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HOW TO DEFEAT EGO

21:38·13 February 2020

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How to defeat ego.

In this episode I talk about how high profile athletes from Lance Armstrong to Tiger Woods have let ego undermine their true potential and what cautionary tales we can learn.

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Welcome to all you guys in podcast land

Welcome to all you guys in podcast land. Also, today is a one show I want to talk to you about the ego. I want to talk about ego and what the antidote to ego is and especially with reference to some high-profile sports stars, namely Mr. Lance Armstrong. And I've gone a chronicle kind of the different stages There were all in in our life. They're kind of tree stages that all of us fall into one of these tree buckets and Yeah, analyze ego and how it's harmful to us at all tree it is stages and Showing you what the antidote to ego is and how we can get around this I love these little stoic teachings and philosophies if you're into it definitely know in the comments Let me know in the comments down below I've been vlogging daily on YouTube. It's been good crack, it's been challenging, I've loved the concept of putting stories together, together. The edits I'm finding surprisingly cartotic and meditative, it's really hard to focus on anything else when you're editing. I'm gonna talk to you at the end of this about something about having an internal scorecard versus an external scorecard and the idea of we George our success on things like the amount of people viewing and the amount of people subscribing, it's to flawed metric for Georgian success and everything I say here today, you know, I might references to do with my career and what my full time is the moment between cycling and a one coaching and bringing you guys the content. But you can take all the stuff I'm saying and apply it into your own family life, personal life, work life. And we're going to talk a lot specifically about applying a true cycling, but obviously cycling is a metaphor for everything else in life as always. So let's dive into this and look no further or waffle no further. Ego. So my goal today is to show you how you can replace ego with which is something that's damaging and toxic to us all at every stage of our life with something which is which empowers us and lifts us up confidence and humility. And I actually have my own theory on on Hawaii confidence and humility, quiet confidence and humility. I'm not talking to Conor McGregor still at confidence, I'm talking in quiet inner confidence. Over here here, we just don't have, we don't have a lot of good examples of what a confident humble leader looks like. If you look around us to the people that we glorify and put up on pedestals, they're not quiet, confident, humble leaders or role models. They're normally extravagant, decadent superstars who prioritize material stuff over self progress, introspection. And yeah, we're in a very weird materialistic driven society. And I suppose that's reflected in the type of leaders we have. Or maybe the type of leaders reflects the society or the society reflect the leaders which can force the chicken or egg, who knows. So I'm going to talk about the tree stages of life, which you could possibly find yourself in. He could either be aspiring to do something. So that's the cyclist and he's on the way up. It's Lance Armstrong back in the day at 7-11. He's hungry. He wants to get ahead. We can be in the middle of great success. This is Armstrong at postal. This is Armstrong at Discovery, the Armstrong years, we'll call them those seven years. Or you can be experiencing exceptional adversity. So adversity is obviously in Armstrong, it's quite a visceral example because it's the post-op in confession and all the stuff that went on after that where he was publicly shunned and shamed. So that's where I picked Lance Armstrong to illustrate this because it's quite obvious and it's quite literal, the adversity. But adversity could be anything for someone a normal race and so like that's the could be just coming to the end so it can career. For somebody in work it could be just stuck in a job that you You don't particularly love at the moment and you just don't see your way out. Adversity comes in big, small and all sorts of little packages in between. But at each stage of this, whether you're exploring to do something when you're in the middle of great success or whether you are in adversity, ego is the worst possible thing you can have.

