Don’t Learn This Dangerous Lesson

"It’s easy to look at history and learn the wrong lesson. You see Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar and can’t help but connect their enormous ego to their incredible successes. Or you watch Elizabeth Holmes escape consequences for her frauds and Adam Neumann, the founder of WeWork, get rewarded with a golden parachute and think: the upside of ego is enormous and the downside is pretty minimal. You look at a Steve Jobs or a Kanye West and it’s understandable to think that ego is an asset. This is a mistake. Correlation and causation are not the same thing."Get another perspective on the costs of ego on today's Daily Stoic Podcast. Get your copy of Ego Is the Enemy for just $2.99: https://geni.us/EBt5 Get 20% off Ego medallions and pendants: https://store.dailystoic.com/discount/EGODISCOUNT Buy an Ego medallion and get an Ego print for $10 (75% off): https://store.dailystoic.com/discount/EGOPRINT****If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryanholidayInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanholiday/Facebook: http://facebook.com/ryanholidayYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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  Welcome to The Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at DailyStoic.com.

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  Don't learn this dangerous lesson. It's easy to look at history and learn the wrong lesson. You see Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar and can't help but connect their enormous ego to their incredible successes. Or you watch Elizabeth Holmes escape consequences for her frauds, and Adam Neumann, the founder of WeWork, get rewarded for a golden parachute and think, "The upside of ego is enormous and the downside is pretty minimal." You look at a Steve Jobs or a Kanye West, and it's understandable to think that ego is an asset. This is a mistake. Correlation and causation are not the same thing. As William Manchester would write of Douglas MacArthur, "It's not that MacArthur's ego

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  contributed to his success. It's that, quote, 'His gifts were so great that he repeatedly triumphed in spite of himself.'" Kyrie Irving is not a great athlete because he has an ego. It's that his talent as a basketball player was great enough for three teams to absorb his ego in order to utilize those talents. And even then, this turned out to be a costlier bargain than they thought. The Stoics believed that ego was the enemy of real greatness. When Marcus Aurelius looked back at the emperors who preceded him, he didn't think, "Oh, Tiberius and Hadrian got away with big egos. So can I." Instead, what he saw is what could have been, how much more they could have accomplished, how much more grander and more meaningful their legacy would have been had it been infused

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  with more temperance and wisdom, justice and courage. And that's how we should look at Adam Neumann, or Steve Jobs, or Kanye West, not as rationalizations for our own egos, but as cautionary tales. They could have done more, been better people, and avoided many of their most painful failures. Remember today that ego is not making you better. At best, it's a drag on your talents, a tax that people are only willing to pay for a short time. At worst, it is a ticking time bomb that will take you and the people who work with you down in flames. Beware. Hey everyone. Great news. The ebook edition of Ego is the Enemy is on sale for just $2.99 on Amazon. And to make it even better, we're offering a discount on Ego is

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  the Enemy themed stuff in the Daily Stoic store. Get 20% off our Ego is the Enemy pendants and challenge coins with the code EGODISCOUNT. Or you can get an Ego print for just $10 when you buy a matching pendant with a code EGOPRINT. You can go to store.dailystoic.com and you can get Ego is the Enemy, number one bestseller on Amazon for just $2.99 right now. Thanks. Do well.