OoM 065： Your Ego is the Enemy with Ryan Holiday
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Summary
Ryan Holiday is a media strategist and prominent writer on strategy and business. After dropping out of college at 19 to apprentice under Robert Green, the author of the 48 Laws of Power, he went on to advise many best-selling authors, multi-platinum musicians, and served as the Director of Marketing for American Apparel for many years. His campaigns have been used as case studies by Ad Age, The Financial Times, and Fast Company. His first book, Trust Me, I'm Lying, was a debut bestseller and is taught in colleges around the world. And his latest, Ego is the Enemy, is coming out soon. In this episode, Ryan shares how confidence is earned while ego is not, the dangers and pitfalls of an inflated ego, and how to get out of your own way.
Transcript
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Many of us as men believe that we need to have it all figured out in order for us to be successful.
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It's that old adage, fake it till you make it. And while confidence is certainly something you'll
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need to gain in order to have success, the fine line between it and ego has the ability to destroy
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that success. My guest today, the one and only Ryan Holiday, shares how confidence is earned
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while ego isn't, the dangers and pitfalls of an inflated ego, and how to get out of your own way.
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You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart
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your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time. Every time. You are not
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easily deterred or defeated. Rugged. Resilient. Strong. This is your life. This is who you are.
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This is who you will become at the end of the day. And after all is said and done, you can call yourself
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a man. Men, what's going on today? My name is Ryan Michler and I am your host and the founder of
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Order of Man. I'm glad you're here with us today. And if you're new to the show, welcome. This is a
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show about all things manly, from health and building wealth to being a better protector
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and a leader. In other words, this is your one-stop shop to learn how to become the man
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you were meant to be. Now, I've got a crazy week this week. I'm going to be participating
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in the Spartan of Gogy. This is a 60-hour team-building, mentally and physically grueling
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event, but I am up to the task. I am looking forward to it. And on top of taking a lot of time
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to focus on that this week, I do briefly want to let you know we've got some exciting news.
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It's our inaugural Order of Man Uprising, and it's now open for registration. I'm going to be
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getting you more details on that later in the show. But if you're interested in some of that
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right now, you can go to orderofman.com slash uprising to see what it's all about. Now, I don't
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need to tell you that we've got an incredible guest lined up for you today. We always do.
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But I do want to let you know that you can get all the links, the resources, the quotes,
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and everything else you need for this show at orderofman.com slash 065. And make sure that
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you're also participating in our Men's Closed Facebook group for a deeper conversation.
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You can find that at facebook.com slash groups slash orderofman. With all that said, I want
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to introduce you to our guest today, Ryan Holiday. He is a media strategist and prominent
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writer on strategy and business. After dropping out of college at 19 to apprentice under Robert
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Green, the author of 48 Laws of Power, he went on to advise many best-selling authors,
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multi-platinum musicians. He served as the director of marketing for American Apparel for many
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years where his campaigns have been used as case studies by Twitter and YouTube and Google
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and have been written about in Ad Age, the New York Times, and Fast Company. His first book,
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Trust Me, I'm Lying, which the Financial Times called an astonishing, disturbing book, was
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a debut bestseller and is taught in colleges around the world. He's also the author of two other books
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that have been instrumental in helping me achieve success in my life, The Obstacle is the Way,
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and his latest, which is here to talk with us about today, Ego is the Enemy.
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Ryan, what's going on, man? Thanks for joining me on the show today.
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Thanks for having me. Not much. I'm excited to chat.
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Yeah, I've been a longtime follower of your work, and I actually reached out to you to have
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a conversation about The Obstacle is the Way, but you've got this new book coming out,
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which is Ego is the Enemy, which I've had a chance to read. And I got to say, I'm excited about
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Thank you. Yeah, no, I was honored to hear that you liked the book, and I wanted you to get this one
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before anyone else. Yeah, no, I love that. So tell me why you decided to write it, because I
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know you got a little personal in the book about your story and your background and how you have
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had a lot of success. I'm sure some of the guys are familiar with that. And this is a new direction
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for you based on the story you said in the book. Yeah, I mean, I see the books as being very related,
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so I sort of talk about them somewhat interchangeably. But I saw Obstacle is the Way as
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being about how we face our external obstacles. And then when I was really, when I finished the
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book, and I was sort of looking at my own life, and I had a difficult year, I guess this would
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have been 2014, you know, American Apparel, which I was the director of marketing, it more or less
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collapsed. I watched some other mentors of mine sort of go through some very difficult times,
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and I went through some myself. And, and so I was sort of thinking, like, what, what causes this?
