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Vegetables (and fruits to a lesser degree) are a richer source of vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids and fiber than any other category of food. Animal tissue (or meat from the muscles of animals) contain far fewer vitamins and minerals, less essential fatty acids, high levels of saturated fat and cholesterol and contain zero health enhancing fiber (soluble or insoluble).
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Keeping the body and mind fit is only appropriate since its employed in everything we do! Yet, the vast majority of us busy ourselves with anything and everything but this…
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Personally, I enjoy indoor machines, but there’s one common mistake that many participants make when choosing to work indoors and that’s based on the concept of convection.
Without adequate airflow (similar to sitting outside on a hot, still day) we overheat quickly, leading to less intensity, shorter duration and a feeling of misery. Consequently, we no longer want to train indoors which is a convenient way to get the job done.
Fans built into stationary machines and ceiling fans are mostly inadequate. What’s needed? A standard floor fan that covers the majority of our bodies while we exercise in place. This will naturally lead to greater enjoyment and more consistency with your indoor training.
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Alain de Botton’s bestselling The Consolations of Philosophy–later made into a six-part TV series–has helped popularize ancient philosophy and especially the work of Seneca. This superb volume offers the finest translation of Seneca’s dialogues and essays in print, capturing the full range of his philosophical interests. Here the Stoic philosopher outlines his thoughts on how to live in a troubled world. Tutor to the young emperor Nero, Seneca wrote exercises in practical philosophy that draw upon contemporary Roman life and illuminate the intellectual concerns of the day. They also have much to say to the modern reader, as Seneca ranges widely across subjects such as the shortness of life, tranquility of mind, anger, mercy, happiness, and grief at the loss of a loved one. Seneca’s accessible, aphoristic style makes his writing especially attractive as an introduction to Stoic philosophy, and belies its reputation for austerity and dogmatism. This edition combines a clear and modern translation by John Davies with Tobias Reinhardt’s fascinating introduction to Seneca’s career, literary style, and influence, including a superb summary of Stoic philosophy and Seneca’s interpretation of it. The book’s notes are the fullest of any comparable edition.
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The majority of males get their health and fitness information from magazines that are full of professional bodybuilders and muscular models who use steriods, as well as other illegal chemicals to achieve their desired look. Not only are these fitness role models typically using drugs to obtain their facade of health and fitness they’re frequently pedaling strength training routines that are literally a figment of someone’s imagination. Choose your health and fitness information wisely.
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Excited to get started with a “new” personal trainer?
How about building a long-term, on-going relationship with your “new” personal trainer?
Be careful here…
The personal-training industry has high rates of employee turnover, meaning that your newly found personal trainer is likely to be gone in the near future. One, because the definition of personal trainer is so loosely defined in the fitness industry today, setting a very low standard and two, because this position is frequently filled by those who are waiting for something better to come along with no real intention or capacity to be a professional.
Look for certifications from ACSM or NSCA, a degree in health and fitness and on-going participation in sports and athletics.
Your personal trainer should know how to stay motivated, year after year, as well as injury free.
If they can’t do that for themselves how are they going to do that for you?
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Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking!
Self-help books don’t seem to work. Few of the many advantages of modern life seem capable of lifting our collective mood. Wealth―even if you can get it―doesn’t necessarily lead to happiness. Romance, family life, and work often bring as much stress as joy. We can’t even agree on what “happiness” means. So are we engaged in a futile pursuit? Or are we just going about it the wrong way?
Looking both east and west, in bulletins from the past and from far afield, Oliver Burkeman introduces us to an unusual group of people who share a single, surprising way of thinking about life. Whether experimental psychologists, terrorism experts, Buddhists, hardheaded business consultants, Greek philosophers, or modern-day gurus, they argue that in our personal lives, and in society at large, it’s our constant effort to be happy that is making us miserable. And that there is an alternative path to happiness and success that involves embracing failure, pessimism, insecurity, and uncertainty―the very things we spend our lives trying to avoid. Thought-provoking, counterintuitive, and ultimately uplifting, The Antidote is the intelligent person’s guide to understanding the much-misunderstood idea of happiness.
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Socrates, amongst others, argued paradoxically that it’s self-discipline or self control above all things that causes pleasure; pleasurable things frequently become uncomfortable when indulged in or pursued, they have a tendency to make us weak of mind and body as well.
