Order of Man - OoM 065： Your Ego is the Enemy with Ryan Holiday

00:00:00.000 Many of us as men believe that we need to have it all figured out in order for us to be successful.

00:00:03.920 It's that old adage, fake it till you make it. And while confidence is certainly something you'll

00:00:07.520 need to gain in order to have success, the fine line between it and ego has the ability to destroy

00:00:12.740 that success. My guest today, the one and only Ryan Holiday, shares how confidence is earned

00:00:17.740 while ego isn't, the dangers and pitfalls of an inflated ego, and how to get out of your own way.

00:00:24.220 You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart

00:00:29.000 your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time. Every time. You are not

00:00:34.900 easily deterred or defeated. Rugged. Resilient. Strong. This is your life. This is who you are.

00:00:42.060 This is who you will become at the end of the day. And after all is said and done, you can call yourself

00:00:47.880 a man. Men, what's going on today? My name is Ryan Michler and I am your host and the founder of

00:00:53.220 Order of Man. I'm glad you're here with us today. And if you're new to the show, welcome. This is a

00:00:56.980 show about all things manly, from health and building wealth to being a better protector

00:01:01.500 and a leader. In other words, this is your one-stop shop to learn how to become the man

00:01:06.800 you were meant to be. Now, I've got a crazy week this week. I'm going to be participating

00:01:10.560 in the Spartan of Gogy. This is a 60-hour team-building, mentally and physically grueling

00:01:15.580 event, but I am up to the task. I am looking forward to it. And on top of taking a lot of time

00:01:20.260 to focus on that this week, I do briefly want to let you know we've got some exciting news.

00:01:24.320 It's our inaugural Order of Man Uprising, and it's now open for registration. I'm going to be

00:01:29.080 getting you more details on that later in the show. But if you're interested in some of that

00:01:32.520 right now, you can go to orderofman.com slash uprising to see what it's all about. Now, I don't

00:01:38.060 need to tell you that we've got an incredible guest lined up for you today. We always do.

00:01:41.820 But I do want to let you know that you can get all the links, the resources, the quotes,

00:01:45.380 and everything else you need for this show at orderofman.com slash 065. And make sure that

00:01:51.780 you're also participating in our Men's Closed Facebook group for a deeper conversation.

00:01:56.480 You can find that at facebook.com slash groups slash orderofman. With all that said, I want

00:02:01.020 to introduce you to our guest today, Ryan Holiday. He is a media strategist and prominent

00:02:05.040 writer on strategy and business. After dropping out of college at 19 to apprentice under Robert

00:02:10.680 Green, the author of 48 Laws of Power, he went on to advise many best-selling authors,

00:02:15.760 multi-platinum musicians. He served as the director of marketing for American Apparel for many

00:02:20.100 years where his campaigns have been used as case studies by Twitter and YouTube and Google

00:02:25.360 and have been written about in Ad Age, the New York Times, and Fast Company. His first book,

00:02:30.540 Trust Me, I'm Lying, which the Financial Times called an astonishing, disturbing book, was

00:02:34.660 a debut bestseller and is taught in colleges around the world. He's also the author of two other books

00:02:39.580 that have been instrumental in helping me achieve success in my life, The Obstacle is the Way,

00:02:43.860 and his latest, which is here to talk with us about today, Ego is the Enemy.

00:02:47.780 Ryan, what's going on, man? Thanks for joining me on the show today.

00:02:51.860 Thanks for having me. Not much. I'm excited to chat.

00:02:55.140 Yeah, I've been a longtime follower of your work, and I actually reached out to you to have

00:02:58.360 a conversation about The Obstacle is the Way, but you've got this new book coming out,

00:03:01.440 which is Ego is the Enemy, which I've had a chance to read. And I got to say, I'm excited about

00:03:05.060 the book coming out for sure.

00:03:07.160 Thank you. Yeah, no, I was honored to hear that you liked the book, and I wanted you to get this one

00:03:11.840 before anyone else. Yeah, no, I love that. So tell me why you decided to write it, because I

00:03:18.060 know you got a little personal in the book about your story and your background and how you have

00:03:21.500 had a lot of success. I'm sure some of the guys are familiar with that. And this is a new direction

00:03:26.480 for you based on the story you said in the book. Yeah, I mean, I see the books as being very related,

00:03:31.900 so I sort of talk about them somewhat interchangeably. But I saw Obstacle is the Way as

00:03:38.440 being about how we face our external obstacles. And then when I was really, when I finished the

00:03:45.320 book, and I was sort of looking at my own life, and I had a difficult year, I guess this would

00:03:49.660 have been 2014, you know, American Apparel, which I was the director of marketing, it more or less

00:03:54.380 collapsed. I watched some other mentors of mine sort of go through some very difficult times,

00:03:58.740 and I went through some myself. And, and so I was sort of thinking, like, what, what causes this?

00:04:03.900 What makes, you know, what, what is this sort of elusive thing that all the people in the obstacle

00:04:09.700 is the way all the all the stories and examples, what did they all have in common? What makes

00:04:13.280 what they do so difficult? And, and the thing I sort of zeroed in on is ego. Ego is what makes

00:04:19.580 seeing the obstacle as being the way impossible. Ego is what causes so many obstacles. So,

00:04:25.380 so the, for the next book, I wanted to focus on, on our sort of internal obstacle, our internal

00:04:31.780 opponent, which, you know, ironically, is often ourselves. So I see the, the books as sort of a

00:04:37.680 continuation. One is how you deal with what is outside you. But when, when you effectively deal

00:04:43.300 with that, then what you're left with is what is inside you. And I wanted to focus on the, the way

00:04:49.480 that we, we get in our own way. Sure. So do you think you maybe wrote these bat, these books

00:04:55.480 backwards or are they simultaneously? Like how would a guy approach this? Yeah, I, that was something I

00:05:00.600 remember I was talking to the publisher. I'm not quite sure if it's a prequel or a sequel so much

