755 Mastering Your Ego

YOU CAN'T LET YOUR EGO RUN THE SHOW. You might be consumed by your ego and not even know it. It can be a powerful tool or the cause of your downfall. You need to recognize it, be aware of it, laugh at it, and finally work together with your ego to be your best self. Break the bonds of your ego. Otherwise, when will you ever be enough? On today’s episode of The School of Greatness, I’ve created a mashup on this topic featuring three people who have learned to work with their ego, not for it: Taye Diggs, Ryan Holiday, and Justin Baldoni. Taye Diggs is an actor and singer who is known for his roles on Broadway, TV, and Film. Ryan Holiday is the bestselling author of books about marketing, culture, and the human condition. His company, Brass Check, has advised companies such as Google, TASER, and Complex, as well as multi-platinum musicians and some of the biggest authors in the world. Justin Baldoni is an actor, director, and filmmaker who currently plays Rafael Solano on the award-winning show Jane the Virgin. These men have all experienced success in their careers, but they have to constantly work on keeping a healthy ego so that they do not self-destruct. It’s a daily battle. So get ready to learn what it takes to master your ego on Episode 755. Some Questions I Ask: What are some ways you can practice self-love? (6:00) How does reality help cure the ego? (8:00) What’s your biggest challenge right now? (12:00) Are you afraid of not being relevant? (14:30) In This Episode You Will Learn: Why knowing that you are enough is so difficult (7:00) Why you need to surround yourself with people who tell you the truth (9:00) The struggle between our lower and higher nature (13:00) How service can help to manage your ego (17:30) How to stop making your good deeds about you (20:00) Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 755 on mastering your ego. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:31Lewis Howes?

  Sigmund Freud said, "The ego is not master in its own house." And Anne Frank said, "Everyone has inside them a piece of good news." The good news is you don't know how great you can be, how much you can love, what you can accomplish, and what your potential is. Ego is a topic that so many people are asking questions about lately because it's the thing that can ruin your life if you don't know how to manage and control your ego. We all have different shadows and darkness within us. We all have different desires, dreams, hopes, and things that we think of that maybe aren't so good as well.

• 1:16Lewis Howes?

  And in this episode, we break down from a few key people about how to be the master of your ego, and not how to be afraid of your ego, but really how to shape and mold it to support you in achieving your dreams instead of breaking you down and ruining you. We've got Ryan Holiday, who's a bestselling author, media strategist, who is sharing about ego in this episode, and really diving into his philosophy of all the different struggles and challenges he's gone through, and the research he's done from the greatest leaders of our time on how they've overcome ego as well. We've got Taye Diggs, who's an actor and a singer, best known for his roles in musicals

• 2:01Lewis Howes?

  and TV series, movies. He breaks down the ego from that point of view. Living a life in entertainment, how he's managed ego to support him and not ruin his life. And we have Justin Baldoni, who's an actor, director, and social entrepreneur focused on creating and affecting positive change. He shares more about the ego, on how he's really shaped this to support him in his life with his marriage, with his kids, and with his mission and his work. And we talk about how to practice self-love without feeding your ego, because if you're allowed to love yourself, does that mean you're just feeding your ego more and more? And is it okay to love yourself and take care of yourself?

• 2:46Lewis Howes?

  We dive into that. We talk about how humility and reality cure the symptoms of ego, and how ego can hold you back from being the person you want to be. This is a complicated and challenging concept. This is something that holds a lot of people back from having the relationship of their dreams, from feeling fulfilled inside, from finding purpose and meaning in life, and really leaving a legacy. And I really hope you enjoy this one. Please share it with your friends. LewisHowes.com/755. I mean, you're around a lot of actors all the time.

• 3:28Lewis Howes?

  Do you feel like self-love is something that actors need more of?

• 3:34Speaker 01

  100%. I think the world needs more of it.

• 3:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  100%.

• 3:38Lewis Howes?

  What do you think, uh, how do you practice self-love yourself? And what would you, how would you give back to people listening who are maybe struggling or trying to figure out, you know, their worth in the world? Whether it be in a relationship, career, anything. What's some ways you can practice? What's not building your ego too much, but it's like the fulfilling self-love, you know?

