Ego Is the Enemy
Hardcover | Paperback | Audiobook
Book Reviews aim to provide succinct, thoughtful summaries of books I have read. They contain quotes from the book, thoughts from others, and also some thoughts of my own. Typically they will be structured in the following order: author, introduction, message and purpose, remarkable chapter, and conclusion. This review will cover Ego Is the Enemy, a book that details the fight to master our greatest hindrance.
Author
Ryan Holiday
Introduction
In this book, Ryan Holiday offers practical advice on the nature and dangers of ego, drawing on a variety of inspiring examples from history, philosophy and literature to show how you can be humble in your aspirations, gracious in your success and resilient in your failures, and rely on confidence, not ego.
Message and Purpose
Ego Is the Enemy is sectioned off into three parts:
Part I: Aspire
Part II: Success
Part III: Failure
Each part has several small chapters inside that go into further detail about the theme of the part. Holiday starts off each chapter with a story from history or literature and how different people aspired, succeeded, or failed their way to whatever it is they're known for. The overall message in the book is that if you can fight to destroy ego, before it destroys you, then you can truly pursue something bigger than your own success.
Remarkable Chapter
Perhaps my favorite chapter in the book is Fight Club Moments, which falls under Part III: Failure. In this chapter, Holiday talks about how the criticism should matter to us if the critic matters to us:
"But change begins by hearing the criticism and the words of the people around you. Even if those words are mean spirited, angry, or hurtful. It means weighing them, discarding the ones that don't matter, and reflecting on the ones that do."
Later in the chapter, Holiday draws insight from a sobering reminder from legendary football coach Vince Lombardi:
"You can change, or you can deny. Vince Lombardi said this once: 'A team, like men, must be brought to its knees before it can rise again.' So yes, hitting bottom is as brutal as it sounds."
Conclusion
Whether or not you think you struggle with ego, this book will surely challenge the way you perceive it. An empowering read, Ego Is the Enemy is filled with inspiring true stories and achievable strategies on how to overcome our own worst enemy: our ego. Holiday got it right when he penned the following to close out the book: "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."