It's toxic, it's damaging and it drags us down in so many different…

It's toxic, it's damaging and it drags us down in so many different ways which I'm going to talk to you about. I bet you never thought you'd be listening to a podcast about ego and how to antidote to ego with confidence and humility. But that's what we do here. It's the new look A1 show, we tackle deeper topics and yeah, the old show was fun, given a bit of cyclone news, the up-hunchy one-liner, feel good factor, bit of banter with the lads. But this is a bit more substance to what I like to think. I might go since I'm rolling out the daily content. Look, there's no reason it has to be one or the other. If there's a demand for and if it's still a low for it, we can go back to the all skill A1 show style as well, maybe once a week. So let me know in the comments down below what you think of that one. If you're on podcast, I would encourage you to jump across onto YouTube and subscribe, so you're not missing all the A1 coaching TV on YouTube, so you're not missing all the daily vlogs because I'm letting you into my life. So if we're aspiring to do something, is the fourth stage and ego is definitely a problem here. But I want to give you a good example of somebody, if you're a hardcore music fan you might know this man's name. His name is Court Hammat and he was a guitarist for a grungy band called Exodus. Nobody really heard of Exodus unless you are really really hardcore. I certainly hadn't heard of them and Court Hammat, it was like me writing for a local team team and then team Inios come along and said, you know what, son, today's your day. They picked you out of the stand and said, you're going to ride real snacks season because that's what happened to Court Hamlet. He got the call from Metallica and we said, he said, you know, Vlad, we looked the court at your gym. We look at a joint Metallica. So Court Hamlet is a bona foyer rock star, one of the biggest stars on the planet. He's made it. He's in Metallica. He's a rock God, but what does he do? He seeks out the best guitar teacher in the world and he commits two years of insanely intense guitar lessons To hone his craft. So he made it and then he keeps working This is we've had a previous podcast on this Go back and check it out It's called the beginner's mindset and it's this idea of court Hammat didn't have a beginner's mindset If he had a mindset that, yeah, I've made it. This would have fallen apart from him. He would have, you know, maybe lasted a year at Metallica and they were saying, you know what, it's on you're not good enough. I moved on to someone else, but he got the head down. He done the work and he had the opposite of ego. He had a quiet confidence in humility. He was happy with where he was. He was happy to have even given the gig in Metallica, but he also knew I can't let the ego get the better of me here. can't think I've made it. I need to get the head down. I need to keep grafting. Parking that ego built one of the most successful rock careers of all time for Court Hammers. And there's a great Epictetus quote which springs to mind on this. And it's of anyone's first time viewer of the show, Epictetus, a stoic philosopher. A lot of the stuff I talk about in the podcast coming from stoicism and their teachings. Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, will be recurring teams on this. So, epictitus has a quote saying, it's impossible to learn that which you think you already know. Like, if that doesn't illustrate the beginner's mindset, I don't know what is. So I would encourage you to apply that into your own life and think where you are in your job. Do you have a quiet confidence and humility about you? Do you seek out and know that even the loneliest person in your office potentially has something to teach you? it to employ, I would encourage you to get that, employ it over to your own life and think about your current situation and think, you know, is there someone in the office, even the lowliest person in the office, someone that you deem, you know, 10 places below your standing, you can still learn something off them.

