• Stoic philosophy
• The ego we see most commonly goes by a more casual definition: an unhealthy belief in our own importance. Arrogance. Self-centered ambition.
• Especially for successful people who can’t see what ego prevents them from doing because all they can see is what they’ve already done.
• With every ambition and goal we have—big or small—ego is there undermining us on the very journey we’ve put everything into pursuing.
• Only when free of ego and baggage can anyone perform to their utmost.
• the path of ambition can be dangerous.
• “abhor flatterers as you would deceivers; for both, if trusted, injure those who trust them.”
• “Be affable in your relations with those who approach you, and never haughty; for the pride of the arrogant even slaves can hardly endure” and “Be slow in deliberation, but be prompt to carry out your resolves” and that the “best thing which we have in ourselves is good judgment.” Constantly train your intellect, he told him, “for the greatest thing in the smallest compass is a sound mind in a human body.”
• “Be natural and yourself and this glittering flattery will be as the passing breeze of the sea on a warm summer day.”
• He was a man who came from nothing and accomplished great things, without ever feeling that he was in someway entitled to the honors he received.
• NOTE: Come from nothing, expect nothing to be entitled upon thyself.
• though we think big, we must act and live small in order to accomplish what we seek. Because we will be action and education focused, and forgo validation and status, our ambition will not be grandiose but iterative—one foot in front of the other, learning and growing and putting in the time.
• understand that ego is our enemy on that journey, so that when we do achieve our success, it will not sink us but make us stronger.
• Research shows that while goal visualization is important, after a certain point our mind begins to confuse it with actual progress.
• The more difficult the task, the more uncertain the outcome, the more costly talk will be and the farther we run from actual accountability.
• ignore the impulse to seek recognition before they act.
• if we are not careful, we can very easily find ourselves corrupted by the very occupation we wish to serve.
• Appearances are deceiving. Having authority is not the same as being an authority. Having the right and being right are not the same either. Being promoted doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing good work and it doesn’t mean you are worthy of promotion (they call it failing upward in such bureaucracies). Impressing people is utterly different from being truly impressive.
• What you choose to do with your time and what you choose to do for money works on you.
• The egocentric path requires, as Boyd knew, many compromises.