Something is living inside each of us, but it is not our true selves. It is a version of us we created in our youth to protect our vulnerable inner beings from the threats of the outside world. It is a version of us we are feeding and strengthening every single day... but we don't realize we are doing it. It spends all its time and energy creating a world of deception around us. A world so authentic and addicting that we have forgotten how to find our way back home. A world where we move mountains to keep this being alive while we willingly neglect our true inner selves, leaving them to starve. Our egos are arguably the most destructive forces on the planet. If we look at many of the major issues that are plaguing us in our modern context, you can most certainly trace their roots back to peoples' egos and our blind obedience to this internal master driving our behavior. Our egos limit us in so many ways. They distract us from enjoying the present moment by ensuring we are always ruminating on the past or anxiously fearing the future. They limit our performance by injecting fear into our thoughts at the moments we need a clear head. They decimate our relationships by seeking self-aggrandizement instead of authentic connections. Therefore, we must ask ourselves the following questions: 1. Am I awake to the deceptions of my self-generated ego?2. Do I recognize the reality I am experiencing is a fictional world created to ensure my ego survives and thrives? I have been on a 11-year journey to confront my ego and remove its stranglehold over my life. This book reveals major pieces of that journey in a unique way. We will start by attaching a 365-pound bundle to me and jumping it out of a plane at 13,000 feet; we will discover hidden signposts that nudged me towards the path that leads back home; we will uncover the brutal 2200-mile Appalachian Trail arena that pitted me against my ego for hours, days, weeks, and months on end, showcasing just how intertwined and deceptive my ego was inside my life; and much, much, more. I created this book to help shake more humans awake and rob more egos of the power they hold over the world we are living in. This book is for those who realize something is hiding underneath the surface of their everyday experience. It is a book for those desiring to find their path back home.

A powerful meditation on the nature and dangers of ego, from the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Stillness is the Key, and Obstacle is the Way - over 1 million copies sold 'Re-read it each year. It's that important' Derek Sivers, author of Anything You Want 'Ryan Holiday is one of his generation's finest thinkers' Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art 'This is a book I want every athlete, aspiring leader, entrepreneur, thinker and doer to read' George Raveling, Nike's Director of International Basketball 'Inspiring yet practical' Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power It's wrecked the careers of promising young geniuses. It's evaporated great fortunes and run companies into the ground. It's made adversity unbearable and turned struggle into shame. Every great philosopher has warned against it, in our most lasting stories and countless works of art, in all culture and all ages. Its name? Ego, and it is the enemy - of ambition, of success and of resilience. In Ego is the Enemy, Ryan Holiday shows us how and why ego is such a powerful internal opponent to be guarded against at all stages of our careers and lives, and that we can only create our best work when we identify, acknowledge and disarm its dangers. Drawing on an array of inspiring characters and narratives from literature, philosophy and history, the book explores the nature and dangers of ego to illustrate how you can be humble in your aspirations, gracious in your success and resilient in your failures. The result is an inspiring and timely reminder that humility and confidence are our greatest friends when confronting the challenges of a culture that tends to fan the flames of ego, a book full of themes and life lessons that will resonate, uplift and inspire.

“Don’t read this book,” your Ego says. “Your life could change. And that scares me.” Sometimes our worst failures lead to our greatest transformation. In 2012, James McCrae left behind a comfortable life in Minnesota and a successful career in advertising to move to New York City and pursue his dreams of being a writer. Soon after he arrived, Hurricane Sandy ripped through the eastern seaboard. New York City was underwater, and James —jobless and running out of money—was suddenly homeless. Fleeing to the island of Culebra for refuge, James sat alone on Flamenco Beach while his greatest doubts and insecurities rose to the surface. What he discovered was his Ego—and it had a lot of sh#t to say. This story of adventure, redemption, and transformation reminds us that we all have two voices inside us: the Ego and the Higher Self. The Ego is our reactive, attached mind that tells us we’re victims of circumstance. The Higher Self is our source of intuition and imagination that reminds us we’re the creators of our reality. Sh#t Your Ego Says exposes the battle between these voices. With arresting honesty and candid, compelling prose, James takes you through practical strategies for overthrowing your Ego and reclaiming a life of creativity and freedom. Whether you’re looking to achieve meaningful career success, improve your relationships, or unlock your imagination, this book provides a no-nonsense roadmap to living with purpose.

New York Times bestselling author and leadership trainer says: Getting your employees to do their work shouldn't have to be so much, well, work!

Although the capacity for self-awareness is an essential aspect of human nature, self-reflection comes at a high price. Self-awareness and its accompanying egoism profoundly affect people's lives, interfering with their success, polluting their relationships with other people, and undermining their happiness. Drawing from work in psychology and other behavioral sciences, in The Curse of the Self, Mark Leary explores personal and social problems that are created by the human capacity for self-reflection and offers insights regarding how these problems may be minimized.

2017 Silver Nautilus Winner 2018 Indie Book Award Finalist ​ Take your ego out of the equation, and watch your company thrive! “I’ve got a solution,” Encore’s CFO tells Brandon, “but it’s unorthodox.” It’s 2005 and Brandon Black has just been promoted to CEO of Encore Capital, a company struggling to navigate an increasingly difficult business environment. Faced with a rapidly declining stock price and low workplace morale, Brandon knows he needs change—and fast. Following his CFO’s advice, he and his executive team start working with Learning as Leadership (LaL) and its president, Shayne Hughes. Through their partnership, Encore’s executive team learns to root out the unproductive ego habits that undermine collaboration and performance. As they instill these more effective behaviors throughout the organization, Encore begins to solve problems collectively, prioritize resources without infighting, and focus on the initiatives with the greatest strategic value. When the financial crisis of 2008–09 forces 90 percent of its competitors out of business, Encore thrives, with its profits increasing by 300 percent and its stock price by 1200 percent. Told from two lively first-person perspectives, Ego Free Leadership brings readers along for Encore’s incredible success story. They’ll see a CEO overcome his unconscious resistance to modeling the change he wants in his team and discover a time-tested roadmap for eliminating the destructive effects of the ego in teams and organizations.

The acclaimed author of Einstein’s Dreams tackles "big questions like the origin of the universe and the nature of consciousness ... in an entertaining and easily digestible way” (Wall Street Journal) with a collection of meditative essays on the possibilities—and impossibilities—of nothingness and infinity, and how our place in the cosmos falls somewhere in between. Can space be divided into smaller and smaller units, ad infinitum? Does space extend to larger and larger regions, on and on to infinity? Is consciousness reducible to the material brain and its neurons? What was the origin of life, and can biologists create life from scratch in the lab? Physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, whom The Washington Post has called “the poet laureate of science writers,” explores these questions and more—from the anatomy of a smile to the capriciousness of memory to the specialness of life in the universe to what came before the Big Bang. Probable Impossibilities is a deeply engaged consideration of what we know of the universe, of life and the mind, and of things vastly larger and smaller than ourselves.