There's a lot of teachings you can learn off them

There's a lot of teachings you can learn off them. There's nobody out there who can't learn something off, but it's having that humility and the quiet confidence to go, yeah, I'm going to take time, I'm going to chat to this person rather than ego to go, you know I know absolutely nothing. There's nothing you can teach me. That's when you become real. That's when you become real. I think you can. Yeah, who was the famous call about the atom bomb? We've become this, the destroyer of universes or something like that. But the second phase of, well, you think about Armstrong in that setting and the spoiling setting. Armstrong, he very quickly came to that sort of ego driven position of, of noting to learn that I have stopped there's no potential for growth when you get to that point and it's a dangerous dangerous place to be. The second phase of this journey through life is when we start succeeding and at this point the ego will tell us we're special we're above the rules. We don't need to pay attention to normal customs, norms, traditions. Nothing bad can happen to me. I'm bigger than the sport, I'm bigger than my job, I'm bigger than my friend's circles. It's a horrible, horrible trait to see in people. And this ego, there's so many high profile examples of this. You know, we've toyed our woods and it's whole life falling apart and they taught, you know, I can do what I want and there will be no consequences and we've seen that absolute, you know, two types of Tiger Woods. The Tiger Woods before this, break before this, and all the news about his personal life broke and the Tiger Woods after. It had such a profound impact on his golf game. So he clearly wasn't above this stuff. You know, parking the morality of his infidelity and his utter extra-martial affairs, Perkin all that. The idea that he taught, he was a buff scandal, the idea that he taught, he was a over approach and that it wouldn't have an impact that his golf game was that perfect. It didn't matter what happened in his personal life, that it wouldn't impact his golf game and it clearly it tore him apart and we have a great example on this when you're succeeding because what you typically see when people succeed is the head swelling, ego takes over, I've made it I'm Billy Big Balls and what happens they they're elevated so they bring everyone else down and they say I'm superior but what would a confident humble person do Marcus Aurelius is widely touted as one of the most successful Roman emperors ever and Marcus Aurelius was elected into Rome and the first thing Marcus Aurelius done when he was elected he decreed a lot that you could have a dual emperor of Rome so he's just been elected emperor of Rome the was powerful position in the world to give context. This is not like the United States president. Rome spanned half the world. And Marcus, instead of Marcus, there he is, me, our buddy Marcus. And Marcus Aurelius, what he'd done as soon as he was elected, he said, you know what's possible to have a joint emperor. And he appointed his broader joint emperor. So the previous example of when somebody gets power, they push everyone else down and elevate themselves. As soon as he got power, he lifted someone else up to his level to keep him humble and to make sure that ego, that all-important devil on the shoulder stayed in check. And a great example of how that paid back for him was because it paid him back in spades in humility and Rome went through a difficult recession under Marcus Aurelius and he was faced like any leader's faced like you know we were faced in around Europe with the Troika putting pretty brutal austerity measures in place. He was faced with the same conundrum as any leader where he needed to generate cash. So there's a couple of ways he could generate cash. He could levy taxes on the poor people. He could use quantitative easing by printing more currency and devaluing currency supply, so making the purchasing power of money in everyone's pocket less valuable. But he chose neither of these two options. He chose to walk through his imperial palace and he just pointed at stuff.

He sold off all Rome's jewels to raise cash

That, that, that. And he sold off all Rome's jewels to raise cash. And the idea being that forced I'm gonna suffer before the people suffer. Like that's ultimate humility. And the towards the edge that we can potentially find ourselves in, it's when we're failing, when all around us is when all around us start to crumble. The Lance Armstrong example, as we said, it's pretty literal because he went on Oprah Winfrey and he answered that series of yes or no questions. How good was that? I remember it was late at night. I was living in Canada at the time, but I was back in Ireland and I stayed up for this. It was the whole world watching it. I stayed up for this Oprah interview and I streamed it on my iPad in my bed my parents house. Most of me 2am and she started off the interview and she said, true all your seven Tour de France victories, did you take performance enhancing drugs? And he said yes. And I was just like what the actual fuck? And then she went on to ask him a series of yes and no questions which he answered yes to all about performance enhancing drugs. It was insane. So basically from that moment, the Armstrong dynasty fell apart, his legacy completely ruined. And ego will pull you down in a situation like that. It'll pull you down really badly because ego, the fuel for ego is opinion. It's what people think you what people are saying about you. Warren Buffett, one of the greatest investors of all time, Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett has a great way for dealing with this. Warren Buffett says he looks to keep an internal scorecard and an external scorecard. So the external scorecard he doesn't worry about, perception worries about that, the public worries about it. He largely can control the external scorecard and it's things that aren't that important to him. Like if If you're to look at Warren Buffett, he's one of the richest men in the world and he works out of a very, very humble office in Oklahoma. And I think he's one staff and it's brilliant to watch in his majority shareholder in Coca-Cola, Jealous, Pepsi, a bunch of other amazingly big companies. But I digress, I digress as I often do. So this outside scorecard tings from me at the moment on the outside scorecard to personalize it. of YouTube subscribers. The amount of views, the videos are getting the amount of likes. I know I'm encouraging you guys to like it. If you haven't do like it. That was the thumbs down. I want to tone up these metrics. They're the outside scorecard. Like I'm making these daily videos because it's a challenge offset myself. I love that you guys are watching and interacting, but I can't get my sense of happiness. I can't get my sense of peace from you guys watching because I largely can't control it. I can make better content but I want to make better content for myself and my progression, my new year's resolution, which is to make video content, learn storytelling. And a natural progression for me on that is improved in the quality of my photography skills, my videography skills and my editing. If that attracts more of yours, brilliant. But I can control more of yours common, YouTube algorithm controls that. I can play it with you guys for likes and subscribes but up to a point that's not going to work but I can't get my kicks from that because if I get my kicks from that I'm leading my happiness to someone else. Likewise I can't, you know, you can buy a house but you can't make that house and press people. You can't make your parents be proud of you. These are all output things that other people to saw it. You can be in charge of your internal scorecard. You can be in charge of where you're happy with how your day went. Are you happy with the relationship you have with your parents? Are you happy with the quality of time you spend with your girlfriend? Are you happy with the amount of personal productivity, your personal self-progression? Are you happy with that? These are things that we can control. And having this internal versus external scorecard is very important and it's important specifically that we build our identity on our internal scorecard and not our external scorecard.

