Mr Ryan Holiday’s new book investigates the detrimental effects that an inflated sense of self-belief can have on both your work and home life .

It’s the saccharine moral of many a Hollywood movie and TV sitcom: just believe in yourself and you’ll be a success. But is there such a thing as too much self-belief? If you ask Mr Ryan Holiday, the author of new book Ego Is The Enemy, the answer to this question is a definitive “yes”. A writer, marketing expert and entrepreneur who now advises media clients such as Refinery29 and Google through his company Brass Check, Mr Holiday also worked as director of marketing for American Apparel during the tumultuous period in which the company’s founder Mr Dov Charney was dismissed after being accused of various professional and personal misdemeanours.

It was this experience, among others, that taught him the havoc that unfettered egotism can wreak upon the lives of oneself and others. It’s an issue he feels is particularly relevant for our current, selfie-obsessed culture. “You see it everywhere around us, especially on social media,” he says. “These tools make it very easy to puff ourselves up, to show off, to talk, to manufacture an image. We start thinking we are constantly on a stage performing for an audience. And all this feeds our egos… But there has also been a shift in culture, especially here in the US and with today’s parenting models. We are told to believe in our uniqueness above all else. We’re told to think big, live big, to be memorable.” Such thinking, he says, can make it difficult for people to be objective about reality, and ultimately results in failure, however much belief they may have in their vision or professional prowess.

“The reality is that most projects are hard and complicated; most visions turn out to be laughably wrong,” says Mr Holiday. “I think there’s a better model to follow and it doesn’t involve people telling you how great you are from birth.” In the course of the book, Mr Holiday draws on various historical examples and thinkers to hammer home his point – that a certain level of humility and uncertainty is really what allows people to learn and grow as professionals and individuals. Of course, we at MR PORTER have got this all locked down (ahem). But we thought we’d ask him for a few ego-quelling tips in any case…

“Ego seeks the comfort and respite of talking. Because I am a writer I see this often. It is easier to talk about writing, to do the exciting things related to art, creativity and literature, than to commit the act itself. Writing is hard. But talking is always there. Talking – listening to ourselves talk, performing for an audience – is almost like therapy. ‘I just spent four hours talking about this. Doesn’t that count for something?’ The answer is no. Positive reinforcement is when you – to stay with the example of a book – talk about the ideas in the book, but not about the book itself. And you see the response, you are getting feedback, you are gauging the reaction of your audience. What I think is best to avoid is telling the world what we are ‘going’ to do.”

“In the book, I give the example of the American Civil War general George B McClellan, who turned out to be quite possibly one of the worst generals during that war. Why? The short answer is because he could never get out of his own head. He had this story in his mind, imagining himself as this leader of a grand army. His ego got the best of him. Someone who fought with him said that ‘his egotism is simply colossal – there is no other word for it’. And that was why he failed; and it cost tens of thousands of lives. What I’ve found while researching for the book is that successful people curb such flights of fancy. They ignore the temptations that might make them feel important or skew their perspective. One of my heroes, General George C Marshall, refused to keep a diary during WWII despite the requests of historians and friends. He worried that it would turn his quiet, reflective time into a sort of performance and self-deception for future readers. That’s what we need to do. We need to rein our imagination – that fantasy world we live in.”

“We’re often assured that passion, in the sense of unbridled enthusiasm, our willingness to pounce on what’s in front of us with the full measure of our zeal, is our most important asset. What I think usually gets lost there is that passion typically masks a weakness, in the sense that its breathlessness and franticness are poor substitutes for discipline, for mastery, for purpose and perseverance. And to be clear, I am not talking about ‘caring’. But what we need is purpose and realism. Purpose, you could say, is like passion with boundaries. Passion is ‘about’. (I am so passionate ‘about’ ___.) Purpose is ‘to’ and ‘for’. (I must do ___. I was put here to accomplish ___. I am willing to endure ___ for the sake of this.) Actually, purpose de-emphasises the ‘I’. Purpose is about pursuing something outside yourself.”

Ego is the Enemy (Profile Books) by Mr Ryan Holiday is on 7 July (UK) and out now (US)