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What makes, you know, what, what is this sort of elusive thing that all the people in the obstacle
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is the way all the all the stories and examples, what did they all have in common? What makes
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what they do so difficult? And, and the thing I sort of zeroed in on is ego. Ego is what makes
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seeing the obstacle as being the way impossible. Ego is what causes so many obstacles. So,
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so the, for the next book, I wanted to focus on, on our sort of internal obstacle, our internal
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opponent, which, you know, ironically, is often ourselves. So I see the, the books as sort of a
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continuation. One is how you deal with what is outside you. But when, when you effectively deal
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with that, then what you're left with is what is inside you. And I wanted to focus on the, the way
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that we, we get in our own way. Sure. So do you think you maybe wrote these bat, these books
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backwards or are they simultaneously? Like how would a guy approach this? Yeah, I, that was something I
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remember I was talking to the publisher. I'm not quite sure if it's a prequel or a sequel so much
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as, you know, it's, it's part of the same continuum, the same focus. You know, they both take
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what is essentially stoic philosophy and apply them to modern life to say, okay, we wake up every day
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with problems. Some of those are problems outside of us. Some of those are problems inside us. Well,
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what can we, you know, how can we use sort of timeless wisdom and, and timeless lessons from
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history to help solve some of those problems? And that's, you know, that, that wasn't just something
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I was interested in. Theoretically, this is, you know, like everyone else, I wake up with problems,
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right? My, I wake up and my, I've got something I've got to deal with in my business or I wake up
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and I'm experiencing success in some form or another. And I have to, you know, it's, that's,
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that's causing its own kind of problems. I'm, I'm struggling with, you know, my own identity and
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my, my own sort of negative personality traits. And so what I do is I look to history, you know,
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there's this quote from Bismarck that I learn, I use in the book where he says, any fool can learn
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from experience. I prefer to learn from the experience of others. The, the, the, this book came
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out of me attempting to learn from the experience of others to look at, you know, successful people
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and the, the, the perils of that success and the perils of, of, you know, sort of difficulty and
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adversity and say, okay, what, what can I pick up here? What universal lessons are there? And then,
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you know, a book sort of comes out of attempting to share what one has learned.
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And it makes a lot of sense. I mean, I, I've read a little bit, I know Marcus Aurelius,
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you follow his work, obviously, you know, Aristotle, Socrates, great philosophers of the
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past. And I've tried to read some of those things, meditations, for example, by Marcus
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Aurelius. And sometimes that's a little bit abstract. So I really value the fact that you've
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gone back, taken this information, applied it in your life, and then shared it with us in a way
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that's very consumable for us. Yeah. I, I think what I'm, what I'm good at, if I'm good at anything,
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it's finding the connections between somewhat unrelated things. And, and I learned that,
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you know, working for Robert Greene, who, who wrote the 40 laws of power and mastery and a
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number of other wonderful books, you know, I was his research assistant for a long time. And he,
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he showed me that he sort of, he said, you have to be able to sort of smell these connections the
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way that like a shark smells blood in the water. And so having done that for a long time for somebody
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else, I started to notice, you know, little connections and things in my, in my own research
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and reading. And I just sort of collected those things. And that, that came that that's, you know,
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that's essentially what my work is, is expressing those connections. And I think, you know, I think
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people are really busy. Not everyone likes to read. And not everyone, I think a lot of people are
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turned off by the fact that reading is so often very impractical. You know, people are discussing
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these things in totally theoretical terms, or they're talking about them in this sort of
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condescending, you know, know it all tone or worse, they talk, they, you know, they sort of
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talk about in this sort of, you know, woo woo, ridiculous feel goodery. And so I tried to say
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like, look, you know, I went through this stuff, you know, what it when you watch your friend and
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mentor destroy a billion dollar company, or you watch, you know, that friend's billion dollar company
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get destroyed, you know, you ask yourself, hey, why could this happen? You know, how do you make
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sense of this? And, and then, you know, in sort of doing that work and doing that research and
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trying to find some personal perspective, I, you know, my job is then to, to sort of try to make
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that as universal as, as possible. So if you're anything like me, and I assume you are in this
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circumstance is I try to read a ton. I try to finish one to two books per week. Yeah. And sometimes I
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think the challenge with that, especially with a lot of the guys that are following us and connecting
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with me is that they don't really know how to take the words from the page and apply it to
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their own life. So how have you found success doing that for you? And then even in this book,
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how can we do that to apply to real life? Yeah. I mean, look, I have one fair advantage in that.