If our identity is built on the amount of Twitter followers, YouTube…

If our identity is built on the amount of Twitter followers, YouTube subscribers or Instagram followers that we have we're setting ourselves up for a very unhappy life. If our identity is built on those internal pieces that's a very different thing and it's setting us up to have a much much happier life. And there's a great quote again in Marcus Aurelius one as I like to quote the great man so often he said now listen to this one and take now pause the video if you're watching on YouTube and go and get a pen and write this one down except success without arrogance and let failure go within difference it's a great mantra for life I'm gonna read it again accept success without arrogance and let failure go within difference so what I'm saying to you is to antidote to ego because ego in all those tree stages of your life will undermine you, will turn you into a bit of a prick, will make you pretty much undesirable to be around and ultimately undermine your own happiness. How you can build confidence, in my opinion. It's a difficult thing to do. I've experimented in all guys's with how you build confidence. I've spent a long time studying real leaders. Like I talked at the beginning, we don't have a lot of humble, confident leaders. So we're not even sure what that looks like. So I spent a lot of time researching humble, confident leaders and one of the traits I find with them is continuing self-progression and self-development. In a non-bost for bragging way, just quietly going about their stuff, constantly learning. And I want to tell you a story about Malcolm Little. No one here probably has heard of Malcolm Little, unless you're exceptionally well read. Welcome Little was a pretty low level criminal from Harlem and he was sentenced to 10 years in jail for low level petty crime. And when he was in jail he went on the rape force year, you know, he wrecking shit, getting in fights, just generally being a badass prisoner for the force year and then he reflected in the talk, can't he, another 9 years of this. So he went down to the library, got himself a dictionary from the library and a blank notebook. And he went on and he transcribed the dictionary. Word for word, he transcribed the dictionary. And he learned a bunch of new words he never knew. And this got him thinking and this started to inquisitive self-development journey. Then he got a book, then he got a second book, then he got a torrid book. Then he devoured every book he could find specifically on history, politics, philosophy, economics, with Verrod the books, took studious notes to the point that he completely ruined his eyesight, riding over such dimly lit books and he'd have to wear glasses for the rest of his life. Malcolm Little emerged from prison after 10 years to the name you might better know him as Malcolm X. So, Malcolm X was built through education. Malcolm X was built through that consistent determination for self improvement and self development. So I'd say to you that the antidote to ego and the way to build confidence and acquire humility, it's constantly self progressing, constantly reading, constantly learning, we're blessed, we're in a mirror with stuff like this podcast and educational video where we can constantly learn and evolve and grow our minds. So just be aware of what you are putting into your mind. And here's a brilliant Marcus Aurelius quotes that I want to finish on. So you could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do, what you say and what you think. You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do, what you say and what you think. This has been the A1 Show. Thanks for watching.

