: This is an opportunity for me. I am using it for my purposes. I will not let this be dead time for me.
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In life, we all get stuck with dead time. Its occurrence isn’t in our control. Its use, on the other hand, is.
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“Cast down your bucket where you are.” Make use of what’s around you. Don’t let stubbornness make a bad situation worse.
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What matters to an active man is to do the right thing; whether the right thing comes to pass should not bother him.
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In life, there will be times when we do everything right, perhaps even perfectly. Yet the results will somehow be negative: failure, disrespect, jealousy, or even a resounding yawn from the world.
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Depending on what motivates us, this response can be crushing. If ego holds sway, we’ll accept nothing less than full appreciation.
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doing his duty faithfully was all that mattered. Any adversity could be endured and any rewards were considered extra.
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Will we work hard for something that can be taken away from us? Will we invest time and energy even if an outcome is not guaranteed? With the right motives we’re willing to proceed. With ego, we’re not.
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It’s far better when doing good work is sufficient. In other words, the less attached we are to outcomes the better. When fulfilling our own standards is what fills us with pride and self- respect. When the effort— not the results, good or bad— is enough.
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“It is a sore thing to have labored along and scaled arduous hilltops, and when all is done, find humanity indifferent to your achievement.”
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Change the definition of success. “Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self- satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.”
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Do your work. Do it well. Then “let go and let God.“ That’s all there needs to be. Recognition and rewards— those are just extra. Rejection, that’s on them, not on us.
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He couldn’t, but from his painful example we can at least see how arbitrary many of the breaks in life are.
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This is why we can’t let externals determine whether something was worth it or not. It’s on us.
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Doing the work is enough.
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The notion everyone experiences jarring, perspective- altering moments is almost a cliché. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
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There are many ways to hit bottom. Almost everyone does in their own way, at some point.
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Today, we’d call that hell— and on occasion we all spend some time there.
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This unhealthy and ego- derived state hardens and becomes almost permanent. Until katabasis forces us to face it.
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The bigger the ego the harder the fall.
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“we cannot be humble except by enduring humiliations.” How much better it would be to spare ourselves these experiences, but sometimes it’s the only way the blind can be made to see.
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Pick a time in your life (or perhaps it’s a moment you’re experiencing now).
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It was in those moments— when the break exposes something unseen before— that you were forced to make eye contact with a thing called Truth. No longer could you hide or pretend.
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How do I move onward and upward? Is this the bottom, or is there more to come? Someone told me my problems, so how do I fix them? How did I let this happen? How can it never happen again?
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Always be a student. Hve meaningful connections
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From the ruin came the opportunity for great progress and improvement.
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It’s always so tempting to turn to that old friend denial (which is your ego refusing to believe that what you don’t like could be true).
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The narcissist who is rejected.
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Sometimes because we can’t face what’s been said or what’s been done, we do the unthinkable in response to the unbearable: we escalate. This is ego in its purest and most toxic form.
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We’re so afraid to lose our own esteem or, God forbid, the esteem of others, that we contemplate doing terrible things.
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“Everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed,”
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But change begins by hearing the criticism and the words of the people around you.
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In the end, the only way you can appreciate your progress is to stand on the edge of the hole you dug for yourself, look down inside it, and smile fondly at the bloody claw prints that marked your journey up the walls.
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the sunk cost fallacy.
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Ego asks: Why is this happening to me? How do I save this and prove to everyone I’m as great as they think? It’s the animal fear of even the slightest sign of weakness.
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Humble for CEOs convinced of their own genius, anyway.
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You are no genious bro. Just keep on learning. Be student and learn greats that are there online.
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Ego kills what we love. Sometimes, it comes close to killing us too.
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“If you cannot reasonably hope for a favorable extrication, do not plunge deeper. Have the courage to make a full stop.”
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You have to be able to see the bigger picture. But when ego is in control, who can?
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Most trouble is temporary . . . unless you make that not so. Recovery is not grand, it’s one step in front of the other. Unless your cure is more of the disease.
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Thinking tht you can read ppers. Tbh you can't nd that you are notsmart enough to know xgboost
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Only ego thinks embarrassment or failure are more than what they are.
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When we lose, we have a choice: Are we going to make this a lose- lose situation for ourselves and everyone involved?
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Ego says we’re the immovable object, the unstoppable force. This delusion causes the problems.
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At any given time in the circle of life, we may be aspiring, succeeding, or failing— though right now we’re failing. With wisdom, we understand that these positions are transitory, not statements about your value as a human being.
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It’s to understand that you must work yourself back to the aspirational phase. You must get back to first principles and best practices.
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The only real failure is abandoning your principles.
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I never look back, except to find out about mistakes . . . I only see danger in thinking back about things you are proud of.
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It was a reminder: You’re not as good as you think. You don’t have it all figured out. Stay focused. Do better.
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This is characteristic of how great people think. It’s not that they find failure in every success. They just hold themselves to a standard that exceeds what society might consider to be objective success. Because of that, they don’t much care what other people think; they care whether they meet their own standards. And these standards are much, much higher than everyone else’s.
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instead of celebrating or congratulating themselves, they put their heads back down and focused on how to get even better.
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Ego can’t see both sides of the issue. It can’t get better because it only sees the validation. Remember, “Vain men never hear anything but praise.”
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the inner scorecard and the external one. Your potential, the absolute best you’re capable of— that’s the metric to measure yourself against. Your standards are. Winning is not enough. People can get lucky and win. People can be assholes and win. Anyone can win. But not everyone is the best possible version of themselves.
