[Music] this is not a book about me but since this is a book about ego I'm going to address a question that I'd be a hypocrite not to have thought about who the hell am I to write it my story is not particularly important for the lessons that follow but I want to tell it briefly here at the beginning in order to provide some context for I have experienced ego at each of its stages in my short life aspiration success failure and back again and back again when I was 19 years old sensing some astounding
and life-changing opportunities I dropped out of college mentors vied for my attention groomed me as their Protege seen as going places I was the kid success came quickly after I became the youngest executive at a Beverly Hills talent management agency I helped sign and work with a number of huge rock bands I advised on books that went on to sell millions of copies and invent their own literary genres around the time I turned 21 I came on as a strategist for American Apparel then one of the hottest fashion brands in the world soon I was
the director of marketing by 25 I published my first book which was an immediate and controversial bestseller with my face prominently on the cover a studio option the rights to create a television show about my life in the next few years I accumulated many of the trappings of success influence a platform press resources money even a little notoriety later I built a successful company on the back of those assets where I worked with well-known well-paying clients and did the kind of work that got got me invited to speak at conferences and fancy events with success
comes the temptation to tell oneself a story to round off the edges to cut out your lucky breaks and add a certain mythology to it all you know that arcing Narrative of Herculean struggle for greatness Against All Odds sleeping on the floor being disowned by my parents suffering for my ambition it's the type of Storytelling in which eventually your talent becomes your identity and your accomplishments become your worth but a story like this is never honest or helpful in my retelling to you just now I left a lot out conveniently omitted were the stresses and
temptations the stomach turning drops and the mistakes all the mistakes were left on The Cutting Room floor in favor of the Highlight Reel they are the times I would rather not discuss a public evisceration by someone I looked up to which so crushed me at the time that I was later taken to the emergency room the day I lost my nerve walked into my boss's office and told him I couldn't cut it and was going back to school and meant it the ephemeral nature of bestseller them and how short it actually was a week the
book signing that one person showed up at the company I founded tearing itself to pieces and having to rebuild it twice these are just some of the moments that get nicely edited out this Fuller picture itself is still only a fraction of a life but at least it hits more of the important notes at least the important ones for this book ambition achievement and adversity I'm not someone who believes in epiphanies there is no one moment that change as a person there are many during a period of about 6 months in 2014 it seemed those
moments were all happening in succession first American Apparel where I did much of my best work teetered on the edge of bankruptcy hundreds of millions of dollars in debt a shell of its former self its founder who I deeply admired since I was a young man was unceremoniously fired by his own handpicked board of directors and down to sleeping on a friend's couch then the Talon agency where I made my bones was in similar shape sued peremptorily by clients to whom it owed a lot of money another mentor of mine seemingly unraveled around the same
time taking our relationship with him these were the people I had shaped my life around the people I looked up to and trained under their stability financially emotionally psychologically was not just something I took for granted it was Central to my existence and self-worth and yet there they were imploding right in front of me one right after another the wheels were coming off or so it felt to go from wanting to be like someone your whole life to realizing you never want to be like him is a kind of whiplash that you can't prepare for
nor was I exempt from this dissolution myself just when I could least afford it problems I neglected in my own life began to emerge despite my successes I found myself back in the city I had started in stressed and overworked having handed much of my hard-earned freedom away because I couldn't say no to money and the thrill of a good crisis I was wound so tight that the slightest disruption sent me into a sputtering inconsolable rage my work which had always come easy became labored my faith in myself and other people collapsed my quality of
life did too I remember arriving at my house one day after weeks on the road and having an intense panic attack because the Wi-Fi wasn't working if I don't send these emails if I don't send these emails if I don't send these emails if I don't send these emails you think you're doing what you're supposed to society rewards you for it and then you watch your future wife walk out the door because you aren't the person you used to be how does something like this happen can you really go from feeling like you're standing on
the shoulders of giants one day and the next you're prying yourself out of the rubble of multiple implosions trying to pick up the pieces from the ruins one benefit however was that it forced me to come to terms with the fact that I was a workaholic not in a oh he just works too much kind of way or in the just relax and play it off sense but more if he doesn't start going to meetings and get clean he will die in early death I realized the same drive and compulsion that had made me successful
so early came with a price as it had for so many others it wasn't so much the amount of work but the outsized role it had taken in my sense of self I was trapped so terribly in inside my own head that I was a prisoner to my own thoughts the result was a sort of treadmill of pain and frustration and I needed to figure out why unless I wanted to break in an equally tragic fashion for a long time as a researcher and writer I have studied history and business like anything that evolves people
seen over long enough timeline Universal issues begin to emerge these are the topics I had long been fascinated with foremost among them was ego I was not unfamiliar with ego and its effects in fact I had been researching ing this book for nearly a year before the events I have just recounted for you but my painful experiences in this period brought the Notions I was studying into focus in ways that I could never have previously understood it allowed me to see the ill effects of ego played out not just in myself or across the pages
of history but in friends and clients and colleagues some at the highest levels of many Industries ego has cost the people I admire hundreds of millions of dollars and like Copus roll them back from their goals just as they've achieved them I have now at least peaked over that precipice myself a few months after my own realization I had the phrase ego is the enemy tattooed on my right forearm where the words came from I don't know probably from a book I read long long ago but they were immediately a source of great Solace and
Direction on my left arm of similarly muddled attribution it says the obstacle is the way it's these two phases that I look at now every single day and use them to guide the decisions in my life I can't help but see them when I swim when I meditate when I write when I get out of the shower in the morning and both prepare me admonish me to choose the right course in essentially any situation I might face I wrote this book not because I have attained some wisdom that I feel qualified to preach but because
it's the book I wish existed at critical turning points in my own life when I like everyone else was called to answer the most critical questions a person can ask themselves who do I want to be and what path will I take and because I found these questions to be Timeless and Universal except for this note I've tried to rely on philosophy and historical examples in this book instead of my personal life while the history books are filled with Tales of obsessive Visionary Geniuses who remade the world in their image with sheer almost irrational Force
I found that if you go looking you'll find that history is also made by individuals who fought their egos at every turn who has skewed the spotlight and put their Higher Goals above their desires for recognition engaging with and retelling these stories has been in my method of learning and absorbing them like my other books this one is deeply influenced by stoic philosophy and indeed all the great classical thinkers I borrow heavily from them all in my writing just as I have leaned on them my entire life if there's anything here that helps you in
this book it is because of them and not me the orator deanes once said that virtue begins with understanding and is fulfilled by courage we must begin by seeing ourselves in the world in a new way for the first time then we must fight to be different and fight to stay different that's the hard part I'm not saying that you should repress or Crush every ounce of ego in your life or that doing so is even possible these are just reminders Moral Stories to encourage our better impulses in Aristotle's famous ethics he uses the analogy
of a warped piece of wood to describe human nature in order to eliminate warping or curvature a skilled woodworker slowly applies pressure in the opposite direction essentially bending it straight of course a couple thousand years later Kant snorted out of the Crooked Timber of humanity nothing can be made straight well we might not ever be straight but we can strive for straighter it's always nice to be made to feel special or empowered or inspired but that's not the aim of this book instead I have tried to arrange these pages so that you might end in
the same place that I did when I finished writing it that is you'll think less of yourself 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 [Music]