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“There is a need, in my view, for someone as a standard against which our characters can measure themselves. Without a ruler to do it against, you won’t make the crooked straight.” Seneca
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To reduce a naturally grown vegetable or fruit to a reductionist scientific way of thinking, where we tease out one particular vitamin, mineral or antioxidant and attempt to bottle it as a healthy alternative to eating produce, is superficial thinking and wrong-headed – a “stuck in stupid” approach. Life requires, in many instances, a sense of mystery and acceptance of what we don’t know and sometimes can’t know. Believe me when I tell you, current food technology has no idea what makes a fruit or vegetable so healthy for our physiology; so don’t succumb to oversimplifications and fancy bottles, pamphlets and marketing campaigns – simply eat the real thing!
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It boils down to having a “WHY”! Why do we live? What’s the Point? What’s important to us? A meaningful career? A close family or family member? A friend? A pet? A religion? A Philosophy? More time to experience life? Further personal development? A book to be written?
Whatever the “Why” may be… we must have one! It is our motivation!
As Nietzsche stated: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
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A sure-fire way to gain weight, and lose control of your health, is to consume food prepared by others (i.e. restaurants, catering services, potluck dinners, etc.). You can’t take responsibility for your weightloss goals, or your health, without knowing what’s in the food that you consume and that starts by preparing your own food. Eating out frequently abdicates your personal control to someone who has no interest in your health and weightloss goals.
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“It is philosophy that has the duty of protecting us…without it no one can lead a life free of fear or worry.”
For several years of his turbulent life, Seneca was the guiding hand of the Roman Empire. His inspired reasoning derived mainly from the Stoic principles, which had originally been developed some centuries earlier in Athens. This selection of Seneca’s letters shows him upholding the austere ethical ideals of Stoicism—the wisdom of the self-possessed person immune to overmastering emotions and life’s setbacks—while valuing friendship and the courage of ordinary men, and criticizing the harsh treatment of slaves and the cruelties in the gladiatorial arena. The humanity and wit revealed in Seneca’s interpretation of Stoicism is a moving and inspiring declaration of the dignity of the individual mind.
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Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl’s theory-known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos (“meaning”)-holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.
At the time of Frankl’s death in 1997, Man’s Search for Meaning had sold more than 10 million copies in twenty-four languages. A 1991 reader survey for the Library of Congress that asked readers to name a “book that made a difference in your life” found Man’s Search for Meaning among the ten most influential books in America.
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Isolated nutrients (such a vitamins, minerals and antioxidants) taken as supplements to our existing diet or artificially added to a product found on a store shelf where it’s then called fortified, is simply a misunderstood concept and grossly inadequate for good health. For instance, vitamin C, is only one single compound of hundreds of compounds found within a single fruit or vegetable. Consuming more of it, when there’s no dietary deficiency (which is normally the case for all of us) without the other compounds, is misguided and unsafe. Vitamins, minerals and antioxidants consumed singularly, in large doses typically found in many store bought supplements, have proven to actually increase disease in carefully performed research on humans; so much so, the studies were halted early because cancer rates were increasing significantly in the participants – not decreasing as desired!
Case in Point:
The majority of our bodies are made of water (65-70% of our bodies); drink normally and things function as they should. But, supplement your normal drinking habits with excess water and you end up in the hospital with Hyponatremia (a metabolic condition in which there is not enough sodium in the body fluids outside the cells because of over-hydration).
If something is good for you, then more must be better? This is simply poor thinking and marketing Bull Shit!
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Winner of the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography
How to get along with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you love—such questions arise in most people’s lives. They are all versions of a bigger question: How do you live? This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, considered by many to be the first truly modern individual. He wrote free-roaming explorations of his thoughts and experience, unlike anything written before. More than four hundred years later, Montaigne’s honesty and charm still draw people to him. Readers come to him in search of companionship, wisdom, and entertainment —and in search of themselves. Just as they will to this spirited and singular biography.
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Lacking in self-control, some people find eating and drinking things they shouldn’t, pleasurable!
On the other hand, there are others who exercise self-control and find great pleasure in abstaining from eating and drinking things they shouldn’t.
