Confidence vs Ego: Why One Is Earned and the Other Is Stolen

Confidence vs ego comes down to where your belief comes from. Confidence is earned: it rests on work you’ve actually done, like knowing you can run five miles today because you ran five yesterday. Ego is stolen: it’s belief you haven’t earned yet, borrowed at a very high interest rate, and it cuts you off from the feedback and reality you need to get better.

That’s the distinction Ryan Holiday gave me when he came on my podcast in 2016, right after Ego Is the Enemy came out. He was about to turn 29. I was reading the book at the time and told him it felt like my whole world was in it. My first question was simple: why is ego the enemy? His answer didn’t give me a definition to memorize. It gave me a test I could run on myself. “Confidence is earned,” he said, “and ego is stolen.”

What’s the difference between confidence and ego?

Ryan was clear he wasn’t talking about Freud. He meant ego in the everyday sense, and he leaned on the football coach Bill Walsh, who described it as the point where “self-confidence becomes arrogance.” In Ryan’s words on the show, ego is the line we cross when “our confidence, our assuredness, our ambition stops being a productive fuel and starts becoming a form of self-sabotage.”

Then he made it concrete. “I’m confident I could run 5 miles this afternoon because I ran 5 miles yesterday and I’ve been training.” Ego is the other voice: “Of course I could run a marathon. I’m the best there ever was.” The first is based on evidence. The second, as Ryan put it, is “what we wish was true rather than what actually is true.”

Here’s the quick version:

Psychologists draw a similar line. Researchers separate authentic pride from hubristic pride: the first comes from effort and real skill, the second from feeling superior. Same idea. One is earned, one is taken.

When ego does the most damage

Ryan said ego is dangerous at two very different points in a career. The first is the start. You tell yourself, “I got this. Of course, this is going to be easy.” You underestimate how much real work it takes, and you quit halfway because it turned out harder than you thought. The person who expected it to be hard is the one who keeps going.

The second point is worse. It’s right after some success, when you start believing “everything we do turns to gold” and that it can never be taken away. That’s when people implode and wreck the thing they worked so hard to build.

What struck me is that ego doesn’t only talk when things go well. Ryan said when we fail, the same voice whispers, “They screwed you over. This isn’t fair.” I said it sounded like it’s on the same volume but just changes channel depending on where you are in life. Ryan brought up Anne Lamott, who calls that station KFKD, and said to turn it off. If the praise puffs you up, the trolls will flatten you. Ignore both and do work you’re proud of.

Purpose vs passion: why Ryan said don’t be passionate

Chapter four of the book is called “Don’t Be Passionate,” which sounds strange when everyone’s been told to follow their passion. Ryan’s point was that passion without direction is chaos. Purpose is “organized and deliberate,” and it’s aimed at something.

He gave two examples. George Bush was passionate about invading Iraq. Christopher McCandless was passionate about going into the wild, and he died out there. Then he made it practical. If you were hiring, you wouldn’t take someone unqualified, in debt and unreliable just because they’re “really passionate.” You’d want someone mature who shows up on time and is ready to learn. “I think you’ve got to apply that standard to yourself.”

That reminded me of something a friend had told me about relationships. He said love isn’t enough; effort is what’s required. “I love airplanes, but I don’t know how to fly one. I love sports cars, but I don’t know how to fix one.” You need a manual. You have to study, sit the test and do the practical. Business is the same. A lot of people get into it on love alone, without the effort, and the difference between being interested and being committed shows up the moment the work gets boring.

Ryan’s version for writers was blunt. Passion for an idea gets you to about chapter five. After that the words stop coming easily, and you need a deep love of the practice plus a real goal to get you through the editing, the marketing and the next book.

How to take feedback without letting ego defend the work

This is where the confidence vs ego test really earns its keep. Ryan said you need “enough confidence to be sure of what you know you absolutely need to have in the project but then enough humility and open-mindedness that you can take input.”

He lived it on this book. Early readers told him the intro and conclusion were basically in the wrong order, and he restructured it. Then he sent a galley, the near-final version, to Tim Ferriss. By that stage you’re not really supposed to make changes. Tim sent back a long list anyway. Ryan said it would have been easy to say it’s too late and the publisher will be mad. Instead he looked at the notes honestly and decided Tim was right. His estimate: the book got about 15% better.

I told him what I believe about this: “You’ve got to always be in the student chair.” You sit there and say, okay, I don’t know everything, and that’s fine. Ryan added that it’s easier when the feedback comes from someone you respect, which is one more reason to keep people around who are better than you.

Then he gave me a filter he credited to Neil Gaiman. Gaiman’s own wording, from his rules for writing in The Guardian, is: “when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.” So keep the first part and question the second. Something isn’t landing. Your job is to figure out why, not to argue.

Impatience is ego in disguise

Ryan sold his first book, Trust Me, I’m Lying, when he was 24. He was so convinced it had to come out right now that they didn’t even do galleys. Looking back, with the book still selling five years later, he said he obviously could have waited. “We want people to recognize how smart we are and before the work is out, that can’t happen.” That rush is ego. Every reader who picked up a weaker version is someone you have to work hard to win back.

