Perhaps you’ve always thought of yourself as a pretty balanced person. But for people
with ambitions, talents, drives, and potential to fulfill, ego comes with the territory.
Precisely what makes us so promising as thinkers, doers, creatives, and entrepreneurs,
what drives us to the top of those fields, makes us vulnerable to this darker side of the
psyche.
Freud was fond of exploring the ego by the way of analogy – our ego was the rider on a
horse, with our unconscious drives representing the animal while the ego tried to direct
them. Modern psychologists, on the other hand, use the word “egotist” to refer to
someone dangerously focused on themselves and with disregard for anyone else.
The ego we see most commonly goes by a more casual definition: an unhealthy belief in
our own importance. Arrogance. Self-centered ambition. That’s the definition this book
will use. It’s that petulant child inside every person, the one that chooses getting his or
her own way over anything or anyone else. The need to be better than, more than,
recognized for, far past any reasonable utility – that’s ego. It’s the sense of superiority
and certainty that exceeds the bounds of confidence and talent.
The pioneering CEO Harold Geneen compared egoism to alcoholism: “The egotist does
not stumble about, knocking things off his desk. He does not stammer or drool. No,
instead, he becomes more and more arrogant, and some people, not knowing what is
underneath such an attitude, mistake his arrogance for a sense of power and self-
confidence.” You could say they start to mistake that about themselves too, not
realizing the disease they’ve contracted or that they’re killing themselves with it.
If ego is the voice that tells us we’re better than we really are, we can say ego inhibits
true success by preventing a direct and honest connection to the world around us.
Just one thing keeps ego around – comfort. Pursuing great work – whether it is in
sports or art or business – is often terrifying. Ego soothes that fear. It’s a salve to that
insecurity. Replacing the rational and aware parts of our psyche with bluster and self-
absorption, ego tells us what we want to hear, when we want to hear it… But it is a
short-term fix with a long-term consequence.
EGO WAS ALWAYS THERE. NOW IT’S EMBOLDENED.
Sure, ego has worked for some. Many of history’s most famous men and women were
notoriously egotistical. But so were many of its greatest failures. Far more of them, in
fact. But here we are with a culture that urges us to roll the dice. To make the gamble,
ignoring the stakes.
