The Daily Stoic - Don’t Learn This Dangerous Lesson

Episode Date: May 18, 2020

"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.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stood Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target. The new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. music or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Daily Stoic. For each day, we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2000-year-old philosophy that has

guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystowach.com. 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 Newman, 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 contributed to his success. It's that quote, his guess 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 with more temperance and wisdom, justice and courage. And that's how we should look at Adam Newman or Steve Jobs or a 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, attacks that people are only willing to pay for short time. At worst, it is a ticking time bomb that will take you and the people who work with you down in flames. Be aware. Hey everyone, great news. The eBook edition of EGO is the Enemy is on sale for just

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