In other words, self control can be very pleasurable, even more so than consuming questionable food and drink!
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One of the great fears many of us face is that despite all our effort and striving, we will discover at the end that we have wasted our life. In A Guide to the Good Life, William B. Irvine plumbs the wisdom of Stoic philosophy, one of the most popular and successful schools of thought in ancient Rome, and shows how its insight and advice are still remarkably applicable to modern lives.
In A Guide to the Good Life, Irvine offers a refreshing presentation of Stoicism, showing how this ancient philosophy can still direct us toward a better life. Using the psychological insights and the practical techniques of the Stoics, Irvine offers a roadmap for anyone seeking to avoid the feelings of chronic dissatisfaction that plague so many of us. Irvine looks at various Stoic techniques for attaining tranquility and shows how to put these techniques to work in our own life. As he does so, he describes his own experiences practicing Stoicism and offers valuable first-hand advice for anyone wishing to live better by following in the footsteps of these ancient philosophers. Readers learn how to minimize worry, how to let go of the past and focus our efforts on the things we can control, and how to deal with insults, grief, old age, and the distracting temptations of fame and fortune. We learn from Marcus Aurelius the importance of prizing only things of true value, and from Epictetus we learn how to be more content with what we have.
Finally, A Guide to the Good Life shows readers how to become thoughtful observers of their own lives. If we watch ourselves as we go about our daily business and later reflect on what we saw, we can better identify the sources of distress and eventually avoid that pain in our life. By doing this, the Stoics thought, we can hope to attain a truly joyful life.
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Taking the “Fatty” out for a stroll today on my favorite trail – Desert Classic (South Mountain).
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To restrain yourself from food and drink is “abstemious” by definition; this is required if you intend to lose weight, maintain weight, gain self control, improve self esteem and succeed in reaching your personal goals. You can’t have your cake and eat it too, quite frankly, I could careless about having the cake in the first place.
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When philosophy rescued him from an emotional crisis, Jules Evans became fascinated by how ideas invented over two thousand years ago can help us today. He interviewed soldiers, psychologists, gangsters, astronauts, and anarchists and discovered the ways that people are using philosophy now to build better lives. Ancient philosophy has inspired modern communities — Socratic cafés, Stoic armies, Epicurean communes — and even whole nations in the quest for the good life.
This book is an invitation to a dream school with a rowdy faculty that includes twelve of the greatest philosophers from the ancient world, sharing their lessons on happiness, resilience, and much more. Lively and inspiring, this is philosophy for the street, for the workplace, for the battlefield, for love, for life.
https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Life-Other-Dangerous-Situations/dp/1608682293
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Our minds must be interested and absorbed in something, for the majority of us, its our own reflection in the mirror and our personal thoughts. When we are not busy looking and thinking about ourselves, our minds must become interested in something else, that something else, is other people!
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When we learn about something that wasn’t readily known before, or see something from a new and unexpected angle, it literally takes a hold of us and alters how we view the world; that’s an insight! We shouldn’t wait for insights to come to us, we should seek them out by actively learning with a purpose. We should read books with depth, watch television and movies of substance, attend interesting and enlightening courses and engage in activities that mentally expand us and emotionally ground us.
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Meaning and direction in life are naturally provided through self improvement; grow your mind while building or maintaining your body!
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To pursue what is most real, most important and most meaningful in life… is a life well lived.
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Reading a well written book and/or having a meaningful conversation with someone nearly everyday is to the mind as exercising and nutrition is to the body; both keep you sharp and in shape!
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Always keeping things fresh and new at StrengthLab!
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We live in an age of unprecedented anxiety. Spending all our time trying to anticipate and plan for the future and to lamenting the past, we forget to embrace the here and now. We are so concerned with tomorrow that we forget to enjoy today. Drawing from Eastern philosophy and religion, Alan Watts shows that it is only by acknowledging what we do not—and cannot—know that we can learn anything truly worth knowing. In The Wisdom of Insecurity, he shows us how, in order to lead a fulfilling life, we must embrace the present—and live fully in the now.
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French superstar philosopher Luc Ferry encapsulates an enlightening treatise of pop-philosophy in a lively narrative of Western thought—explaining how the history of philosophy can teach us how to live better lives today.