• 3:58Speaker 01

  Sure, sure. Hmm. I think, uh, I think it manifests itself differently in different, in different people. Um, you know, uh, like for me, um, with talent, you know, I didn't have an issue because people were always there telling me how, that I had something. It had to deal with, for me, uh, um...

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Deserving uh uh the pretty girl or or deserving to be in a conversation. I think at the end of the day, it's tough, man. It's one of the hardest. I think it could be one of the hardest things to do, which is just convince yourself that you are worth it. Just you, who you are and not comparing yourself or putting yourself in a context. Um, because it's so easy to say, oh, uh, am I uh as intelligent as this person? And then looking at what you have, you know, to offer in terms of intelligence. Because it's not about that, because that can easily be taken away or you cannot have it.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  So you have to find who you are as a person, regardless of everything else and everyone else around you and just be cool with that and let that power you. So that no matter how great, how handsome, how talented, no matter how, whatever it is you are, you can, you consider yourself more than enough. Yeah. And in this world that's based on all of that other shit, it's really tough to do. Because we we're here and first thing we ask ourselves, you know, what, what do I have to offer? What makes me different? What makes me special? So that's, that's where I think the, the, the difficulty comes in.

• 5:49Lewis Howes?

  You also talk about in the book, you say humility and reality are the cure for symptoms of ego.

• 5:54Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 5:55Lewis Howes?

  Why is that? What do you mean by that?

• 5:57Ryan Holiday?

  Well, so if ego is being confident in things that you shouldn't be confident in, reality is like, oh, wait, okay. I was, I, I got too far over my skis. You know what I mean? Like I, I went too far in the other direction. I needed like a little bit of a wake up call. And so sometimes that's why failure can be good or not catastrophic failure, but like little things, right? Like you're confident. So, you know, you, you put something out there and someone's like, hey, this is wrong for the following reasons. You gotta listen to that stuff or you keep investing and you go further and further. And then when you do fall and when you do fail, it's like really painful.

• 6:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, interesting.

• 6:33Ryan Holiday?

  So I think you gotta cultivate people around you who are not afraid to tell you the truth. That's the hard part is like, I mean. Especially as you become successful, I'm sure you've seen this.

• 6:44Lewis Howes?

  I think you've got to be willing to have people tell you the truth.

• 6:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 6:46Lewis Howes?

  Because most people don't want to hear the truth.

• 6:48Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, right.

• 6:49Lewis Howes?

  Even if they say it, they're like, they don't want to hear it, right?

• 6:51Ryan Holiday?

  Right. You have to make sure you don't punish people for telling you the truth, like by not talking to them or fighting them. Even if you disagree, you have to hear them. But it's like, it's like you can realize like, man, I only talk to people who worked for me today. Right? Like who are in some sense not super motivated to tell me the truth. Like I've been around a lot of really, really successful, wealthy people. And you realize like, if I were to tell this person, like the only way I could deliver the truth to this person would be like a kamikaze mission. Like, like they, we would not be friends after. Like they've gotten so far that like, I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to go in and say all this unpleasant stuff. And that's going to be the end of it.

• 7:33Ryan Holiday?

  And then you realize like, and then you usually don't do it, right? Like, you know, it's like if, if I'd gotten to a point where like you, you follow me on social media and you, you, you thought I would, like you knew, you know what my life is like, but the pictures I was posting were not at all representative. You knew maybe I was inflating numbers about what I've done. Or like, you know, look at this photo with me and this celebrity, but you knew like I paid to meet that person. You know, all the things and, and like, you might know like, hey, Ryan, like you might want to say like, hey, Ryan, like people are starting to think you're full of it. Like you're not, you don't, you're not coming off. Well, you should change, but like you might not do it because you would be worried that I'm going to, I'm going to shoot the messenger essentially, right?

• 8:16Ryan Holiday?

  And so that's the difficult thing is like, if you don't have that realism in your life and you don't cultivate it, you're not checking in all the time, you get to a point where it's like, people realize that it's not in their interest to tell you the truth.

• 8:31Lewis Howes?

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• 9:15Lewis Howes?