I’d had a conversation with John C. Maxwell, who told me your first book is probably your worst. Ryan agreed and said he’s proud of that. Getting better with each thing you make is the point. He also said you have to be OK with a world where the book sells one copy, because the only thing you control is the work. If you can think that way, two readers feels lucky and a thousand feels like a miracle.

4 ways to keep confidence from turning into ego

When I asked Ryan for steps people could use right now, he didn’t give me affirmations. He gave me habits.

1. Train plus, minus and equal. Ryan borrowed this from Frank Shamrock, the mixed martial arts pioneer and UFC champion. Every fighter trains with someone better (plus), someone equal and someone they’re teaching (minus). The plus shows you what you’re doing wrong. The equal keeps you honest. The minus makes you explain it, and teaching is often the best way to learn. Ryan said you should have all three at work, at home and among your friends.
2. Turn dead time into live time. This one came from Robert Greene. Stuck in traffic, waiting out a contract or sitting in a dead-end job, you decide whether that time is dead or alive. “Often times we waste time out of ego,” Ryan said. If someone’s 30 minutes late, you can spend it calling them a rude jerk or you can read. He showed me a note card from his desk about Ian Fleming, who was forbidden a typewriter while recovering from a heart attack and wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by hand in the hospital.
3. Get small on purpose. Ryan quoted Bertrand Russell, who wrote in The Conquest of Happiness that “one of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.” A couple of times while writing, Ryan had to tell himself, “It’s just a book, man.” He started spending more time walking in the woods, on a beach in the middle of the night, on top of a mountain. It’s hard to feel full of yourself there. He meditates, too, and said it’s hard to have ego when you’re focused on the present moment. Back then I was living in Santa Barbara out in the mountains, and I spun the camera around to show him the view of the ocean and the valleys where I’d sit and meditate. He also said his relationship keeps him honest: if the book is amazing but it costs the person you love, is that really winning?
4. Take pride only in what you control. Ryan pointed to Michael Bloomberg, who has said, “I’m not smarter than anybody else, but I can outwork you.” You don’t control your IQ. You control your hours, your research and how much you put in. That’s where confidence should live.

You choose the ending of every story

Near the end I brought up a picture quote my friend Alexi had shared that morning. It went something like: was it really a bad day, or did you just milk a five-minute problem?

Ryan tied it straight to the Stoics. “You choose the ending to every story.” If someone’s rude to you at breakfast, you decide whether that ruins your day or stays an insignificant moment. They don’t get the other 23 hours unless you hand them over.

Here’s how I see it play out. We give an event a meaning. Keep repeating that meaning and it becomes a mood. Hold the mood long enough and it solidifies into a belief, and now it’s part of your programming, running your life without you noticing. Ryan took it one step further: you start making decisions from that belief. You’re in a bad mood, so you’re rude to someone who works for you, they stop trying as hard, they make a mistake, and now things really are bad. Ego turns a five-minute problem into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you want the practical side of that, the Stoic dichotomy of control is the tool. Ryan’s last 30 seconds came back to the same place. He reached for Kurt Vonnegut, whose advice boils down to be kind, and then the Stoic line he tries to live by: you don’t control what happens to you, you control how you respond.

Here’s where I land

Ego is sneaky because it feels like confidence. It even sounds like it. The difference is the receipt. Before you back yourself, ask what work you’re standing on. If you can point to the miles, the reps, the drafts and the notes you took, that’s confidence and you should use it. If all you’ve got is a feeling that you’re special, you’re borrowing, and the bill always comes.

So this week, find your plus, your equal and your minus. Pick one stretch of dead time and make it live. And the next time someone tells you something isn’t working, say thank you before you say anything else.

FAQ

What is the difference between confidence and ego?

Confidence is belief backed by real work and evidence, like knowing you can run five miles because you ran five yesterday. Ego is belief you haven’t earned, based on what you wish were true. As Ryan Holiday put it, confidence is earned and ego is stolen.

Is confidence the same as arrogance?

No. Confidence stays connected to reality and stays open to feedback. Arrogance is what happens when confidence goes past what you’ve earned. Bill Walsh described ego as the point where self-confidence becomes arrogance.

How do I know if I’m acting from ego or confidence?

Check how you react to feedback. If notes feel like an attack, or you’re rushing to be recognized before the work is ready, that’s ego. If you can point to the work behind your belief and still take notes, that’s confidence.

How do you build confidence without ego?

Train with someone better, someone equal and someone you teach. Use waiting time to read or think instead of complaining. Spend time in nature, and take pride only in what you control, like the hours and research you put in.

What did Ryan Holiday say about confidence vs ego?

On my podcast in 2016, Ryan Holiday said confidence is based on what’s real and earned through work, while ego is stolen, borrowed at a very high interest rate. He warned that ego does the most damage at the start of a career and right after success.