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Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves—and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives—and destroyed them.
Now, Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization, and helped make us who we are. Penguin’s Great Ideas series features twelve groundbreaking works by some of history’s most prodigious thinkers, and each volume is beautifully packaged with a unique type-drive design that highlights the bookmaker’s art. Offering great literature in great packages at great prices, this series is ideal for those readers who want to explore and savor the Great Ideas that have shaped the world.
The Stoic writings of the philosopher Seneca offer powerful insights into the art of living, the importance of reason and morality, and continue to provide profound guidance to many through their eloquence, lucidity and timeless wisdom.
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“John is so calm, so poised, so much at home with himself, so much a familiar spirit of the forests, ” wrote Walt Whitman of his friend, the naturalist and writer John Burroughs. “He is a child of the woods, fields, hills – native to them in a rare sense (in a sense almost a miracle).” Henry James called Burroughs “a more humorous, more available and more sociable Thoreau. James wrote that “the minuteness of Burroughs’s observation, the keenness of his perception, give him a real originality, and his sketches have a delightful oddity, vivacity, and freshness.” Burroughs was born in 1837, the same year that Henry Thoreau graduated from Harvard. Along with Thoreau and John Muir, he was one of the nineteenth century’s most popular and preeminent nature writers. In the course of his long life, Burroughs authored more than twenty-eight books on natural history and literature. Writing during the increasingly industrial decades of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Burroughs stayed constant to the transcendental message of his idols – Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman. During what Mark Twain called the “faithless” era of the Gilded Age, Burroughs urged his readers to go to the woods to develop a relationship with nature that did not “vulgarize it and rob it of its divinity.” In this outstanding new book – the first full biography of John Burroughs to be published since 1925 – Edward J Renehan, Jr. draws on a wealth of previously unpublished manuscripts, journals, and letters to reveal the life of the dean of American nature writers. Renehan describes Burroughs’s relationships with some of the most notable figures of his time, including Jay Gould, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Edison, John Muir, E. H. Harriman, Andrew Carnegie, Oscar Wilde and especially Walt Whitman, Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Ford, with whom he developed complicated and enduring friendships.
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Personally, I don’t understand why any “so called” educated adult would intentionally put artificial substances in their mouth and believe it to be okay – normal – no big deal! Those things are going directly INSIDE you! What you put into your body is the most significant thing altering your health; it has the power to benefit or damage your biological system immediately or over a period of time. Artificial flavors, colors, preservatives, ingredients and the like are to be minimized… and better yet – avoided! Believing a government panel or any professional organization that deems “artificial chemicals” as safe to consume is beyond the bounds of logic and simply VERY naïve!
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Meditations is a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor 161–180 CE, setting forth his ideas on Stoic philosophy. Marcus Aurelius wrote the 12 books of the Meditations in Koine Greek as a source for his own guidance and self-improvement. It is possible that large portions of the work were written at Sirmium, where he spent much time planning military campaigns from 170 to 180. Some of it was written while he was positioned at Aquincum on campaign in Pannonia, because internal notes tell us that the second book was written when he was campaigning against the Quadi on the river Granova (modern-day Hron) and the third book was written at Carnuntum. It is not clear that he ever intended the writings to be published, so the title Meditations is but one of several commonly assigned to the collection. These writings take the form of quotations varying in length from one sentence to long paragraphs.
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In this accessible and comprehensive work, Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins cover the entire history of philosophy–ancient, medieval, and modern, from cultures both East and West–in its broader historical and cultural contexts. Major philosophers and movements are discussed along with less well-known but interesting figures. The authors examine the early Greek, Indic, and Chinese philosophers and the mythological traditions that preceded them, as well as the great religious philosophies, including Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, and Taoism. Easily understandable to students without specialized knowledge of philosophy, A Short History of Philosophy demonstrates the relevance of philosophy to our times, illuminating the impact of the revolutions wrought by science, industry, colonialism, and sectarian warfare; the two world wars and the Holocaust; and the responses of philosophy in the schools of existentialism, postmodernism, feminism, and multiculturalism. In addition, the authors provide their own twists and interpretations of events, resulting in a broad view of the nature of philosophy as an intellectual discipline and its sometimes odd and dramatic consequences.