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It's my job to take information and put it to some use, right? Like, sure, sure. But, but that's
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something that a lot of people can replicate, right? Like one of the, one of the great, you know,
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advantages of this society where anyone can publish anything, whether it's a self-published
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book or a blog post or, you know, just a note on Facebook is that, you know, you can take this
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knowledge that you've, you know, you read while you're laying in bed at night and you can try to
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process it into some, some new thought, new original thought and put it out into the world. And,
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you know, one of the, I think one of the most effective ways is to, is to teach,
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is to teach, uh, you know, and so that a part of my writing is, is very selfish and that I'm trying
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to, I'm just trying to make sense of everything I've personally learned. So that that's obviously
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a bit of an advantage for me, but what I, I, I don't just read the information and then leave it
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there. I transfer, like I take notes, like when I'm writing in books while I'm reading, I don't,
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I don't think reading is a passive process. It's a very active one for me. So I'm, I'm reading very
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actively, I'm taking notes, I'm writing things in the margins. And then I transfer that information
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into what I call a commonplace book, which is, you know, something people have kept for now
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thousands of years. I, I jot this information down and I organize it by theme. I actually use
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physical note cards for, for what I call my commonplace book, but some people do it in a
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journal. Some people do it in an Evernote file. Some people have a, you know, a, a, a text file on
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their desktop. But I actually, I think you have to, you have to remove that information from the book
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where it was born and put it into some form of your own that you can access and refer back to.
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So you can, so you can actually use it. Seneca is saying, look, look, the whole point of reading
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is to turn words into works. If you're not taking an active step to do something with this information,
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you might as well just be, you know, watching movies or whatever.
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No, I'm really glad that you said that. I actually just did a post a couple of days ago on how to
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speed read. And one of the things that I mentioned in there was making annotations. Like somebody once
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told me you should never write in or mark or tab your book. And then for a long time I did that.
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And then I realized, no, this is my book. Like I've got to make this my own. So I use my highlighter.
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I use a pencil to tab or write in the margins. I tab every page that I find interesting. And then I go
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back and I reread what it is that I actually highlighted or noted. So I'm glad you said that.
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Yeah. I mean, look, I, because of some of the things I write about, oftentimes I'll end up
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getting really rare out of print books that are sometimes quite expensive. I'll buy some book for
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$200 on Amazon and I'll write in that too. Like it's mine. I own it. And I feel like, I think some
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people think that's disrespectful to the book, but I'll tell you as an author who spends, you know,
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hundreds and hundreds of hours on a book, there's not a higher compliment that you can pay a writer
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than to interact with or argue or even disagree with the stuff that they, that they've put down
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on the page. Like the whole reason it's a book and it's printed is so you can interact with it.
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And I think if you're not doing that, if you're keeping these sort of pristine, unbroken books,
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just up on your shelf, you're, you're doing yourself and the author a grave disservice.
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That's good to know. So I want to jump back because I want to get into this conversation of ego and I
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want to jump back to something you said. Yeah. You just barely told us something that you're good
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at. And to me, I hear that and you say, Hey, I'm, I'm very good at this. I hear that and think,
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okay, this is a guy who's confident and who has done this in the past and knows what he's good at
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and maybe also what he's not good at. But I think other people are probably going to hear that and
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say, well, that's ego. Like that's egotistical. So what's the line between ego and confidence?
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Yeah. Look, I think there's a very important distinction. And one of the quotes I use in,
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in the book is from Frank Shamrock, who was, you know, a pioneer of mixed martial arts and a UFC
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champion. And he makes that difference. He's saying, look, you know, confidence is earned and
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ego is stolen. Ego is garbage. He says confidence is based on the fact that you've done the work
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and that you've received real feedback based on that work. So, you know, I know I'm pretty good
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at finding and making connections because that's what I've done professionally for,
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you know, an author who sold millions of copies of his books. And I know that because he told me that
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because I watched work that I did get, you know, integrated into those books. And I know, you know,
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I'm now I'm turning 29 and I'm on my fourth book. And I know that those books are the result of
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connections that I made in my reading and they wouldn't exist if I wasn't able to research and put
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a thought together. No, I'm not saying that they're necessarily coherent, brilliant, amazing
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thoughts, but I know I'm able to find at least enough connections to fill a couple hundred thousand,
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you know, words or a couple hundred, probably close to a thousand pages. Right. So, so, you know,
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and I've said this before to other people, but it's like, I run every day. So I know confidently
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what I'm capable of running. Like I know I wouldn't like to, but I could get up today and probably run
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10 or 12 miles and it wouldn't, it wouldn't, uh, like tax my system beyond what I'm capable of.
