Ego Is the Enemy

Ego Is the Enemy
Author: Ryan Holiday
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2016-06-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 069819215X

The instant Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and international bestseller “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’ve found that history is also made by individuals who fought their egos at every turn, who eschewed the spotlight, and who put their higher goals above their desire for recognition.” —from the prologue Many of us insist the main impediment to a full, successful life is the outside world. In fact, the most common enemy lies within: our ego. Early in our careers, it impedes learning and the cultivation of talent. With success, it can blind us to our faults and sow future problems. In failure, it magnifies each blow and makes recovery more difficult. At every stage, ego holds us back. Ego Is the Enemy draws on a vast array of stories and examples, from literature to philosophy to his­tory. We meet fascinating figures such as George Marshall, Jackie Robinson, Katharine Graham, Bill Belichick, and Eleanor Roosevelt, who all reached the highest levels of power and success by con­quering their own egos. Their strategies and tactics can be ours as well. In an era that glorifies social media, reality TV, and other forms of shameless self-promotion, the battle against ego must be fought on many fronts. Armed with the lessons in this book, as Holiday writes, “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.”

Extreme Ownership

Extreme Ownership
Author: Jocko Willink
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2017-11-21
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 125018472X

An updated edition of the blockbuster bestselling leadership book that took America and the world by storm, two U.S. Navy SEAL officers who led the most highly decorated special operations unit of the Iraq War demonstrate how to apply powerful leadership principles from the battlefield to business and life. Sent to the most violent battlefield in Iraq, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin’s SEAL task unit faced a seemingly impossible mission: help U.S. forces secure Ramadi, a city deemed “all but lost.” In gripping firsthand accounts of heroism, tragic loss, and hard-won victories in SEAL Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser, they learned that leadership—at every level—is the most important factor in whether a team succeeds or fails. Willink and Babin returned home from deployment and instituted SEAL leadership training that helped forge the next generation of SEAL leaders. After departing the SEAL Teams, they launched Echelon Front, a company that teaches these same leadership principles to businesses and organizations. From promising startups to Fortune 500 companies, Babin and Willink have helped scores of clients across a broad range of industries build their own high-performance teams and dominate their battlefields. Now, detailing the mind-set and principles that enable SEAL units to accomplish the most difficult missions in combat, Extreme Ownership shows how to apply them to any team, family or organization. Each chapter focuses on a specific topic such as Cover and Move, Decentralized Command, and Leading Up the Chain, explaining what they are, why they are important, and how to implement them in any leadership environment. A compelling narrative with powerful instruction and direct application, Extreme Ownership revolutionizes business management and challenges leaders everywhere to fulfill their ultimate purpose: lead and win.

How to Be Your Own Best Friend

How to Be Your Own Best Friend
Author: Mildred Newman
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 98
Release: 2016-09-06
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 0425286398

What is real, lasting happiness? How does one achieve it? And why are so many people holding themselves back? At the heart of this profound, simple, beautiful book is the wisdom of Mildred Newman and Bernard Berkowitz, married psychoanalysts who encourage readers to both love themselves and to confront life’s hardest truths. A classic for more than three decades, How to Be Your Own Best Friend has already changed millions of lives. Now, open up your mind, and let it change yours. Praise for How to Be Your Own Best Friend “I want to tell you that it’s magic, but the whole point of the book is that there is no magic. So instead let me simply say that I can’t live without it.”—Nora Ephron “A wonderful prescription for the blahs . . . an antidote to weariness, discouragement or loneliness.”—Los Angeles Times “What the Berkowitzes unearthed . . . is a too-often-forgotten form of human intercourse called getting to know me.”—Chicago Tribune “A kind of psychiatric pep talk . . . directed at people who [are] learning how to operate themselves.”—The New York Times “Seductively jargon-free, presented in neat question-and-answer format.”—Houston Chronicle

Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps

Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps
Author: Jennifer Garvey Berger
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2019-01-29
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1503609782

Author and consultant Jennifer Garvey Berger has worked with all types of leaders—from top executives at Google to nonprofit directors who are trying to make a dent in social change. She hears a version of the same plea from every client in nearly every sector around the world: "I know that complexity and uncertainty are testing my instincts, but I don't know which to trust. Is there some way to know what to do when I can't know what's next?" Her newest work is an answer to this plea. Using her background in adult development, complexity theories, and leadership consultancy, Garvey Berger discerns five pernicious and pervasive "mind traps" to frame the book. These are: the desire for simple stories, our sense that we are right, our desire to get along with others in our group, our fixation with control, and our constant quest to protect and defend our egos. In addition to understanding why these natural impulses steer us wrong in a fast-moving world, leaders will get powerful questions and approaches that help them escape these patterns.