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How to Stop Spending Time You Don’t Have with People You Don’t Like Doing Things You Don’t Want to Do!
Are you stressed out, overbooked, and underwhelmed by life? Fed up with pleasing everyone else before you please yourself? It’s time to stop giving a f*ck.
And it will free you to spend your time, energy, and money on the things that really matter. So what are you waiting for? Stop giving a f*ck and start living your best life today!
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From the author of How Proust Can Change Your Life, a delightful, truly consoling work that proves that philosophy can be a supreme source of help for our most painful everyday problems.
Perhaps only Alain de Botton could uncover practical wisdom in the writings of some of the greatest thinkers of all time. But uncover he does, and the result is an unexpected book of both solace and humor. Dividing his work into six sections — each highlighting a different psychic ailment and the appropriate philosopher — de Botton offers consolation for unpopularity from Socrates, for not having enough money from Epicurus, for frustration from Seneca, for inadequacy from Montaigne, and for a broken heart from Schopenhauer (the darkest of thinkers and yet, paradoxically, the most cheering). Consolation for envy — and, of course, the final word on consolation — comes from Nietzsche: “Not everything which makes us feel better is good for us.”
This wonderfully engaging book will, however, make us feel better in a good way, with equal measures of wit and wisdom.
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There is no shortage in our society of messages extolling us to reach for things we don’t need at the cost of our precious time. What we need are messages encouraging us to spend more time with our kids, friends and family and taking better care of our physical and mental health!
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Work to be satisfied with having little, because if you do not, when you gain a lot you will still be unsatisfied! Put another way, nothing satisfies the man who is not satisfied with a little. The reason? The essential things in life are obtainable with very little, so simply gaining more, and more, will not increase more of what is essential in life.
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The majority of us are simply unable to accurately answer “what will make me happy” and “what will make me healthy.” Is it, Materialism? Money? Respect? Weight-loss? Power? Freedom? Fun? Love? Beer? We can work on these questions here!
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When wellness, fitness and nutrition are important to you, you can either follow popular fads, personal hunches, opinions of others or mass marketing invented to part you from your money or you can hire someone who has thought rationally and deeply about the human body for decades while being formally educated and trained within the health and fitness field. Logic and truth over opinion!
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The happiness of pleasure can never mean as much as the happiness we derive from the pursuit of excellence! Enlightenment is far more satisfying and enduring than mere entertainment; although they are not always mutually exclusive. Pleasure can never make up for the absence of purpose, direction and real meaning in our lives; the pursuit for self improvement naturally provides these things. Happiness from excellence is enduring; happiness from pleasure is shallow and fleeting.
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The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph
The Obstacle is the Way has become a cult classic, beloved by men and women around the world who apply its wisdom to become more successful at whatever they do.
Its many fans include a former governor and movie star (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a hip hop icon (LL Cool J), an Irish tennis pro (James McGee), an NBC sportscaster (Michele Tafoya), and the coaches and players of winning teams like the New England Patriots, Seattle Seahawks, Chicago Cubs, and University of Texas men’s basketball team.
The book draws its inspiration from stoicism, the ancient Greek philosophy of enduring pain or adversity with perseverance and resilience. Stoics focus on the things they can control, let go of everything else, and turn every new obstacle into an opportunity to get better, stronger, tougher. As Marcus Aurelius put it nearly 2000 years ago: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
Ryan Holiday shows us how some of the most successful people in history—from John D. Rockefeller to Amelia Earhart to Ulysses S. Grant to Steve Jobs—have applied stoicism to overcome difficult or even impossible situations. Their embrace of these principles ultimately mattered more than their natural intelligence, talents, or luck.
If you’re feeling frustrated, demoralized, or stuck in a rut, this book can help you turn your problems into your biggest advantages. And along the way it will inspire you with dozens of true stories of the greats from every age and era.
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Renowned media scholar Sherry Turkle investigates how a flight from conversation undermines our relationships, creativity, and productivity—and why reclaiming face-to-face conversation can help us regain lost ground.
We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection.
Preeminent author and researcher Sherry Turkle has been studying digital culture for over thirty years. Long an enthusiast for its possibilities, here she investigates a troubling consequence: at work, at home, in politics, and in love, we find ways around conversation, tempted by the possibilities of a text or an email in which we don’t have to look, listen, or reveal ourselves.