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When you take ego out of the equation, other people’s opinions and external markers won’t matter as much.
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Think of the times that you’ve excused your own with “no one will know.” This is the moral gray area that our ego loves to exploit.
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Because it’s not about what you can get away with, it’s about what you should or shouldn’t do.
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person who can think long term doesn’t pity herself during short- term setbacks.
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Reflecting on what went well or how amazing we are doesn’t get us anywhere, except maybe to where we are right now. But we want to go further, we want more, we want to continue to improve.
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Ego blocks that, so we subsume it and smash it with continually higher standards.
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inching our way toward real improvement, with discipline rather than disposition.
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And why should we feel anger at the world? As if the world would notice!
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Thus, the paradox of hate and bitterness. It accomplishes almost exactly the opposite of what we hope it does.
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Streisand effect
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Attempting to destroy something out of hate or ego often ensures that it will be preserved and disseminated forever.
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We all have stuff that pisses us off. The more successful or powerful we are, the more there will be that we think we need to protect in terms of our legacy, image, and influence. If we’re not careful, however, we can end up wasting an incredible amount of time trying to keep the world from displeasing or disrespecting us.
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You know what is a better response to an attack or a slight or something you don’t like? Love. That’s right, love.
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For the group that rejects you.
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“hate will get you every time.”
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Okay, maybe love is too much to ask for whatever it is that you’ve had done to you. You could at the very least try to let it go. You could try to shake your head and laugh about it.
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Certainly, this is an incredibly difficult attitude to maintain. It’s far easier to hate. It’s natural to lash out.
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Take inventory for a second. What do you dislike? Whose name fills you with revulsion and rage? Now ask: Have these strong feelings really helped you accomplish anything? Take an even wider inventory. Where has hatred and rage ever really gotten anyone?
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The question we must ask for ourselves is: Are we going to be miserable just because other people are?
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we seem to have different capacities for forgiveness and understanding. And even when some people are able to carry on, they carry with them a needless load of resentment.
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This obsession with the past, with something that someone did or how things should have been, as much as it hurts, is ego embodied. Everyone else has moved on, but you can’t,
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You can’t conceive of accepting that someone could hurt you, deliberately or otherwise. So you hate.
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we don’t do much else when we’re busy getting revenge or investigating the wrongs that have supposedly been done to us. Does this get us any closer to where we want to be? No.
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Meanwhile, love is right there. Egoless, open, positive, vulnerable, peaceful, and productive.
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I don’t like work— no man does— but I like what is in the work— the chance to find yourself.
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There is no way around it: We will experience difficulty. We will feel the touch of failure.
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“People learn from their failures. Seldom do they learn anything from success.”
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“See much, study much, suffer much, that is the path to wisdom.”
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What you face right now could, should, and can be such a path. Wisdom or ignorance? Ego is the swing vote.
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Aspiration leads to success (and adversity). Success creates its own adversity (and, hopefully, new ambitions). And adversity leads to aspiration and more success. It’s an endless loop.
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Ego. It makes all the steps hard, but failure is the one it will make permanent.
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found within those experiences some benefit— even if it was simply the realization that they were not infallible and that things would not always go their way.
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Not to aspire or seek out of ego. To have success without ego. To push through failure with strength, not ego.
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It is no easy task to go head- to- head with one’s ego. To accept first that ego may be there. Then to subject it to scrutiny and criticism. Most of us can’t handle uncomfortable self- examination.
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Just because we’ve done it once, doesn’t mean the floor is clean forever. Every day the dust comes back. Every day we must sweep.
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We all experience success and failure in our own way.
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A few months later, those painful pages were dirt that nourished my yard, which I could walk with bare feet.
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Any ambitious person knows that feeling— that you must do great things, that you must get your way, and that if you don’t that you’re a worthless failure and the world is conspiring against you.
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There is so much pressure that eventually we all break under it or are broken by it.
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Yes, we all have potential within us. We all have goals and accomplishments that we know we can achieve—
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These are worthy aims.
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Ego, like any drug, might be indulged at first in a misguided attempt to get an edge or to take one off. The problem is how quickly it becomes an end unto itself.
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What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg, a novel
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Clearly I had understood Schulberg’s words intellectually, even emotionally— but I had made the wrong choices anyway. I had swept once and thought it was enough.
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any fool can learn from experience. The trick is to learn from other people’s experience.
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I set out to study ego and came crashing into my own— and to those of the people I had long since looked up to.
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we don’t “so much gain the knowledge of things by the words, as words by the experience [we have] of things.”
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In any case, I want to conclude this book with the idea that has underpinned all of what you’ve just read. That it’s admirable to want to be better businessmen or businesswomen, better athletes, better conquerors. We should want to be better informed, better off financially . . . We should want, as I’ve said a few times in this book, to do great things. I know that I do.
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But no less impressive an accomplishment: being better people, being happier people, being balanced people, being content people, being humble and selfless people. Or better yet, all of these traits together. And what is most obvious but most ignored is that perfecting the personal regularly leads to success as a professional, but rarely the other way around. Working to refine our habitual thoughts, working to clamp down on destructive impulses, these are not simply the moral requirements of any decent person. They will make us more successful; they will help us navigate the treacherous waters that ambition will require us to travel. And they are also their own reward.
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Your choices. What will you do with this information? Not just now, but going forward?
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Every day for the rest of your life you will find yourself at one of three phases: aspiration, success, failure. You will battle the ego in each of them. You will make mistakes in each of them. You must sweep the floor every minute of every day. And then sweep again.