  And that's why I love using Organifi. It's so quick and easy, but it also tastes great. I love this stuff, guys. I can't get enough of it. Go to Organifi.com and use code LEWIS, that's L-E-W-I-S, at checkout to get 20% off your order. Again, that's Organifi, spelled O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I, dot com, and use the code L-E-W-I-S to get 20% off your order and start the year off clean and green.

• 9:49Lewis Howes?

  What do you feel like is your biggest challenge to step in the man you've always wanted to be? Is there something you're challenged with right now that you feel like you still get to overcome or embrace to help you become a better version of the man you want to be? Yeah. I don't think there's one thing. I think there's an endless number of things that I'm challenged with. What's the biggest? One of the biggest challenges for me is the control of my ego. It's hard, man. You've got all these followers, all these likes, all these opportunities, TV shows. Billboard. Wasn't you up on a billboard recently, I think I saw or something? Thank God, I didn't see it if I was. I think you were up on Sunset, a big billboard to you. Yeah, I don't think that's...

• 10:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that must have not been real at all, ever. It was real. I think it was you with, you know, Jade the Virgin. It was probably, yeah. One of seven people. Yeah, I was a three, maybe, but yeah. But I think that, uh...

• 10:45Speaker 03

  I think part of our journey as human beings is the is the balance between our lower and higher nature and learning how to control it, right? So you obviously have spirituality, religion, divinity, things that are designed to help us come into our higher nature. And then you have everything else in the history of existence that's attacking our lower nature.

• 11:05Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, our ego.

• 11:06Speaker 03

  And our ego, that whispering voice is strong. It's really strong. It's just it's strong in men, it's strong in women. It starts with children. And and for me, it's definitely always been my ego, and my ego can also be something that cripples me. Because when my ego's hurt, or when it's bruised, or when it feels attacked, then I don't function from my higher nature, I function from my lower nature. And that happens in all sorts of ways. And then, of course, there's the idea of success, which is relative, right? Because it is a it is a never-ending journey.

• 11:41Lewis Howes?

  Search.

• 11:42Speaker 03

  Because there's no such thing as true success. Like, what, when would you be successful enough? When you're George Clooney? Okay, George Clooney, are you successful enough?

• 11:50Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 11:51Speaker 03

  There's something else he wants, right? Find me someone who's happy with their success. You can't. But you can find me someone who's happy, because they're content with where they are and what they have, because they're grateful. So, success is also interesting, because where I am, so much of what I do also is dependent on other people validating it.

• 12:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 12:10Speaker 03

  So.

• 12:11Lewis Howes?

  Coming to watch it, buying a ticket, whatever it is.

• 12:13Speaker 03

  Exactly. And especially in our town, and this in this business, relevancy is like the delta that is everything, so.

• 12:22Lewis Howes?

  Are you afraid of that? Not being relevant?

• 12:24Speaker 03

  I'm not afraid of it. What's interesting is that I've mostly never been relevant. The fact that even anybody wants to hear what I have to say is interesting and really cool. But what I am is aware of it. So I'm aware of the fact that I have a short window, called Jane the Virgin, that is interesting to people. After we're done in five years, I might not be relevant.

• 12:44Lewis Howes?

  Who knows?

• 12:45Speaker 03

  Who knows? So I look at it like, I have this amount of time to say what I want to say, and then maybe no one's gonna want to hear what I have to say again. Unfortunately, that's just the way it works. You have your 15 minutes, and then it's on to somebody else. And the other night, we were just talking about, you know, my wife's shooting a movie right now, and she's shooting a movie with a woman who was nominated for three Academy Awards in the 60s. And we know when you get nominated for Academy Award, your name is everywhere, right? But I had no idea who this woman was. Wow. She had experienced tremendous success. She's in her eighties now, right? So you just look at like, you know, the, the chart of, of being in the moment and feeling success and then getting to a place where you don't, you no longer have that.

• 13:26Speaker 03

  And, and then you have to realize that, well, do people not care about me? Because I'm not doing a, a podcast with Lewis. Hmm. Does that mean I'm not valuable to the world? Does that mean I'm not, am I not relevant to anybody just because I'm not relevant to the media? Or to the world that, or to social media right now? If I didn't have any followers, would that be a reflection of my self-worth? So these are things that are important and they, they affect us on both sides of the spectrum. They affect us when we don't have any success, when we're trying and we're struggling and we're like, we're, you know, we're getting off the ground. Striving to be relevant. We're trying to be relevant, which is, which is really something that I struggle with. Cause it's like, are we trying to be relevant and like, and why are we doing that?