00:05:05.080 as, you know, it's, it's part of the same continuum, the same focus. You know, they both take

00:05:10.060 what is essentially stoic philosophy and apply them to modern life to say, okay, we wake up every day

00:05:18.120 with problems. Some of those are problems outside of us. Some of those are problems inside us. Well,

00:05:23.260 what can we, you know, how can we use sort of timeless wisdom and, and timeless lessons from

00:05:29.480 history to help solve some of those problems? And that's, you know, that, that wasn't just something

00:05:34.780 I was interested in. Theoretically, this is, you know, like everyone else, I wake up with problems,

00:05:40.300 right? My, I wake up and my, I've got something I've got to deal with in my business or I wake up

00:05:44.520 and I'm experiencing success in some form or another. And I have to, you know, it's, that's,

00:05:49.420 that's causing its own kind of problems. I'm, I'm struggling with, you know, my own identity and

00:05:54.580 my, my own sort of negative personality traits. And so what I do is I look to history, you know,

00:06:01.700 there's this quote from Bismarck that I learn, I use in the book where he says, any fool can learn 0.95

00:06:06.200 from experience. I prefer to learn from the experience of others. The, the, the, this book came 0.90

00:06:11.420 out of me attempting to learn from the experience of others to look at, you know, successful people

00:06:16.680 and the, the, the perils of that success and the perils of, of, you know, sort of difficulty and

00:06:23.260 adversity and say, okay, what, what can I pick up here? What universal lessons are there? And then,

00:06:29.060 you know, a book sort of comes out of attempting to share what one has learned.

00:06:34.760 And it makes a lot of sense. I mean, I, I've read a little bit, I know Marcus Aurelius,

00:06:38.280 you follow his work, obviously, you know, Aristotle, Socrates, great philosophers of the

00:06:42.700 past. And I've tried to read some of those things, meditations, for example, by Marcus

00:06:45.640 Aurelius. And sometimes that's a little bit abstract. So I really value the fact that you've

00:06:51.140 gone back, taken this information, applied it in your life, and then shared it with us in a way

00:06:54.860 that's very consumable for us. Yeah. I, I think what I'm, what I'm good at, if I'm good at anything,

00:07:01.540 it's finding the connections between somewhat unrelated things. And, and I learned that,

00:07:06.620 you know, working for Robert Greene, who, who wrote the 40 laws of power and mastery and a

00:07:11.060 number of other wonderful books, you know, I was his research assistant for a long time. And he,

00:07:15.400 he showed me that he sort of, he said, you have to be able to sort of smell these connections the

00:07:21.300 way that like a shark smells blood in the water. And so having done that for a long time for somebody

00:07:26.320 else, I started to notice, you know, little connections and things in my, in my own research

00:07:31.440 and reading. And I just sort of collected those things. And that, that came that that's, you know,

00:07:36.660 that's essentially what my work is, is expressing those connections. And I think, you know, I think

00:07:42.060 people are really busy. Not everyone likes to read. And not everyone, I think a lot of people are

00:07:47.840 turned off by the fact that reading is so often very impractical. You know, people are discussing

00:07:53.100 these things in totally theoretical terms, or they're talking about them in this sort of

00:07:57.640 condescending, you know, know it all tone or worse, they talk, they, you know, they sort of

00:08:02.940 talk about in this sort of, you know, woo woo, ridiculous feel goodery. And so I tried to say 0.83

00:08:10.280 like, look, you know, I went through this stuff, you know, what it when you watch your friend and

00:08:15.460 mentor destroy a billion dollar company, or you watch, you know, that friend's billion dollar company

00:08:20.660 get destroyed, you know, you ask yourself, hey, why could this happen? You know, how do you make

00:08:25.340 sense of this? And, and then, you know, in sort of doing that work and doing that research and

00:08:29.220 trying to find some personal perspective, I, you know, my job is then to, to sort of try to make

00:08:36.280 that as universal as, as possible. So if you're anything like me, and I assume you are in this

00:08:42.040 circumstance is I try to read a ton. I try to finish one to two books per week. Yeah. And sometimes I

00:08:48.000 think the challenge with that, especially with a lot of the guys that are following us and connecting

00:08:51.560 with me is that they don't really know how to take the words from the page and apply it to

00:08:56.860 their own life. So how have you found success doing that for you? And then even in this book,

00:09:01.700 how can we do that to apply to real life? Yeah. I mean, look, I have one fair advantage in that.

00:09:06.420 It's my job to take information and put it to some use, right? Like, sure, sure. But, but that's

00:09:12.220 something that a lot of people can replicate, right? Like one of the, one of the great, you know,

00:09:17.080 advantages of this society where anyone can publish anything, whether it's a self-published

00:09:21.200 book or a blog post or, you know, just a note on Facebook is that, you know, you can take this

00:09:26.580 knowledge that you've, you know, you read while you're laying in bed at night and you can try to

00:09:31.860 process it into some, some new thought, new original thought and put it out into the world. And,

00:09:38.660 you know, one of the, I think one of the most effective ways is to, is to teach,

00:09:41.980 is to teach, uh, you know, and so that a part of my writing is, is very selfish and that I'm trying

00:09:48.760 to, I'm just trying to make sense of everything I've personally learned. So that that's obviously

00:09:53.720 a bit of an advantage for me, but what I, I, I don't just read the information and then leave it

00:09:59.760 there. I transfer, like I take notes, like when I'm writing in books while I'm reading, I don't,

00:10:04.740 I don't think reading is a passive process. It's a very active one for me. So I'm, I'm reading very

00:10:09.620 actively, I'm taking notes, I'm writing things in the margins. And then I transfer that information

00:10:15.000 into what I call a commonplace book, which is, you know, something people have kept for now

00:10:19.520 thousands of years. I, I jot this information down and I organize it by theme. I actually use

00:10:25.100 physical note cards for, for what I call my commonplace book, but some people do it in a

00:10:29.420 journal. Some people do it in an Evernote file. Some people have a, you know, a, a, a text file on

00:10:35.240 their desktop. But I actually, I think you have to, you have to remove that information from the book

00:10:41.520 where it was born and put it into some form of your own that you can access and refer back to.