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Communitysolo

HOW TO DEFEAT EGO

21:38·13 February 2020

Listen on

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How to defeat ego.

In this episode I talk about how high profile athletes from Lance Armstrong to Tiger Woods have let ego undermine their true potential and what cautionary tales we can learn.

READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT

Searchable, deep-linkable, every word.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT5 SECTIONS

Welcome to all you guys in podcast land

It's toxic, it's damaging and it drags us down in so many different…

There's a lot of teachings you can learn off them

He sold off all Rome's jewels to raise cash

If our identity is built on the amount of Twitter followers, YouTube…

NEVER MISS AN EPISODE

Weekly insights from the podcast. The stuff that actually makes you faster.

USE THESE TOOLS

RELATED EPISODES

More episodes you might enjoy

Episode

Community19:30

THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE FESTINA AFFAIR (WHAT REALLY HAPPENED)

Go check out our FREE Skool community, it's got amazing tools in there and a thriving community of cyclists - https://www.skool.com/roadman/about

Episode

Community10:08

THIS IS EXACTLY HOW PRO RIDERS FUEL A STAGE IN THE GIRO WITH CHRIS HARPER

Go check out our FREE Skool community, it's got amazing tools in there and a thriving community of cyclists - https://www.skool.com/roadman/about

Episode

Community18:10

THE RISE AND FALL OF CAMPAGNOLO (WHAT HAPPENED)

LIKED THIS EPISODE?

Join the Clubhouse to discuss this episode, ask Anthony your questions, and connect with serious cyclists.

Join the Clubhouse — Free More Episodes

HOW TO DEFEAT EGO

Welcome to all you guys in podcast land

It's toxic, it's damaging and it drags us down in so many different…

There's a lot of teachings you can learn off them

He sold off all Rome's jewels to raise cash

If our identity is built on the amount of Twitter followers, YouTube…

NEVER MISS AN EPISODE

RELATED EPISODES

THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE FESTINA AFFAIR (WHAT REALLY HAPPENED)

THIS IS EXACTLY HOW PRO RIDERS FUEL A STAGE IN THE GIRO WITH CHRIS HARPER

THE RISE AND FALL OF CAMPAGNOLO (WHAT HAPPENED)

RELATED CONTENT

UNBOUND GRAVEL 2026: THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO GRAVEL'S BIGGEST DAY

MARCO PANTANI: THE MADONNA DI CAMPIGLIO TEST, THE MAFIA FILE, AND A DEATH ITALY HASN'T CLOSED

WHAT TO EXPECT AT A CYCLING TRAINING CAMP

LIKED THIS EPISODE?

HOW TO DEFEAT EGO

Welcome to all you guys in podcast land

It's toxic, it's damaging and it drags us down in so many different…

There's a lot of teachings you can learn off them

He sold off all Rome's jewels to raise cash

If our identity is built on the amount of Twitter followers, YouTube…

NEVER MISS AN EPISODE

RELATED EPISODES

THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE FESTINA AFFAIR (WHAT REALLY HAPPENED)

THIS IS EXACTLY HOW PRO RIDERS FUEL A STAGE IN THE GIRO WITH CHRIS HARPER

THE RISE AND FALL OF CAMPAGNOLO (WHAT HAPPENED)

RELATED CONTENT

UNBOUND GRAVEL 2026: THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO GRAVEL'S BIGGEST DAY

MARCO PANTANI: THE MADONNA DI CAMPIGLIO TEST, THE MAFIA FILE, AND A DEATH ITALY HASN'T CLOSED

WHAT TO EXPECT AT A CYCLING TRAINING CAMP

LIKED THIS EPISODE?