What is the ego?

“Just one thing keeps ego around— comfort.”

-Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

In other words, do difficult work.

It’s hard to have an ego when you are constantly taking on difficult challenges.

Ego arises when you think you are better than others or better than you really are.

The goal here isn’t to beat yourself down, of course not. The goal is to learn where your strengths and weakness truly lie.

Ego creates a foggy view of the world.

There are many other things that you can use to help check your ego.

• Do intense workouts. You’ll realize soon that you weren’t as fit or strong as you thought.
• Start public speaking. The confidence you thought you had tends to go right out the window when you try to stand in front of a room of people and make a logical speech.
• Write something online. You think you can communicate until you try to put together an intelligent article that other people will see and judge.
• Try reading a philosophical book. Read any of the classic philosophers and see how much you understand your first try, probably not much.
• Wake up early. You’ll learn how disciplined you really are when the alarm goes off at 5 a.m. and you have a decision to make.

When you do difficult things like these, you start to understand yourself better.