00:10:47.640 So you can, so you can actually use it. Seneca is saying, look, look, the whole point of reading

00:10:52.200 is to turn words into works. If you're not taking an active step to do something with this information,

00:10:59.140 you might as well just be, you know, watching movies or whatever.

00:11:02.460 No, I'm really glad that you said that. I actually just did a post a couple of days ago on how to

00:11:06.580 speed read. And one of the things that I mentioned in there was making annotations. Like somebody once

00:11:10.020 told me you should never write in or mark or tab your book. And then for a long time I did that.

00:11:15.340 And then I realized, no, this is my book. Like I've got to make this my own. So I use my highlighter.

00:11:19.740 I use a pencil to tab or write in the margins. I tab every page that I find interesting. And then I go

00:11:24.220 back and I reread what it is that I actually highlighted or noted. So I'm glad you said that.

00:11:28.480 Yeah. I mean, look, I, because of some of the things I write about, oftentimes I'll end up

00:11:32.540 getting really rare out of print books that are sometimes quite expensive. I'll buy some book for

00:11:38.220 $200 on Amazon and I'll write in that too. Like it's mine. I own it. And I feel like, I think some

00:11:45.260 people think that's disrespectful to the book, but I'll tell you as an author who spends, you know,

00:11:50.180 hundreds and hundreds of hours on a book, there's not a higher compliment that you can pay a writer

00:11:55.600 than to interact with or argue or even disagree with the stuff that they, that they've put down

00:12:02.020 on the page. Like the whole reason it's a book and it's printed is so you can interact with it.

00:12:07.000 And I think if you're not doing that, if you're keeping these sort of pristine, unbroken books,

00:12:12.100 just up on your shelf, you're, you're doing yourself and the author a grave disservice.

00:12:18.540 That's good to know. So I want to jump back because I want to get into this conversation of ego and I

00:12:21.960 want to jump back to something you said. Yeah. You just barely told us something that you're good

00:12:25.960 at. And to me, I hear that and you say, Hey, I'm, I'm very good at this. I hear that and think,

00:12:30.300 okay, this is a guy who's confident and who has done this in the past and knows what he's good at

00:12:35.160 and maybe also what he's not good at. But I think other people are probably going to hear that and

00:12:39.120 say, well, that's ego. Like that's egotistical. So what's the line between ego and confidence?

00:12:45.640 Yeah. Look, I think there's a very important distinction. And one of the quotes I use in,

00:12:50.360 in the book is from Frank Shamrock, who was, you know, a pioneer of mixed martial arts and a UFC

00:12:54.920 champion. And he makes that difference. He's saying, look, you know, confidence is earned and

00:13:00.080 ego is stolen. Ego is garbage. He says confidence is based on the fact that you've done the work 1.00

00:13:06.540 and that you've received real feedback based on that work. So, you know, I know I'm pretty good

00:13:13.840 at finding and making connections because that's what I've done professionally for,

00:13:19.140 you know, an author who sold millions of copies of his books. And I know that because he told me that

00:13:26.920 because I watched work that I did get, you know, integrated into those books. And I know, you know,

00:13:34.860 I'm now I'm turning 29 and I'm on my fourth book. And I know that those books are the result of

00:13:41.580 connections that I made in my reading and they wouldn't exist if I wasn't able to research and put

00:13:47.040 a thought together. No, I'm not saying that they're necessarily coherent, brilliant, amazing

00:13:52.400 thoughts, but I know I'm able to find at least enough connections to fill a couple hundred thousand,

00:13:58.540 you know, words or a couple hundred, probably close to a thousand pages. Right. So, so, you know,

00:14:04.620 and I've said this before to other people, but it's like, I run every day. So I know confidently

00:14:11.320 what I'm capable of running. Like I know I wouldn't like to, but I could get up today and probably run

00:14:17.700 10 or 12 miles and it wouldn't, it wouldn't, uh, like tax my system beyond what I'm capable of.

00:14:24.440 Cause I've done that before and I'm, I've continued the training. I don't know whether I could run an

00:14:29.780 ultra marathon. So I don't go around acting like I'm an ultra marathoner and talking trash to people

00:14:36.140 who have done that thing or have right work. So I think confidence is based on doing the work and

00:14:42.280 knowing you've done the work and having some objective feedback or measurement behind that

00:14:48.140 sense. The problem with ego is that it's not based on that. It's based on what we want to be true,

00:14:53.660 or it's based on what, you know, maybe our mothers told us was true. Um, and, and that's where you get

00:15:00.100 in real trouble. Look, sometimes you're right. You know, sometimes someone says, Hey, I'm the best

00:15:04.100 that ever was. And then they become the best that ever was. But a lot more people suffer from sort of

00:15:10.660 the opposite, right? They've got an ego that tells them they're better than they are. And then they're

00:15:15.520 either rudely awakened or they're never actually capable of achieving that thing because they've

00:15:20.920 got a totally misaligned understanding of what work is required of them. Right. And I even think

00:15:28.260 that you mentioned in the book that once they start verbalizing how great they are, that somehow

00:15:33.760 psychologically, they're less likely to go ahead and actually do the work because their mind has

00:15:37.940 said, you've already done this. Well, it's not just that it's, it's also when you like, you know,

00:15:42.940 let's say I'm working on a, I've never written a book and I announce on Facebook, like, Hey everyone,

00:15:48.400 I'm writing a book. It's going to be amazing. I can't wait for you to read it. I would get validation

00:15:54.220 from people that I know. Right. My friends are like, great job. Like awesome work. So excited. Good for

00:16:00.000 you. You know, all they would be giving me validation for something that I've not yet done.

