My ego was the enemy, a review of Ego is the Enemy

Kent Fenwick
4 min readJul 6, 2016

I thought I was better than Ryan Holiday.

I read his book, Trust me I’m Lying, and came away with a few tips and general feeling that he was probably a jerk and not someone that I would want to work with or for.

I looked him up on Google, read scathing reviews and that further made up my mind, Ryan was a cocky guy who got lucky and wrote a book about it pretending to know what he was talking about.

“A victim of the narrative fallacy” I would say to myself while sipping my brandy wearing my suede penny loafers, “a real douchebag”.

Every time Ryan would quote some philosopher or boast about how much he read, I would dislike him more and more, “what a boasting jerk this guy is, pshht, I don’t care how much you read Ryan, I read a lot too!”

I meditate you see, I have right thought and practice right action. I have been meditating for 8 years, everyday, I am better than this guy who put some porn stars in some clothing ads and sold some american made leggings, “what a jerk”, I would think.

Then a funny thing happened.

I finished the book and decided to read it again.

Then I told some friends about this “jerk / boasting asshole”’s book and even bought a few of them a copy. Even though I…

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Kent Fenwick
Kent Fenwick

Written by Kent Fenwick

VP of Growth @clearbanc. I help companies grow. At the intersection of marketing, software development and product.

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