Slow and steady - Ego is the Enemy

Your Ultimate Guide to building long term as drawn from successes in Ryan Holiday's book, Ego is the enemy: Everything You Need to Know

I love to run.

Especially in the evening, with the night breeze holding me in its grasp and carrying me forward.

All my thoughts fall away, and I'm airlifted by the music that blares through my ears.

I can’t hear the catcalls from the Boda Boda guys, nor am I bothered by the stares from fathers driving home to their wives and children.

It’s just me, my music, the wind, and a determination not to stop.

I observed something from my last run.

I split my 10 minutes run into two.

The first was in one direction and the second in another.

For the first one, I was excited, my body could not wait to start, and the only thing that was waving through my brain was, 'I love this!' I love this

I was smiling wrapped up in the joy of the thing I was about to do.

I took off at max speed, yet again still smiling, geared up, and unstoppable.

Believe me, when I tell you, it only took 2min for me to give out, my lungs set themselves on fire, my heart was threatening to stop, with a stitch conveniently showing up to the party.

I stopped and stretched, waiting for my body to calm down.

Ryan Holiday's book Ego is the enemy reveals that; the “bundle of energy” and zeal to go fast and hard, that our teachers assured us is our most important asset, is not as sustainable as we think.

That burning desire to start or achieve an ambitious goal and that innocuous motivation that people say is all you need is so far from the right track it hurts.

John Wooden felt that those extra emotions were a burden. Instead, his philosophy was about being in control and placing your entire focus on the task before you, and in turn, never being “passion’s slave.”

Breathlessness, impetuousness, and franticness are poor substitutes for discipline, mastery, strength, and perseverance.

So I remembered this as well as some lessons from Atomic habits as I took my breather and decided to try differently for my 2nd run.

I set a timer and started, slow and steady, free from the infatuation around the run, and instead, I focused on placing one foot in front of the other.

True to the book, I ran past my time, I ran past my distance, I ran soberly, I ran with strength, and I was able to call on to perseverance.

It was one of my best runs.

I have witnessed similar dynamics at work, where people are driven by a burning fire to prove and be the best and it dims just as quickly as it began. Trust me, I’ve been there too.

The strong urge to prove, to do it all at once, and fast is often driven by the ego.

The ego wants to look successful. wants to look like it's doing great, it's dying to be seen as progressing, as great, as knowledgeable, when really all it does, is it keeps us in a cycle of the exact opposite.

The needs of the ego are a perfectly normal thing, especially in your building or learning phase.

Here is what helps me silence it when I feel it coming;

• Breathing and being still.

I literally close my eyes and listen to my breathing. I was just as skeptical about the said 'power of breathing' as most people are, but I tried it and nothing brings me back to the present like it does. The ego hates the present. It loves to keep us in our head about the future and the past, it loves to stay in the future where we are rich and famous and it hates to do the actual work.

• Mentally acknowledge my ego's needs

Consciously acknowledging your ego's needs, in a sense silences it. Reason with it if you must. As I'm writing this, I just got off the phone with a friend asking if I could share contacts to women mentors who have done incredible things. For a split second, my ego went 'Me!'

I shared the contacts with him and reasoned internally with my ego.

Why do you think it should be me? On what basis? Aren't we just starting? I hear you and I know that you want recognition and validation, which is okay, but let's work on our proof of concept first, then we can raise our hand.

• Remembering your why and doing de ting.

It's so easy to forget, to get caught up and lose your sense of direction especially in a world full of distractions as we shall see in Stolen Focus. Remember why you started learning, why you started building and get on with it.

With this Ryan says, you are likely to achieve a euthymic state.

What Is Euthymia?

Euthymia is a Greek word defined as a steadiness of the mind, that focuses on the present, and on a buoyant assurance of your path with fewer distractions from it.

This results in clarity, deliberateness, and methodological determination. But too often, we proceed hastily driven by inspiration, to the best and biggest, youngest, firstest and the mostest to prove something to people who could give a bleep as we'll learn from Big Magic.

Slow and steady, is what thousands of successful folks advise us.

This holds, especially if you intend on playing the long game.

You don't have to rush, you have nothing to prove.

We saw it from my run, didn’t we?

What do you think?

Slow and steady or Fast Growth?