00:16:05.240 And I get to take that. And here's the thing, writing a book is extraordinarily difficult and

00:16:09.820 it's very discouraging. And so often it's the need for that validation, the need for that sort of

00:16:15.960 recognition at the end of the tunnel that keeps you going through the darkness. But you know, when we

00:16:23.840 live in a world that loves to credit people for hype or credit people for what they're going to do,

00:16:29.720 there's a great, uh, Henry Ford line where he's like, you can't build a reputation on what you're

00:16:34.040 going to do. But the reality is in this social media world, that's much easier than maybe it was

00:16:39.760 in the past. And so, so people are sort of living on reputations for things that they haven't done.

00:16:45.660 And, and I see that as a, a particularly toxic form of ego, because when you've gotten credit for the 0.73

00:16:51.300 thing, you're much more, you're much less likely to, you know, do the damn thing that you need now, 0.92

00:16:56.980 uh, because Hey, it's hard. And what's the point? People already patted you on the back for it. 0.95

00:17:02.680 Okay. So here's the other side of it, because I remember I'm a financial advisor. I've been in

00:17:06.320 the business for about nine years now. And I remember when I got into the business,

00:17:09.280 I was not confident. I mean, I had no idea. I didn't have any right to be confident because

00:17:13.580 I was just getting into the business. I didn't know who I was going to be meeting with. I didn't

00:17:16.260 know what, what the strategies that we were going to be presenting were, but I had one of my

00:17:20.360 trainers use the infamous quote, which everybody's heard is that sometimes you just have to fake it

00:17:24.780 until you make it. So where's the truth and validity to that? Or is there none? And how

00:17:28.820 do we find that balance? Well, look, let's flip that. You're hiring a professional to do something

00:17:34.360 for you. There's something as important as managing their finances. Let's say they actually aren't that

00:17:39.800 good at what they're doing yet. Uh, and they're struggling and maybe they're going to be making

00:17:44.740 mistakes and you know, it's, it's going to be a little, do you want them to be faking that they're,

00:17:50.120 uh, you know, it might make you immediately more comfortable in the short term, but over the long

00:17:55.340 term, that's, that's how really bad mistakes are made. Right. So, so it's like, you know,

00:18:00.720 you wouldn't want your doctor to be faking it till you make it. You want your doctor to be honest

00:18:04.580 and straightforward with you. You obviously want them to have some confidence that, Hey, if I don't

00:18:10.000 know the answer, I'm going to go figure it out. Right. Or then I'm going to be straight with you when

00:18:14.680 I'm, you know, I need help or I'm not sure about something, but what you don't want is people to

00:18:20.200 be misrepresenting who they are for their own sort of short term game. And so I think you're much

00:18:26.420 better off. And as someone who, you know, sort of had my own mentors and my own sort of career

00:18:31.320 thrown into some things that I wasn't totally prepared for. I find that being very aware of what

00:18:37.020 you don't know and what you're, what you still need to learn and how far you have left to go is,

00:18:43.160 is a far better attitude and a far more educational one than the, the idea of the,

00:18:49.600 the person who's walking around sort of writing checks that they're not even remotely capable of

00:18:55.340 cashing yet. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, in my experience, because I did some of that where

00:19:00.380 I was fake it till I make it because that's what I was taught. But I did realize that as I was more

00:19:05.520 genuine and real with my clients, they responded very positively to that. Yeah. And look, you can,

00:19:10.900 there's plenty of, there's always something to take confidence in, you know, it's, Hey,

00:19:15.680 I'm going to take confidence in the fact that I know I work my ass off and that I know I'm a quick

00:19:20.900 learner and I know that I'm good at, you know, picking things up on the fly. Those would be

00:19:25.940 things to have confidence in not the, Hey, I'm going to pretend that I'm much more qualified and

00:19:31.500 knowledgeable than I actually am. I'm going to talk over people. I'm going to, you know, brag about

00:19:36.940 things that I, you know, I, I'm actually not sure about it. Humility is not necessarily softness.

00:19:42.520 There's, there can be a sort of a bedrock that, that humility is based on. And I think it's, it's,

00:19:48.540 it's in taking pride and satisfaction in the right things, not necessarily the things that might make

00:19:54.720 us feel good or might make us, I think this is where it's particularly insidious and egotistical.

00:20:00.120 So it's taking, taking confidence in things that would make us look good to other people,

00:20:05.300 even if it's not totally accurate or, or realistic yet.

00:20:09.120 Right. And I think that's what a lot of people are after. I mean, it's so easy to be visible and

00:20:12.780 get noticed for how great you are. I mean, we talked about this earlier with, with social media. And so

00:20:17.480 that makes it very difficult because 10 years ago I couldn't have really bragged about anything

00:20:22.380 necessarily online and even faked people out because they would have seen right through it. There

00:20:26.800 wasn't social media. There wasn't these outlets where we could do that. So that's changed quite a bit.

00:20:30.120 over the last decade or so. Yeah, look, and, and I think, uh, it's, it's better to have a, to,

00:20:36.220 to underestimate your abilities and overestimate your abilities. And, and so part of this is just

00:20:41.800 sort of guiding or protecting against that, that inclination. There's always something left to

00:20:48.240 learn. There's always more that you can do. And I think you're better off focusing on that. You get

00:20:53.540 something out of that because you get real knowledge rather than sort of going around pretending that

00:20:58.320 someone or, you know, going around hoping that someone doesn't call your bluff.

