Refusing the Crown

Recently I've been reading Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday.

One of the biggest lessons I've learned is that my ego... really is my enemy. Ryan didn't have to do a lot of convincing on his part for me to feel like that was true for me.

Something that stuck out in particular was the danger of praise and validation: if you breathe in the praise and validation, it can be intoxicating and cause you to take your foot off the pedal, and stop progressing.

People have, in a proverbial sense, handed me "crowns" in the past.

Crowns for what I've done, or (more often the case) crowns for announcing big things I want to accomplish.

And nearly every single time... I've taken it and experienced firsthand what Ryan Holiday is talking about in his book:

What we cultivate less [than negativity] is how to protect ourselves against the validation and gratification that will quickly come our way if we show promise. What we don’t protect ourselves against are people and things that make us feel good—or rather, too good. We must prepare for pride and kill it early—or it will kill what we aspire to do.

There are a few times (very few) where the crown was offered, but I refused. In those moments, I really felt like I was in full control. In other words, I kept working just as hard, sometimes harder.

When I did this, I didn't feel like I was living in a "dream", like I was prone to do in the past. I was living in reality, knowing that the only way to really accomplish what I said I was going to do was to work harder and longer hours, double down on what was working, and leave behind what wasn't.

And now I know that one of those things that doesn't work is breathing in the praise, which is like taking a sugar-coated pill with harmful side effects, namely: arrogance, pride, and hubris (just to name a few).

The plan now is to keep pushing forward, silently putting in the long hours of hard work, problem solving, and brutal bouts with my own ego and self-doubt.

This truth can pretty much sum it up:

Those who would make the best kings and queens are those who refuse the crown.