Ego and Battling the Enemy Within: The Uyo Book Club September 2025 Reading Session
Clashing voices, doubling down on falsehoods, emotional outbursts, petitions… One thing connects them most times – ego; unfettered and unbounded.
And who is more renowned in modern literature for writing extensively on ego and its many expressions than Ryan Holiday?
“Ego Is The Enemy”, the Uyo Book Club’s September 2025 Book of the Month authored by Ryan Holiday, has been translated into over thirty languages, on many bestseller lists (including the Wall Street Journal), and praised by celebrated authors like Robert Greene and Steven Pressfield for its impact and wisdom.
This reading session deviated somewhat from the book reviews you have come to expect – every attendee had to give their opinion(s) on the book. How that is possible if you had no prior encounter with “Ego Is The Enemy”? The DEAR Moment to the rescue. We always set aside over an hour to Drop Everything And Read, only this time focusing on any or as many of the twelve chapters in this Ryan Holiday’s celebrated masterpiece.
Ms. Mfon Ebebe, the September 2025 Lead Reviewer, set the tone and the pace. Anecdotalizing with her decades-long experience as a classroom teacher, Ms. Ebebe stated time and again she has realized humility and openmindedness as a tutoring approach yeilds better communication with students – a core lesson in Chapter Three of “Ego Is The Enemy” titled “Become An Amateur”.
The Lead Reviewer also harped on titular obsession, especially amongst the Nigerian elite and lettered, who would cause a scene or breed animosity when all of their titles – academic, ecclesiastical, and traditional – are not spelt out and announced. This, she continues, are egoistical expressions and Ryan Holiday fittingly chose “The Canvas Strategy” urging readers to think like the canvas, not the painter as the book’s first chapter.
Dr. Udeme Nana, Founder of the Uyo Book Club, followed up with “Follow the Canvas Strategy”, the book’s fifth Chapter. The chapter addresses the issue of service – the attitude of interns or young gifted people to accepting their current status while diligently and patiently immersing themselves in assigned duties which they confuse as servitude and undignifying of their assumed statuses. Instead, he pressed on, the observed norm has been underlings wanting to bask in every beamed light of attention just for the chance to name-drop.
Dr. Nana insisted shedding the cloak of ego is the only way celebrated understudying and mentorship systems like the Igbo Apprenticeship System (now taught in Ivy league schools too) can take root, and its success has always been dependent on the lessons and messages Ryan Holiday communicates in “Ego Is The Enemy”.
Exemplifying with a topical and related issue which has been making the rounds in the social media space, Dr. Nana highlighted the viral response of Nollywood actor, Ime ‘Bishop’ Umoh (whom you will me more acquainted with as “Okon Lagos”), to a public admonishment by the Akwa Ibom State Governor, Pst. Umo Bassey Eno.
While most (young) people will have felt slighted, and while social media pundits had joined the fray writing lengthy, non-commissioned rebuttals in the celebrated actor’s defence, the actor’s response was completely at variance with the circulating back-and-forths: “Sir, I am available. What can I do for you, to serve you? Ask me. I am available.” His humility stunned everyone and gained him more respect across opinionated aisles on and off social media.
“Ego Is The Enemy”, the Public Relations Specialist added, ” teaches to subsume ego and identity, talk less, and do more.” And the suppression of ego correlates with the rise of social capital.
Control Your Emotions. This isn’t just an admonishment – it’s the Chapter Eleven’s title. Kingsley Mark Akpan addressed this. “From cases of domestic violence”, he explained, “to soured interpersonal relationships”, emotional reactions have led to countless loses. This chapter emphasizes the importance of staying calm, gaining perspective, and focusing on the lessons from, not just failure, but seeming aggression. Ryan Holiday, in the book, states that such reactions of shame, anger, or despair are egoistical and avoidably so when we learn to seperate identity from situations.
Personalizing it, Akpan continued, since reading works on psychology like “Ego Is The Enemy” years ago, he has learnt to bounce off arrowed words which would have otherwise triggered emotional reactions and has learnt to keep them under wraps.
From “Be For Others” teaching selflessness to “Don’t Tell Yourself A Story” which cautions against false narratives of assumed greatness, Dara-Abasi Akpan, Joshua Iwems and others did justice analyzing these chapters.
Yet the real poser which left everyone ratiocinating for minutes was asked by the Lead Reviewer, Ms. Mfon Ebebe, “What sets ego apart from self-esteem, confidence and pride?”
What if cautioning against ego somehow translates to a rallying to be timid and refusing to stand up for what is right even when the gathering conspires to do wrong?
Everyone had a go at this question, but as one reading this, what really is ego, self-esteem, and confidence? Are they mutually exclusive?
Regardless, “Ego Is The Enemy” is a book with lessons as timeless as human existence itself. The topics and issues therein are always going to be a part of society, but it teaches to be better versions of ourselves as we interact with the world around, constantly evaluating and grading how these interactions and reactions define us.
The Uyo Book Club holds its Monthly Reading Session on the last Saturdays by 4:00PM at Shakespeare Hall, WatBridge Hotels and Suites, (opposite Ibom Hall), IBB Avenue, Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.