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00:21:57.540 So you can get more of the details at orderofman.com slash uprising. We have 25 spots and about half of

00:22:02.980 them are booked already. So I want you to act quick if you're interested in that. I look forward to

00:22:07.220 seeing you there. Now let's get back to my interview with Ryan. So why do you say that? Why do you say

00:22:13.680 you get more by underestimating what you can actually do versus overestimating what you can do? Because I can

00:22:18.840 actually see both sides of that argument. So what makes you say that? So I talk about John Boyd in the book and

00:22:22.880 one of the things that he would always teach his acolytes is like, okay, when you go in,

00:22:27.380 you're going to argue something in a budget meeting or you're going to argue for this program or that

00:22:34.320 program. You always understate your numbers because there's going to be, you're going to have adversaries

00:22:39.180 and you're going to have people who are going to doubt what you're saying. Instead of say misrepresenting

00:22:45.240 yourself for a job and then they hire you and they find out, dude, this guy doesn't have any idea what

00:22:51.020 he's doing. We've got to re-evaluate our understanding of him downwards. You want the

00:22:57.100 other way. You want to get hired and then, hey, it turns out that Ryan's got really good ideas about

00:23:03.060 this and this or, hey, we really underestimated this person. There's a lot more to the story

00:23:08.440 than there is. And I'll give you another example. So a lot of times we think our work is amazing and

00:23:14.560 so what we really need help with is marketing. And I get this a lot because it's sort of what I do

00:23:18.720 professionally. People go like, hey, what's a great marketing tactic or how can I get more people

00:23:23.920 to see my work? And so I'll look at their work and I'll be like, man, this is not that good.

00:23:30.920 Here's what you should fix. And they go, oh no, that doesn't matter. It's perfect, blah, blah, blah.

00:23:36.660 And so what their ego is doing is saying, hey, this is done. This is perfect. It's time to focus

00:23:40.800 on marketing. And let's say I were to take them at their word and I would give them,

00:23:44.560 say I magically had the power to turn 10,000 people onto their work. Well, those 10,000 people

00:23:50.360 are going to see it and be disappointed. And so what that humility does, and this is different

00:23:56.880 than say perfectionism, which I think is its own problem. What humility does is go, hey,

00:24:01.400 I'm going to keep perfecting this thing until I'm absolutely ready. And then when I am ready,

00:24:06.680 the work is going to do the bulk of the talking for me rather than me need to market or hype or fake

00:24:13.260 to compensate for some sort of deficiency, which even if I'm successful is still going to lead to

00:24:20.600 disappointed customers or fans or, or viewers. And I think that's what we miss in our impatience.

00:24:27.520 It's like, uh, there's some quote from one of the founders of Google where he was saying, you know,

00:24:31.740 Google gets better every, this was early on in their trajectory. He's like, Google is getting better

00:24:35.420 every day. So we don't want you to check out Google today. We want you to look at it tomorrow for the

00:24:40.500 first time. And, and there's a certain amount of humility and, but also confidence in that approach

00:24:46.360 to say, Hey, we're getting better. So we don't need everyone to see us right now. We want to grow

00:24:51.240 slowly rather than rapidly. Yeah. I actually heard this same concept as I started to speak a little

00:24:56.520 bit more. They would say, Hey, don't be upset that you're only having, you know, the, these,

00:25:00.640 these presentations where there's 10 or 15 or 20 guys, you're not that good anyways. You don't want

00:25:05.060 to be presenting in front of 200 people right away. Yeah. I mean, look for some of us,

00:25:08.600 and I put myself in this category. Sometimes the worst thing that could possibly happen to us

00:25:12.440 would be for millions of people to suddenly hear about our work because too many of those people

00:25:17.720 would be disappointed. And frankly, it's much harder to can, to re-attract someone who's been

00:25:25.160 disappointed than it is to interest someone with something amazing that you're, you know,

00:25:31.160 you're finally ready for them to see. Yeah, this makes sense. I mean, at the end of the day,

00:25:35.620 it sounds like you're talking about under promising over delivering, right?

00:25:39.300 Definitely. And, and I think we understand that with our work product, but it's harder

00:25:43.220 for us maybe to apply that to our personal lives or to our, you know, to our brand itself.

00:25:50.160 Sure. Yeah. It's really funny. You talk about the story that as you were talking about,

00:25:53.880 uh, people who are thinking their work is really good, but all they needed was marketing. It brought

00:25:57.660 to mind kitchen nightmares with a chef Gordon Ramsey. I don't know if you ever remember that show

00:26:01.620 where he would go in and these restaurant owners would say, our food's amazing. I don't know why

00:26:05.200 people are showing up. Right. And he would go in there and taste their food and absolutely destroy

00:26:09.840 their universe because they're so delusional about how good their food is. And all they need

00:26:13.840 is marketing when in reality, they need to improve their, their food. Yeah, totally. And look,

00:26:18.000 one of those things is much harder than the other, which is why we rather focus on the marketing

00:26:22.800 or, you know, getting people to come to our restaurant because that's like, Hey, you know,

00:26:27.740 I, I called a hundred people and five of them came in. That's much more measurable than say,

00:26:32.780 Hey, I spent the last two weeks knee deep in this draft and, and I'm not sure if I'm making progress

00:26:38.760 or not. You know, one is very discouraging and the other is sort of very outwardly focused. And so

00:26:43.920 I think that's why we gravitate towards one and not the other. It seems like in a way that if my food

00:26:50.340 is bad, that's a reflection upon me. But if my marketing is bad, that's a reflection on other people,

00:26:55.620 which is easier to handle. Sure. And you could see why an egotistical person is naturally going

00:27:00.000 to focus on the one that shifts the blame to someone else than onto themselves.

00:27:05.240 Sure. So I want to talk about awareness and delusion because a little bit ago you talked

00:27:10.260 about, you've got to be aware, you've got to understand this, but I think by way of being

00:27:15.280 egotistical in a way, it almost is delusion. So let's talk about maybe the difference between

00:27:21.320 those, the pros and cons of being aware versus, uh, versus having delusion in your life.

