In this episode, we discuss the Ryan Holiday book, “The Ego Is The Enemy” and how your ego is holding you back.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
At the end of today’s podcast episode, I’m going to give you a prompt question to reflect on in your journal. The idea is to take one to five minutes to reflect on today’s lesson and write a minimum of one paragraph on how you can apply the lesson in your life. You can use an actual journal, a word document like on Google Drive, or your note-taking app like Evernote. The idea is that you’re actually thinking about how to process the information to help you improve your life.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about how the ego is the enemy. There is a really good book by Ryan Holiday called The Ego Is The Enemy and I highly recommend that you read it. The ego has caused a lot of misery and pain for society and for individuals. Emperors who had big egos back in the day were crappy people to deal with because their ego was too big and they had a lot of power to do what they wanted to do. Which typically meant that other people got screwed over.
Your ego prevents you from doing the hard work and thinks it’s okay just to talk about what is wrong and what needs to be fixed. I’m a big believer that action changes the world and there should be less talking and more doing. After reading the book, it made me respect Bill Belichick and Patriots more. In the book, Ryan Holiday writes a section called to do your job and talks about Bill Belichick’s beginnings as a coach. He first got started in the video room and would not come out of that video room until the job was done. It was boring work and no one really wanted to do it but he did. He didn’t allow his ego to get in the way. He did the job.
That is your ego tries to prevent you from doing. It wants to say you’re better than this and you shouldn’t do the work. What will other people think about you? I remember graduating from college after spending seven years in the Marines and having to take a valet job for a short time. I didn’t like the job but I did it to fill in the gap before I found something else. It just motivated me to find something else. You just have to do what you have to do to get the job done. If you want a different job, then earn that job. But if you have to do something that you fill like you shouldn’t do, then you should do it. Don’t let the feeling of being above something keep you stuck in life. For me, it was better to be a valet driver than draining money from my bank account.
Your ego can also cause you to do things that you really don’t want to do. How many people chase careers or stick with careers that they don’t really like but they enjoy the status it brings? A lot of people do. I remember working in the White House as an intern for four months and I was looking around the place and I told myself that I couldn’t work in a place like this. The hours are long, the pay sucks, it’s stressful, and occasionally you get to do something cool. Now that I’m out of the White House, I don’t care if I ever get invited back because it’s not for me. I remember sitting in meetings with folks from outside organizations and was wondering why we were having this meeting. I felt like people wanted to have a meeting in the White House just to say they had a meeting in the White House and that doesn’t sit well with me. I felt it was more ego-driven than coming from the heart. So this is another way that the ego causes harm.
The ego just wants to do less work and have more attention and stuff, which it didn’t deserve. And if everyone let their ego take over, then the world would be a much worst place. Thank god, for the most part, we have to cooperate in this world so the ego has to stay in check.
What is in important in this world is just being a person of value. How can you provide the people that you’re interacting with the most benefit so they can turn around to other people and deliver the same thing? You do this by doing purposeful work, learning how to do better every day, doing the work, and being a good person to the best of your ability. This requires a lot more work and to have higher standards, which the ego doesn’t like. The ego wants it easy but easy doesn’t last. It can give you temporary relief but something will happen that causes that relief to go into chaos. I’ll do the hard work now so that I don’t have bigger problems down the road.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, the ego is the enemy. So if you want to prevent a lot of pain down the road, learn how to keep your ego in check so you can do your job as a person. It requires more work to check in the ego in check and you might feel like a fool initially, but it will create a solid foundation for you in the future. If you let the ego take over, the foundation of your life with being shaky and more likely to crumble. I don’t want a volatile life and you shouldn’t, so don’t let the ego take over. If you want to get a link for this book, just go to the show notes at growwithjoe.me/episode220 and I’ll have a link to the book.
So in your journal, ask yourself, is there something you should do but you feel like it’s beneath you? If you do that thing, what is the worst thing that going to happen? If you do this less prestigious thing, will it give you a short cut to a greater thing down the road? You only have one life to live, might as well make sure you’re doing what you really want to do and not let your ego drive the wheel because you’ll most likely end a place that you don’t want to be in.
Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
I’m also trying to do a feedback Friday episode, so if you have a question that you would like to have my answer on the air, just e-mail me at [email protected]
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
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