We develop a taste for what mere connection offers. The dinner table falls silent as children compete with phones for their parents’ attention. Friends learn strategies to keep conversations going when only a few people are looking up from their phones. At work, we retreat to our screens although it is conversation at the water cooler that increases not only productivity but commitment to work. Online, we only want to share opinions that our followers will agree with – a politics that shies away from the real conflicts and solutions of the public square.
The case for conversation begins with the necessary conversations of solitude and self-reflection. They are endangered: these days, always connected, we see loneliness as a problem that technology should solve. Afraid of being alone, we rely on other people to give us a sense of ourselves, and our capacity for empathy and relationship suffers. We see the costs of the flight from conversation everywhere: conversation is the cornerstone for democracy and in business it is good for the bottom line. In the private sphere, it builds empathy, friendship, love, learning, and productivity.
But there is good news: we are resilient. Conversation cures.
Based on five years of research and interviews in homes, schools, and the workplace, Turkle argues that we have come to a better understanding of where our technology can and cannot take us and that the time is right to reclaim conversation. The most human—and humanizing—thing that we do.
The virtues of person-to-person conversation are timeless, and our most basic technology, talk, responds to our modern challenges. We have everything we need to start, we have each other.
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Just returned from Mountain Biking in MOAB and PARK CITY, Utah, The REDWOODS and YOSEMITE in California and SAN JUAN ISLANDS, Washington State! I won’t bore you with all the pictures; they wouldn’t do the experience justice anyway! Stay active and engaged!
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What’s the formula for a happy life?
Neil Pasricha is a Harvard MBA, a Walmart executive, a New York Times–bestselling author, and a husband and dad. After selling more than a million copies of his Book of Awesome series, he now shifts his focus from observation to application.
In The Happiness Equation, Pasricha illustrates how to want nothing, do anything, and have everything. If that sounds like a contradiction, you simply haven’t unlocked the 9 Secrets to Happiness.
Each secret takes a common ideal, flips it on its head, and casts it in a completely new light. Pasricha then goes a step further by providing step-by-step guidelines and hand-drawn scribbles that illustrate exactly how to apply each secret to live a happier life today.
Controversial? Maybe. Counterintuitive? Definitely.
The Happiness Equation will teach you such principles as:
· Why success doesn’t lead to happiness
· How to make more money than a Harvard MBA
· Why multitasking is a myth
· How eliminating options leads to more choice
The Happiness Equation is a book that will change how you think about everything—your time, your career, your relationships, your family, and, ultimately, of course, your happiness.
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If you’re attempting to lose weight, I recommend that you stay away from liquid calories! Skip the Beer, Wine, Sweetened Tea, Soda, Fruit juice, Milk, Smoothies, etc. No VOLUME to these calories, meaning that you don’t get full or stay full. Cold liquid empties from the stomach faster than other temperatures as well. Drink Water, Sparkling Water, Unsweetened Tea, Black Coffee, etc.!
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Dairy Springs Campground, Coconino National Forest near Flagstaff.
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Many of us insist the main impediment to a full, successful life is the outside world. In fact, the most common enemy lies within: our ego. Early in our careers, it impedes learning and the cultivation of talent. With success, it can blind us to our faults and sow future problems. In failure, it magnifies each blow and makes recovery more difficult. At every stage, ego holds us back.
Ego Is the Enemy draws on a vast array of stories and examples, from literature to philosophy to history. We meet fascinating figures such as George Marshall, Jackie Robinson, Katharine Graham, Bill Belichick, and Eleanor Roosevelt, who all reached the highest levels of power and success by conquering their own egos. Their strategies and tactics can be ours as well.
In an era that glorifies social media, reality TV, and other forms of shameless self-promotion, the battle against ego must be fought on many fronts. Armed with the lessons in this book, as Holiday writes, “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.”
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Just like we need healthy food, clean water, sound sleep and solid relationships, we REQUIRE challenges; problems to be faced and overcome! That’s one of the reasons why some troubled people create their own problems. Of course, I’m not suggesting that you create your own, because there’s plenty to be faced without putting in a request, but I am suggesting that instead of resorting to anxiety, depression or avoidance that you simply engage the struggle and respect the process!
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