00:27:25.940 I'll give you an example. So I was at this conference a couple of weeks ago and some very

00:27:29.180 well-known, uh, author and speaker was there and he was, he gave this talk and it was a pretty,

00:27:34.840 it was a really good talk, but I would say at least three times on during the talk, he,

00:27:40.060 he bragged very pridefully about how self-aware he was, right? You know, he's like,

00:27:45.480 why greatest strength is how self-aware I am. I am so self-aware. And I just remember thinking

00:27:51.260 like this, you know, this is sort of the, the, you know, the snake eating its tail. It's like,

00:27:54.880 it's such a preposterous and ironic contradiction. Like here you are talking about self-awareness

00:28:01.980 and saying a very unselfaware thing and having no understanding of how it's coming off. And so,

00:28:07.120 you know, one of the things that success does to us is it makes us convinced that we're right all the

00:28:11.940 time and that, that we, we know things and that we, we often understand, you know, what other people

00:28:18.040 think better than they do, but it's not true. And so, um, I would say at the root of all sort of

00:28:23.700 creative work, uh, at all sort of interactions with an audience or a customer base, it, it requires the,

00:28:30.480 the ability to understand that person, right? Like even, even works of fantastical fiction,

00:28:37.760 right. Where the author or the, you know, the screenwriter or the animator is creating whole

00:28:43.500 worlds from nothing. They still have to understand like truth, you know, with a capital T, they have

00:28:49.460 to understand the human experience or this work isn't going to resonate with anyone. And so what I

00:28:55.980 find is that, you know, really egotistical, self-absorbed, you know, delusional people are often very

00:29:03.520 ambitious. They have huge goals. And so in the one way, in one sense that pushes them forward,

00:29:08.760 but the work almost universally suffers because it's lacking any connection to other human beings.

00:29:16.040 Like there was a great quote in the guardian. I'm forgetting the, the author's name right now. Um,

00:29:20.940 but he's basically saying, he's like all bad writing starts as a letter to oneself or is addressed to

00:29:27.660 oneself. And so that's what happens is that when we're self-absorbed or we're delusional,

00:29:31.520 our work is no longer a value to other people because it really has nothing to do with them.

00:29:36.260 And it has everything to do with ourselves. And I think that's very, very dangerous. And so as a

00:29:41.560 creative person, that's something you have to think about constantly. You have to, you know, am I,

00:29:46.380 am I, Robert Greene says, you know, uh, we must take to reality like a spider to its web.

00:29:51.840 If you're not sort of living and breathing this amazing, you know, complicated, confusing,

00:29:58.040 nuanced world around you, your work is going to suffer.

00:30:01.520 I know what some guys are going to be thinking. And I know what I was thinking before I even got

00:30:06.760 into this book was that, Oh, I know egotistical guys that are extremely successful. One of the

00:30:10.680 people that comes to mind right now is Donald Trump. We're in the 2016, uh, 16, 17 elections here

00:30:15.880 and he's been extremely successful and somebody that I think everybody out there would consider

00:30:20.260 very egotistical. Can you help me explain that?

00:30:22.920 Yeah, sure. So I'm not saying that success and ego are never connected. I'm saying that one does not

00:30:29.320 cause the other. So, um, like, look, uh, a lot of people also think that, you know, sort of drug

00:30:36.480 addiction is, is essential to musical success because so many, you know, amazing, uh, musicians

00:30:43.840 were, were strung out and struggled with addiction or even died of overdoses. Or, you know, we think that

00:30:49.800 artists must sort of struggle and be poor and that this, this poverty is what drives their creativity.

00:30:55.460 In fact, there's no link, you know, correlation and causation are not the same thing. Um, and,

00:31:00.780 and, you know, you definitely argue with drug addiction when, when drug addiction kills Jimi

00:31:05.260 Hendrix, can you really say that it was essential to his art or would you actually say it's the enemy

00:31:10.000 to that art? Right. Because it, it was the, it was the final sort of curtain. Right. Destroyed it.

00:31:15.280 Destroyed it. So certainly there are many, many successful people with huge egos, but what I usually

00:31:21.000 find, and obviously I did a lot of research on this and I have some real world experience working

00:31:26.260 with, with very successful creative people as well. It's that often they're actually quite humble

00:31:32.660 related to the work itself. And that's why they're so talented and good at it. And ego is this sort of

00:31:38.760 cancer that, that, that, or virus that lives within them that makes that work even more difficult.

00:31:45.240 Like you look at someone like Donald Trump, uh, I think what's going to be interesting is

00:31:49.920 he's a great campaigner. Could he actually do the job of being president or is the fact that,

00:31:56.660 you know, running a campaign where, you know, he only has like five or six people working for him

00:32:01.520 cause he, you know, someone asked like, you know, who gives you advice? And he says, Oh,

00:32:04.840 I give myself great advice. That's like a retarded egotistical statement of the century. But, 1.00

00:32:10.820 but the job of the president requires even our greatest cabinet. Yeah. You know, even some of

00:32:17.520 the most brilliant presidents of all time were, were largely successful due to their, you know,

00:32:21.680 their ability to, to select key advisors. And so, you know, I think what's going to be interesting is

00:32:26.140 whether ultimately ego is the enemy of what Donald Trump is, seems to crave so desperately,

00:32:32.620 which is real power and leadership. And would it not make him a terrible president? So I think you see,

00:32:39.400 you see what happens is someone like Kanye West has his ego made his musical career

00:32:44.640 more difficult or less difficult in the studio when he's sitting there trying to make beats or write

00:32:50.140 rhymes. Ego's not there helping him. And in fact, uh, you know, it's, it's his, it's his brilliance and

00:32:56.300 his talent that's doing that. It's, it's the fact that he can't talk to a reporter without saying

00:33:01.980 something that makes people hate him. That's caused him an intense amount of personal anguish and,

00:33:07.560 you know, cost him millions of dollars and turned off many, many fans. So, so what you want to look

00:33:13.880 at is not success, you know, in the abstract, you want to say relative to what that person is trying

00:33:20.440 to accomplish is ego making things better or worse for them. And, and, and what you find is that it

00:33:26.620 almost always makes things worse. It's going around shutting doors in their face.