The 48 Laws of Power

The 48 Laws of Power
Author: Robert Greene
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 481
Release: 2023-10-31
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 0670881465

Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control – from the author of The Laws of Human Nature. In the book that People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum. Some laws teach the need for prudence (“Law 1: Never Outshine the Master”), others teach the value of confidence (“Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness”), and many recommend absolute self-preservation (“Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally”). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package, The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.

I Kissed Alice

I Kissed Alice
Author: Anna Birch
Publisher: Imprint
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2020-07-28
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1250219868

"Rivals-to-lovers, mistaken identity, and slow, slow burn... A loving homage to fandom and queer girls." —Victoria Lee, author of The Fever King For fans of Leah on the Offbeat and Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me, Anna Birch's I Kissed Alice is a romantic comedy about enemies, lovers, and everything in between. Rhodes and Iliana couldn't be more different, but that's not why they hate each other. Rhodes, a gifted artist, has always excelled at Alabama’s Conservatory of the Arts (until she’s hit with a secret bout of creator’s block), while Iliana, a transfer student, tries to outshine everyone with her intense, competitive work ethic. Since only one of them can get the coveted Capstone scholarship, the competition between them is fierce. They both escape the pressure on a fanfic site where they are unknowingly collaborating on a webcomic. And despite being worst enemies in real life, their anonymous online identities I-Kissed-Alice and Curious-in-Cheshire are starting to like each other... a lot. When the truth comes out, will they destroy each other's future? An Imprint Book "The swoony queer romcom of my heart... Pitch-perfect." —Rachel Hawkins, New York Times-bestselling author of Prince Charming and Her Royal Highness

The Obstacle Is the Way

The Obstacle Is the Way
Author: Ryan Holiday
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2014-05-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1591846358

#1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller The Obstacle is the Way has become a cult classic, beloved by men and women around the world who apply its wisdom to become more successful at whatever they do. Its many fans include a former governor and movie star (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a hip hop icon (LL Cool J), an Irish tennis pro (James McGee), an NBC sportscaster (Michele Tafoya), and the coaches and players of winning teams like the New England Patriots, Seattle Seahawks, Chicago Cubs, and University of Texas men’s basketball team. The book draws its inspiration from stoicism, the ancient Greek philosophy of enduring pain or adversity with perseverance and resilience. Stoics focus on the things they can control, let go of everything else, and turn every new obstacle into an opportunity to get better, stronger, tougher. As Marcus Aurelius put it nearly 2000 years ago: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” Ryan Holiday shows us how some of the most successful people in history—from John D. Rockefeller to Amelia Earhart to Ulysses S. Grant to Steve Jobs—have applied stoicism to overcome difficult or even impossible situations. Their embrace of these principles ultimately mattered more than their natural intelligence, talents, or luck. If you’re feeling frustrated, demoralized, or stuck in a rut, this book can help you turn your problems into your biggest advantages. And along the way it will inspire you with dozens of true stories of the greats from every age and era.

The Alter Ego Effect

The Alter Ego Effect
Author: Todd Herman
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2019-02-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0062838679

Now a Wall Street Journal bestseller. What if the games we played as children were the greatest gift to helping us achieve more today? Before stage fright, impostor syndrome, emotional baggage, and the other dubious gifts of adulthood, everyone pretended to be a superhero, a favorite athlete, an inspiring entertainer, a nurse, a firefighter, a lion, or whatever else captured our imaginations. And yet, that natural creativity is slowly squeezed out of us because we think it’s childish or it’s “time to grow up.” Now Todd Herman—backed by scientific research and countless stories from the real world—will show us how to tap into the human imagination to unleash new versions of ourselves, ready-made to kick ass. Herman has been coaching champions in every field for over twenty years, and he’s helped them bring out their Heroic Self to transcend the forces pulling them into the Ordinary World. Anyone attempting ambitious things faces adversity, resistance, and challenges, but Herman confronts these obstacles with a question: Who or what needs to show up to make success inevitable? In The Alter Ego Effect, Herman presents countless stories from salespeople, executives, entertainers, athletes, entrepreneurs, creatives, and historical figures to illustrate how to activate the Heroic Self already nested inside each of us. And he reveals that we may not be using those traits in the moments when we need them the most. From the creative entrepreneur who resisted their craft, to the accomplished military officer who wanted to be a warmer dad at home, Todd Herman’s clients have discovered there is no end to the parts of their lives they could improve by using Alter Egos.

The Sense of an Ending

The Sense of an Ending
Author: Julian Barnes
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2011-10-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307957330

BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.