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Cause I've done that before and I'm, I've continued the training. I don't know whether I could run an
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ultra marathon. So I don't go around acting like I'm an ultra marathoner and talking trash to people
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who have done that thing or have right work. So I think confidence is based on doing the work and
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knowing you've done the work and having some objective feedback or measurement behind that
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sense. The problem with ego is that it's not based on that. It's based on what we want to be true,
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or it's based on what, you know, maybe our mothers told us was true. Um, and, and that's where you get
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in real trouble. Look, sometimes you're right. You know, sometimes someone says, Hey, I'm the best
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that ever was. And then they become the best that ever was. But a lot more people suffer from sort of
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the opposite, right? They've got an ego that tells them they're better than they are. And then they're
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either rudely awakened or they're never actually capable of achieving that thing because they've
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got a totally misaligned understanding of what work is required of them. Right. And I even think
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that you mentioned in the book that once they start verbalizing how great they are, that somehow
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psychologically, they're less likely to go ahead and actually do the work because their mind has
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said, you've already done this. Well, it's not just that it's, it's also when you like, you know,
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let's say I'm working on a, I've never written a book and I announce on Facebook, like, Hey everyone,
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I'm writing a book. It's going to be amazing. I can't wait for you to read it. I would get validation
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from people that I know. Right. My friends are like, great job. Like awesome work. So excited. Good for
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you. You know, all they would be giving me validation for something that I've not yet done.
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And I get to take that. And here's the thing, writing a book is extraordinarily difficult and
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it's very discouraging. And so often it's the need for that validation, the need for that sort of
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recognition at the end of the tunnel that keeps you going through the darkness. But you know, when we
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live in a world that loves to credit people for hype or credit people for what they're going to do,
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there's a great, uh, Henry Ford line where he's like, you can't build a reputation on what you're
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going to do. But the reality is in this social media world, that's much easier than maybe it was
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in the past. And so, so people are sort of living on reputations for things that they haven't done.
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And, and I see that as a, a particularly toxic form of ego, because when you've gotten credit for the
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thing, you're much more, you're much less likely to, you know, do the damn thing that you need now,
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uh, because Hey, it's hard. And what's the point? People already patted you on the back for it.
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Okay. So here's the other side of it, because I remember I'm a financial advisor. I've been in
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the business for about nine years now. And I remember when I got into the business,
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I was not confident. I mean, I had no idea. I didn't have any right to be confident because
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I was just getting into the business. I didn't know who I was going to be meeting with. I didn't
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know what, what the strategies that we were going to be presenting were, but I had one of my
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trainers use the infamous quote, which everybody's heard is that sometimes you just have to fake it
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until you make it. So where's the truth and validity to that? Or is there none? And how
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do we find that balance? Well, look, let's flip that. You're hiring a professional to do something
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for you. There's something as important as managing their finances. Let's say they actually aren't that
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good at what they're doing yet. Uh, and they're struggling and maybe they're going to be making
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mistakes and you know, it's, it's going to be a little, do you want them to be faking that they're,
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uh, you know, it might make you immediately more comfortable in the short term, but over the long
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term, that's, that's how really bad mistakes are made. Right. So, so it's like, you know,
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you wouldn't want your doctor to be faking it till you make it. You want your doctor to be honest
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and straightforward with you. You obviously want them to have some confidence that, Hey, if I don't
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know the answer, I'm going to go figure it out. Right. Or then I'm going to be straight with you when
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I'm, you know, I need help or I'm not sure about something, but what you don't want is people to
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be misrepresenting who they are for their own sort of short term game. And so I think you're much
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better off. And as someone who, you know, sort of had my own mentors and my own sort of career
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thrown into some things that I wasn't totally prepared for. I find that being very aware of what
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you don't know and what you're, what you still need to learn and how far you have left to go is,
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is a far better attitude and a far more educational one than the, the idea of the,
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the person who's walking around sort of writing checks that they're not even remotely capable of
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cashing yet. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, in my experience, because I did some of that where
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I was fake it till I make it because that's what I was taught. But I did realize that as I was more
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genuine and real with my clients, they responded very positively to that. Yeah. And look, you can,
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there's plenty of, there's always something to take confidence in, you know, it's, Hey,
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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
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learner and I know that I'm good at, you know, picking things up on the fly. Those would be
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things to have confidence in not the, Hey, I'm going to pretend that I'm much more qualified and
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knowledgeable than I actually am. I'm going to talk over people. I'm going to, you know, brag about
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things that I, you know, I, I'm actually not sure about it. Humility is not necessarily softness.
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There's, there can be a sort of a bedrock that, that humility is based on. And I think it's, it's,
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it's in taking pride and satisfaction in the right things, not necessarily the things that might make
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us feel good or might make us, I think this is where it's particularly insidious and egotistical.
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So it's taking, taking confidence in things that would make us look good to other people,
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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
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get noticed for how great you are. I mean, we talked about this earlier with, with social media. And so
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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.
00:21:03.120
Man, I just want to take a quick time out to tell you about our inaugural order of man
00:21:06.600
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00:21:57.540
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00:22:02.980
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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,
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.
00:42:34.060
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
00:42:54.600
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
00:43:11.060
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.