00:33:31.300 Yeah. It'd be really interesting if you could even do a study that would show

00:33:34.880 what the trajectory of somebody's career, you talk about Kanye West, for example,

00:33:39.020 without that egotistical side, what that would actually look like. You bring up a really good

00:33:42.640 point, which is one that I didn't consider that ego isn't what has made them successful. It's just

00:33:47.360 what people happen to see in other people. So it's often you find with extraordinarily talented people

00:33:54.640 that they are, they are in fact so talented that it compensates for that ego. Right. Um,

00:34:01.520 you, you, you see, uh, you know, no one is lining up to, to work with Donald Trump because he is

00:34:08.280 egotistical. They're saying, Hey, this guy has been successful. Can we overlook these things? I mean,

00:34:14.320 obviously personally, I wish they wouldn't. I wish people would have some principles and could

00:34:18.200 sort of see a little bit out into the future. But what you see is, I would imagine the people in

00:34:23.600 sort of, let's say Kanye West or even a Steve jobs is inner circle. You know, you,

00:34:27.420 they go this egotistical understanding you have of this person, these flashes,

00:34:32.920 that's not the guy that we know, you know, we don't know like the Steve jobs who parks in

00:34:38.940 handicapped spaces or berates employees. That's, that's something we wish he wouldn't do. What

00:34:45.040 we look at is the, all the other amazing things that he's done. So, so it's, it's like a bad habit

00:34:51.380 or a bad trait that this person carries around. It's not essential to what they do. In fact,

00:34:57.060 they would be better if they didn't have it. Yeah, that makes sense. So, okay. I think here's

00:35:03.200 the problem as I think by nature of being egotistical and in a way delusional, it would

00:35:09.800 be very difficult for you to say, I know that this is something I need to work on. So where does

00:35:15.280 somebody begin this self-awareness process to see if they're really falling into the trap and what

00:35:19.740 life would look like if they didn't? Yeah. I mean, look, you know, I've watched people,

00:35:25.240 you know, destroy things that they've worked really, really hard for. And, and you, it's like,

00:35:30.500 why does this happen? Why are they doing this? And you see how, how easily say like, you know,

00:35:35.100 sitting alone or sitting in a quiet room with a therapist would, would force them to evaluate or

00:35:41.020 question certain things or, or even just stopping just even for an instant and evaluating, you know,

00:35:47.900 what they're doing, whether it's working, whether it's who they want to be, would, would force them to

00:35:52.920 be aware of things that their, their busyness or the sycophants that they've surrounded themselves

00:35:58.400 with make it so much harder to see. No, no one likes to see negative sides of themselves. No,

00:36:05.300 we, we sort of, we are averse to taking responsibility for things that say bad things about us as people.

00:36:12.640 And so, and so, you know, part of what ego does, I think as a, as a protective mechanism is it,

00:36:19.260 it keeps us incredibly busy. It says yes to everything. It, it micromanages, it gets sucked

00:36:25.180 into crises and, and complicated, you know, uh, difficult things. So it doesn't have to stop and

00:36:32.060 go, man, what am I doing here? Is this the right thing for me? Um, it, in, in some ways that,

00:36:37.780 that sort of toxic ego is addicted to, to crisis and chaos because it's, it, it, it prevents one

00:36:45.860 from having the, the wherewithal to, to, to look at oneself objectively. So I think, I think the idea

00:36:51.760 of, of stopping and taking stock on a regular basis, you know, thinking, reading a philosophy,

00:36:57.260 going to therapy, going to a 12 step group, any number of, uh, of, of these things that we've

00:37:02.720 created as a society are designed to make us evaluate ourselves and our own behavior from

00:37:08.940 some lens other than, you know, our frenzied, busy, addled state.

00:37:15.020 Right, right. I mean, I know you're in, you're in the meditation, obviously we, I think we maybe

00:37:18.720 address that a little bit. Uh, I talk about doing an after action review, which is every day looking

00:37:22.720 back and see what you got accomplished, what you didn't and why it didn't get accomplished.

00:37:25.880 So there's a lot of opportunities and moments to pause. One of the things that really stood out in

00:37:30.640 the book to me and this concept that's, that I'm really latched onto at this point is the

00:37:34.420 difference between be and do. Can you talk about that really briefly? Because I think that's

00:37:39.740 something that guys need to hear more. Yeah. Uh, so I would urge everyone just

00:37:43.760 Google like to be or to do there's a famous speech. It was given by John Boyd, who I mentioned earlier,

00:37:48.800 and this was the speech that he would give sort of every young sort of rising star that would work

00:37:53.800 for him. He, he was a, a colonel in the, in the air force. He was a great fighter pilot. Um, but,

00:37:59.740 but what he would say is, is as we, for people who show potential, who start to sort of be room for

00:38:06.000 leadership at a certain point in your career, you come to a choice and that choice is, are you going

00:38:10.860 to be someone who looks impressive or are you going to be someone who does impressive things?

00:38:16.200 Are you going to be someone who gets a lot of credit or are you going to be someone who focuses

00:38:20.620 on getting a lot accomplished and getting a lot done? And often these two paths are at odds with each

00:38:27.380 other. You know, the person who gets the great assignments, uh, who, uh, who, you know, has

00:38:33.240 universally everyone's, you know, uh, uh, friendship or respect the person who the media

00:38:39.760 possibly adore adores the one who's, whose superiors are, are always pleased with. That's a

00:38:46.300 person who, who in, in often cases has avoided making difficult decisions, has avoided telling

00:38:53.480 uncomfortable truths or sticking to certain principles. That's someone who's gotten really

00:38:58.680 good at playing the game versus, you know, sort of doing what needs to be done. And so I, I think

00:39:04.480 that's ultimately the distinction. Are you going to be someone who cares about getting credit or

00:39:08.320 you're going to care about someone who accomplishes what they set out to accomplish? And, and, and

00:39:12.860 obviously ego wants the plot and the recognitions and the trophies and humility says, look, I just want