• 14:12Speaker 03

  Or are we just fulfilling our purpose and it's gonna happen? So on one side you have that struggle and then on the other side, when you have it, you have that struggle because then you have the fear of losing it. And then you have to decide, and this is where the ego comes in. And this, and this is something that I battle with is, am I doing this out of love? Or am I doing this out of fear? And if I'm doing it out of fear, then I'm doing it from a place of lack. Cause I'm, I'm afraid that I'm gonna lose it. I'm afraid that if I don't do it right, that someone's not gonna respond. Or I'm not gonna get enough likes. Or this many people won't watch my YouTube video. Or whatever it is, or, you know, and the same thing goes for writing a television show and being on a show. So, so your ego creeps in everywhere.

• 14:54Speaker 03

  Your ego creeps in in relationships and mine creeps in in my marriage. Right? It creeps in absolutely everywhere. And so one of the struggles that I, I think will always have is figuring out the balance between a healthy ego and an ego that's managed. And for me, I've, the only way I've found to be able to manage my ego is through spirituality. And it's through prayer. It's through commuting with God and really it's through service. Because the second year of service, the goal is to take yourself out of the equation. We have a phrase we like to call it, we call it secret service. Would you still do it if nobody knew you had done it? And that's, and that's kind of your measure. Like it's service if you will do it and you don't care if anyone knows.

• 15:39Speaker 03

  So oftentimes, I'm gonna go do something, I will practice intentionally not telling anyone I did it. Cause that's a, it's a muscle. Like we go to the gym, we work out. We don't go to the gym and work out just because it's fun. It sucks, but we need it. The same thing goes for service. The same thing goes for spirituality. It goes for, you know, whatever, whatever it is we do. So yeah, so it's a practice. It's, it's like, it's building the muscle that fights the ego. Cause the evil, you know, the ego is strong. Christians call it the devil. Some, you know, in some ways, like it's, it is the devil. It will take us down to places that you never, ever want to go to.

• 16:17Lewis Howes?

  Unless you're using it for a bigger purpose to serve others, I guess, or serve something else.

• 16:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. And you can use, yeah. And you can, and your ego can drive you. I mean, there's a reason we have it, right? It's a necessary evil. If none of us had an ego, we'd be living in utopia and there'd be no reason for us to, like, why are we here? There'd be no reason, but why are we even alive, right? We're alive to experience a journey, to start somewhere, to go through hardship and eventually hopefully to learn lessons and come out on the other side. So if there's no journey, like that there's no ego, if there's no taking us into the darkness, then there's no light, right? So ego exists, I think, so that we can overcome it.

• 16:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I think if we're living in service every day, whether it's, you know, I do a lot of little acts of service. Little acts of service where no one knows about, where I'm just opening a door for someone.

• 17:02Speaker 03

  Don't tell me.

• 17:04Lewis Howes?

  In general, I'm not telling you specifics.

• 17:06Speaker 03

  No, I'm joking.

• 17:07Lewis Howes?

  But I think also just smiling at people down the street is an act of service. As opposed to having your head down and being disconnected. I think showing up with an open heart is of service. And those are the things, I have a battle with this sometimes because we, we build schools for kids all around the world who need support, right? And I, I've always been like, I never want.

• 17:26Speaker 03

  Pencils of promise.

• 17:27Lewis Howes?

  Pencils of promise, yeah.

• 17:27Speaker 03

  I love it.

• 17:28Lewis Howes?

  And, you know, I remember when I first got into it, I was like, I don't want to let people know. Cause I don't want to be like, have my ego involved, like I did something. Then someone told me one time, they were like, you're doing a disservice by not letting other people know because you're not inspiring other people to do the same thing.

• 17:43Speaker 03

  There's a balance.

• 17:44Lewis Howes?

  Okay, yeah, how do we balance?

