"You are your own worst enemy, that your ego, is the root of most of your problems. And if you can learn to understand this better, you can begin to adapt, make progress and stop being held back."

The Painful Prologue

• "quod vitae sectabor iter" → "What path of life shall I pursue?"

Descartes's "Olympica", or how one night changed the course of philosophy

• virtue begins with understanding and is fulfilled by courage
• I hope you will be less invested in the story you tell about your own specialness, and as a result, you will be liberated to accomplish the world-changing work you've set out to achieve.

Introduction

• Ego inhibits true success by preventing a direct and honest connection to the world around us
• Ego is the "conscious separation from everything: the ways the separation manifests itself negatively are immense: we can work with other people if we’ve put up walls we can’t improve the world if we don’t understand it or ourselves we can’t take or receive feedback if we are in capable of or on interested in hearing from outside sources we can’t recognize opportunities or create them if is that of seeing what is in front of us will live inside our own fantasy without an accurate accounting of our own abilities compared to others what we have is not confidence but delusion.

Aspire

• When we remove ego we are left with what is real. What replaces ego is humility, yes— but rock-hard humility and confidence.
• Detachment is a sort of natural ego antidote. It's easy to be emotionally invested and infatuated with your own work. What is rare is not raw talent, skill, or even confidence, but humility, diligence, and self-awareness.

Talk, Talk, Talk

• Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know. — Lao Tzu
• Talk depletes us. Talking and doing fight for the same resources. Research shows that while goal visualization is important, after a certain point our mind begins to confuse it with actual progress. The same goes for verbalization.
• The only relationship between work and chatter is that one kills the other.

To Be or To Do?