Ego is the Enemy Quotes

“Almost universally, the kind of performance we give on social media is positive. It’s more ‘Let me tell you how well things are going. Look how great I am.’ It’s rarely the truth: ‘I’m scared. I’m struggling. I don’t know.’ ”

“In this course, it is not ‘Who do I want to be in life?’ but ‘What is it that I want to accomplish in life?’ Setting aside selfish interest, it asks: What calling does it serve? What principles govern my choices? Do I want to be like everyone else or do I want to do something different?”

“Purpose is about pursuing something outside yourself as opposed to pleasuring yourself.”

“If your purpose is something larger than you- to accomplish something, to prove something to yourself- then suddenly everything becomes both easier and more difficult.”

“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.’ ”

“It’s a temptation that exists for everyone- for talk and hype to replace action.”

“It’s time to sit down and think about what’s truly important to you and then take steps to forsake the rest.”

“ ‘A man is worked upon by what he works on,’ Frederick Douglass once said. He would know. He’d been a slave, and he saw what it did to everyone involved, including the slaveholders themselves. Once a free man, he saw that the choices people made, about their careers and their lives, had the same effect. 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.”

“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.”

“The more difficult the task, the more uncertain the outcome, the more costly talk will be and the farther we run from actual accountability.”

“This is what the ego does. It crosses out what matters and replaces it with what doesn’t.”

“The world can show you the truth, but no one can force you to accept it.”

“You 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. It’s easy to be emotionally invested and infatuated with your own work. Any and every narcissist can do that. What is rare is not raw talent, skill, or even confidence, but humility, diligence, and self-awareness.”

“Ego is its own worst enemy. It hurts the ones we love too. Our families and friends suffer for it. So do our customers, fans, and clients. A critic of napoleon nailed it when remarking: ‘He [Napoleon] despises the nation whose applause he seeks.’ He couldn’t help but see the French people as pieces to be manipulated, people he had to be better than, people who, unless they were totally, unconditionally supportive of him, were against him.”

“Ego needs honours 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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Passion is seen in those who can tell you in great detail who they intend to become and what their success will be like- they might even be able to tell you specifically when they intend to achieve it or describe to you legitimate and sincere worries they have about the burdens of such accomplishments. They can tell you all the things they’re going to do, or have even begun, but they cannot show you their progress. Because there rarely is any.”

“Our ego wants the ideas and the fact that we aspire to do something about them to be enough.”

“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.”