I recently finished reading Ryan Holiday's book "Ego Is the Enemy." Holiday is like a modern-day Plutarch, the face of 21st-century Stoicism.

If we consider ancient philosophers like Seneca as the creators of Stoicism, then Holiday is their PR manager in the modern world. And that's not a joke. He's really good.

He has a whole series of books related to Stoicism in one way or another. I started getting acquainted with it with "Ego Is the Enemy." I finished it. It's a good book.

The main idea is reflected in the title. Holiday breaks down three stages that each of us has gone through:

1) The beginning of the journey — when we strive for a goal, want to achieve something.
2) The summit — when the goal is achieved, and we have gotten what we wanted.
3) The fall — when we fail along the way or after we have achieved something.

And at each of these stages, ego harms us. It harms in different ways, inflicts different damage. But one way or another, ego is always a modifier that complicates and worsens things.

Holiday talks about all this and also shares how we can cope with ego. Or at least try.

The book is good. First, I learned a lot of new things from it. For example, one of the finds is that very euthymia that I referenced in my New Year's greeting.

Second, it's one of the few books after reading which you don't feel like "well, I had a nice time, but what to do in the end?" Because Holiday doesn't just explain what ego is, but also what to do with it, how you can at least try to tame it.

After reading, I wrote a whole review. It's too big to post here, so I remembered that I have a blog and published it there.

I recommend it, in general. At least — check out the review, at most — the whole book.

Review — here.

What do you think about ego? Do you fight its manifestations or accept it as it is? Or maybe you have already reached that stage of enlightenment where ego sits quietly and doesn't stick out? Share.