00:39:19.940 to, I just want to do what needs to be done. And, and so I think that's a very important distinction

00:39:24.980 that one that I'm very glad I read early in my life. Yeah. I'm on board with that. Ryan, I'm looking

00:39:30.520 at the time. I can't believe how fast time has gone. Yeah. You and I could go on about this all

00:39:35.300 day. This is really fascinating to me. And you know, there was some notes that I had made. One was

00:39:40.020 fight club moments, scorecard, things like that. So at this point I'm going to have to leave it to the

00:39:43.360 guys to check out the book guys. I've read the book. I'm telling you, go, go get the book and it's

00:39:47.900 going to be, it's going to change your life. It has the ability to change your life and really

00:39:50.840 help you accomplish what you want to accomplish. A couple of things, Ryan, I did want to ask you

00:39:54.300 about as we wind down here. The one thing I remember on, uh, when reading through the book

00:39:59.080 is you actually have these tattooed on your arm. Is that right? So you have ego as the enemy on one

00:40:03.740 arm and then you have the obstacle as the way on the other arm. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Look,

00:40:09.000 I didn't get them to celebrate the fact that I wrote books with these titles. I got, I think I got the

00:40:14.300 why I got one of them a little bit after, but I got ego, you know, sort of well before. Um, but,

00:40:19.680 but the idea was that there's not really a single situation that I could encounter that I would not

00:40:26.560 be better off for having reminded myself of these sort of two mantras. So they're there. I see them

00:40:32.300 all the time and you know, it's, I'm making some decisions. Someone, you know, someone did this or this

00:40:37.140 happened. You know, I want to remind myself that whatever problem I'm going through can actually be an

00:40:41.860 opportunity. And I also want to remind myself, Hey, stripping ego from this, this interaction or

00:40:48.360 this decision is only going to help me see it more clearly and more accurately. And, and then I,

00:40:53.300 that I need to make sure that I'm doing essentially nothing out of ego. Yeah. And that's, I guess that's

00:40:58.560 part of the self-awareness process that you talked about. And this just happens to be one more element

00:41:02.300 or tool that you use at your disposal to make sure you accomplish that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not saying

00:41:06.160 everyone needs to rush out and do it. It's just helpful for me to be personally. That's right. Yeah.

00:41:11.240 Whatever works for you. So very cool. Well, Ryan, as we wind down on time, I want to ask you a

00:41:15.380 question that I prepped you for a little bit before we started the show. And that is, what does it mean

00:41:19.080 to be a man? Uh, so it's a great question because, you know, I think, uh, increasingly, you know,

00:41:25.760 we're, we're, I think we're trying to separate, you know, that, that expression from certain gender

00:41:31.480 norms or certain stereotypes and stuff. So I think for me, when, when I think of someone, I go like that

00:41:36.960 guy's a man, that's someone I want to be like, I think of someone who's sort of in control of their

00:41:42.160 own lives and, and sort of comfortable in their own skin. So I think I could apply that to a man

00:41:48.100 as well as a woman, but it's, it's someone who I feel like, uh, has taken ownership of their own

00:41:53.660 life in, in sort of every single way. That doesn't mean that, you know, they don't have people in their

00:41:58.240 life. It just means, Hey, this is someone who's responsible for themselves, who doesn't, you know,

00:42:03.760 uh, who doesn't try to pass the blame, who doesn't try to, you know, who doesn't want you to take pity

00:42:08.320 on them or any of that, that they are in control of any situation that they're in as far as it

00:42:15.100 pertains to themselves. And, and that's what I aspire to be like in my own life as well.

00:42:20.240 And I completely agree. I mean, this is a reoccurring thread and a theme that we hear is that it's all

00:42:24.860 about ownership and responsibility and taking charge of your own life, which is, which are all things that

00:42:29.700 I wholeheartedly agree with as well. So I'm on board with you, man.

00:42:32.740 Awesome. Awesome.

00:42:34.060 Hey, I want to let you know, I appreciate you. I appreciate your work. I'm a, I'm excited that

00:42:37.900 we had the chance to talk about this. I'm excited to have read your book and gone through that. I

00:42:41.200 know it's going to be impactful in my life as I continue to work to get better at podcasting

00:42:46.820 and blogging and all the fun stuff that's going on in my life. So I want to let you know that I

00:42:50.120 appreciate you. And I really appreciate you taking some time to be with me and the rest of the guys

00:42:54.040 today. Thanks, Ryan.

00:42:54.600 That means a lot to me. I appreciate it. And I would say, you know, listening to something like this is,

00:42:59.080 is taking responsibility for one's own life and their own education and sort of

00:43:04.360 trying to hold that mirror up to yourself about how to be better. So I appreciate what you're doing

00:43:09.120 as well. Thanks, brother.

00:43:10.520 Appreciate it.

00:43:11.060 There you have it, man. Mr. Ryan holiday, sharing with you why your ego might just be your biggest

00:43:17.920 enemy. So make sure you go to order of man.com slash zero six, five for all the show notes,

00:43:22.020 the links, the quotes, and most importantly, the link to the book. This is a must read. So go buy

00:43:26.880 the book and read the book, implement the strategies in your life. Remember also our inaugural order of

00:43:32.240 man uprising, September 15th, 2016 through the 18th. I expect this event to sell out quickly. So act

00:43:38.980 fast. If you're interested, we're going to be taking three days in a cabin. I leased out

00:43:42.040 for us to really give you all the tools and resources to take your life to the next level.

00:43:47.460 Go to order of man.com slash uprising for all the details guys. I look forward to talking to you next

00:43:52.280 week, but until then take action and become the man you were meant to be. Thank you for listening

00:43:58.200 to the order of man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life and be more of a man you were

00:44:03.400 meant to be. We invite you to join the order at order of man.com.

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Order of Man - June 14, 2016

OoM 065： Your Ego is the Enemy with Ryan Holiday

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