Don’t Be Passionate. Ego is the enemy !

That’s an attention-grabbing title, since be passionate / follow your passion is a modern day mantra. But, bear with me as I guide you through Ryan Holiday's book «Ego is the Enemy», where the author explains convincingly, in my opinion, that you at least take this approach with a grain of salt. Many times, I love to play the devil’s advocate and try to present other perspectives and think out of the box. So, there you go, read with why our ego is our true enemy!

What is actually Ego

We should start defining what ego truly is. The strategist and writer defines ego as «an unhealthy belief in your own importance». You could be confused at this point. It's not bad to have an ego. It's fundamental in a way, it's something all people have. Thing is, that you should explore the deeper meaning of it. How healthy or not it actually is. To quote the great C. S. Lewis, «A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you».
A right way to start thinking outside the box for that matter is to think of a simple quote. If you want to be more than a flash in the pan, think big but live and act small. And here is the point where ego comes. An unhealthy ego, the strongest and unhealthy belief of self-importance may harm you in ways of living the best you could. And here's why. When you believe in a higher importance, a strong ego, you are not able to learn new things. Think about it. You won't be open to new things. Your true potential will not be obvious to others and especially you.

The Passionless road to Mastery

The writer continues to talk about self-mastery. There is no recipe to it of course and you should not think of it that way. It's not measurable, it takes infinite time, and it's perfectly fine. Even more than that. A continual effort to master yourself is the key to a healthy ego according to Ryan's logic. There is a huge effort there, but it certainly worths a try. To be honest, our society doesn't help people to think outside the box and practice this theory, but it's really good to be ahead of your time. You should try it.
Now there's a really tricky part in this theory. For a healthy ego, you should forget your passions. «Don't be passionate». Be effective and committed to a purpose. If you want to be the most successful person in a field, work for it. Try hard, work harder, and you will succeed.
The first step to success is to recognize how hard it is to succeed and be a worker bee.
We all know how hard it is to fail. The writer doesn't forget about that, but he has an important advice for all. «Make it so you don't have to fake it». This of course has to do with the part of working hard. You should try and work hard to succeed, show this daily to others and most importantly to yourself. Having an unhealthy ego, will never let you accomplish all these things. It's not that hard to sit daily and work hard when you keep reminding yourself that this is what you want to do.

Euthymia an Arete

Ryan Holiday goes on in his book introducing euthymia. Euthymia is a greek word that means tranquility in english, but he uses it as «the sense of our own path and how to stay on it without getting distracted by all the others that intersect it». In a way, tranquility comes with euthymia, it's basically the result of that clarity and consistency when we achieve to not care of others and celebrate our inner self and most of all, embrace our awesomeness.
Let's talk about failure again. The writer embraces failure in his book as a really important part of life. As said above, it is something we will all experience and it should be that way. The phrase «False hope vs. True hope» is what really matters here. You should embrace failure, experience and become even stronger from it. Nothing's easy in this life, and we should all step back and see the big picture. With false hope, everything seems easy. True hope is in a sense more difficult but in a way it is also an inner trust in our abilities.
As a closure to his book, the writer uses once again a greek word. «Arete». He focuses on how every moment we all have the opportunity to show our true self. But this requires patience. This is how a person achieves the three big ideas: aspiration, success, failure. Surely, mistakes will be made, but that's what you should want in order to become the most successful YOU.

Will YOU be the most successful YOU?

And until we all fight the real enemy,
Be Healthy, Smile and Steem.

PS: Now, that you’ve reached the end of this presentation of Ryan Holiday’s “Ego is the Enemy”, I suppose that you know what you could do and that is upvote, resteem and follow, because this way we can create more. Right ?

Additional Read
Ryan Holiday official page