Ryan Holiday opens his book, Ego is the Enemy, with a quote from Richard Feynman, who said, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."Ego is such an important thing to master, especially as you attempt challenging work. Running a small business or private practice is not easy. At every step of the way, your ego can place you in a haze of delusion and allow your enthusiasm to blind you with overly-optimistic projections, assumptions about how the market feels about your products or services and big assumptions we make on the part of consumer demand and the amount of hard work that is required to achieve what our ego has convinced us should be easy.Starting a practice, raising a child, nurturing relationships, writing a book, running a volunteer organization – all of these things are hard enough, even if you've stripped ego out of the equation. If you don't master your ego, these pursuits can become impossible.Ryan Holiday shares in this episode of The Burleson Box, "If you believe that your success says something about you as a person, that it says that you're better than other people, that you're smart, that you're attractive, that you're special, that you're amazing, that you're all these things, which it doesn't, the problem is then, when you go through difficulty or failure which is an inevitable part of life, which happens even to incredibly successful people, the problem is now all of a sudden you think that your failure says something about you as a person, too. So, it's not good to have ego when you're successful, but it's potentially fatal to have ego when you're going through a tough time."On the program, you'll hear practical advice from Ryan Holiday and learn from several examples throughout history how you can put your ego in focus and manage it, so that you can do great work and achieve your goals.This episode is brought to you by Dentma. From Appointment Reminders to New Patient Satisfaction Surveys, Dentma's cutting-edge assistant, Ava, has your patient communication covered and is growing every day! Visit Dentma.com to schedule a demo today.Resources Mentioned on The Burleson Box:Ego is the EnemyRyan Holiday Reading ListSherman: Soldier, Realist, AmericanTruman by David McCulloughUlysses S. Grant: Memoirs and Selected LettersThe Red Queen EffectRaise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly IvinsGo Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, exclusive study guides, special edition books each quarter, powerpoint and keynote presentations and two tickets to Dustin Burleson's Annual Leadership Retreat.http://www.theburlesonbox.com/sign-upStay Up to Date: Sign up for The Burleson Report, our weekly newsletter that is delivered each Sunday with timeless insight for life and private practice. Sign up here:http://www.theburlesonreport.comFollow Dustin Burleson, DDS, MBA at:http://www.theburlesonfiles.comAffiliate DisclosurePrivacy PolicyTerms and Conditions Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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