• 17:45Speaker 03

  And that's, and that's the struggle. And that's the struggle that nobody talks about. Because I can go do this Good Row carnival and not tell anybody and have a carnival with myself. Right, exactly. Or you can say, hey, we're doing this. But how many people can I affect? Yeah. The challenge becomes, and this is again, it's controversial, but you can look at a lot of these proclaimed life coaches and spiritual guides and pastors. You look at people that are in positions of power where their job is to influence and help people become enlightened, inspire people, and you can see how quickly that can become self-serving. Absolutely. When everyone's looking at you. Because everybody then is looking at you. Everyone.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  And what happens is we forget that the only reason you're there is because you were at a clear channel from God to them, right? So then as man, we suddenly go, oh. It's my idea. It's me, yeah, yeah. Right? I had this carnival idea. Well, the truth is, dude, the idea came through me. Absolutely. That absolutely was not my idea. It was just crazy enough that I did it. Yes. So that's where it can get dangerous is we start to think it's about ourselves. So even service is a test of the ego, right? So it's like, how do you stay pure and true and honest and authentic in service? It's knowing and it's checking that like, yeah, you're going and building those schools. You might build five schools and not tell a soul, but you're gonna, on the sixth school,

• 19:12Speaker 03

  you're gonna go tell everybody because you need the money to go build more schools. The challenge is when Lewis becomes more important than the school. Absolutely. And that's why it's important to have friends that are like right in there with you. Right. That check you, like your boys, like I know you have here, like your account, you know, your best friends, for females to have their girlfriends or guy friends, I mean, whatever, to always kind of keep us authentic and grounded. Because it'd be very easy for me to make the Skid Row Carnival about me. Right. Right? I'm the creator of this thing. I did this thing. But the, but what we realized through the process, and by the way, I tried at one point to not make it about me, is that it needed me. It needs a, a spokesperson or a someone. It needs an entry point. A story. A story. It needs something to galvanize people.

• 19:57Speaker 03

  And I was okay being that, but it comes at a cost. Let me tell you why. I don't get to enjoy the carnival like everybody else.

• 20:03Lewis Howes?

  You're making sure it's all working out and everyone's in their place.

• 20:06Speaker 03

  I'm doing interviews, or I'm doing this, or I'm making sure it's running. But all I desire, honestly, is I want to sit down and wash people's feet. Three years I've done the carnival, I haven't gotten to wash one person's feet. And that breaks, and it breaks my heart.

• 20:20Lewis Howes?

  Carve out thirty minutes.

• 20:22Speaker 03

  That's the goal, that's the goal, but by the time I, and by the time, and again, it's something that we've, that we're working on. But, so my carnival experience isn't the same as someone else's. However, my experience is necessary. But the second it becomes about me, the carnival will die. The nonprofit will die, because that's not what it's for. And that's where the ego comes in. So all these likes, all these posts where there's now instant feedback. It's like, oh, great, they got five thousand likes in two minutes? I did something right, I better do that again. That's the ego, versus, I'm happy that people responded to that. Right? And we don't have that healthy dialogue with ourselves right now. Because we're so like, minute to minute with our phones.

• 21:11Lewis Howes?

  There you have it, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this one, all about breaking the bonds of ego. Mastering and redefining self without ego and with ego. Super inspiring. And again, big thank you to all the people who shared and contributed in this. If you enjoyed this, and you know someone in your life that this could benefit and could help, spread the message of greatness. We are building a movement of inspiration and positivity around the world, infecting people with love and support to help them achieve their greatest lives. But we can't do this alone. We need your support. Please text one friend, say, "Check this out, subscribe to this podcast, and listen to this episode," to support you with what you might be going through as well. We're all in this together.

• 21:54Lewis Howes?

  My friends, ego, it's something that can consume us and hold us back. And Sigmund Freud said, "The ego is not master in its own house." You have the opportunity to be the master of your ego. To recognize it, to be aware of it, to kind of laugh at it and look at it from the outside. Take it out and stare at your ego and say, "Okay, I know why you're doing these things. Now let's work together. Let's do things together to have a greater life." This is what it's all about, guys. Learning about ourselves, discovering new possibilities within, and making a better life for ourselves moving forward. I love you guys also very much. You mean the world to me. And as always, you know what time it is.

• 22:37Lewis Howes?

  It's time to go out there and do something great.