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I appreciate the message of Holiday’s book. Holiday asserts that we must focus on the things we can control (our purpose, our effort) and let go of the things we cannot (external rewards and validation). Once again, ego (or rather, lack thereof) is critical. How we respond to failure determines whether we improve and grow or wallow in misery and resentment. Failure is seen as a natural consequence of living. Part 3 explores how ego responds to failure. “As success arrives, like it does for a team that has just won a championship, ego begins to toy with our minds and weaken the will that made us win in the first place.” The remedies are humility, sobriety, and a continuous focus on learning. Part 2 considers the impact of success on our ego. It might be slow, iterative, and (at times) boring, but that’s the reality behind many meaningful accomplishments.
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Success comes through diligent work and continuous effort. Holiday, however, admonishes the reader to see things for what they are and eschew these self-made fictions. Ego engages in the fantasy of what we want to believe. An important lesson concerns the gap between perception and reality. In Part 1, Holiday describes how ego interferes with and sabotages our aspirations. The book is structured around these three stages of life. The book explores the nature of ego and the ways we can learn to manage it in order to achieve the success and fulfillment we all desire.Įarly in the book, Holiday describes the three phases that comprise the continuous experiential cycle of life: aspiring to something, achieving success, and experiencing failure. More specifically, Holiday takes aim at the subject of ego which he defines as “an unhealthy belief in our own importance.” Under Holiday’s definition, ego encompasses negative traits such as arrogance, self-centeredness, vanity, and delusional thinking. Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday (2016) is a book about the biggest obstacle to individual success: ourselves.