Ryan Holiday

Here’s what those same people haven’t told you: your passion may be the very thing holding you back from success.

The world would be a better place if artists, entrepreneurs, executives and creative types got better at explaining and selling what they do. More great stuff would break through in this attention economy we live in.

Especially if you work on anything remotely internet related. Because the amount of people making obscene, life-changing amounts of money doing what appears to be very little work is essentially infinite. Let me tell you, it doesn’t matter how well you’re doing, these people can make you feel like a chump.

“The worst thing in life that you can have is a job that you hate, that you have no energy in, that you’re not creative with and you’re not thinking of the future. To me, might as well be dead.” — Robert Greene

What should you do?

Sometimes you have to be dumb enough to be wrong. Really wrong. Because that’s ultimately how you turn out to be right.

These are books I loved so much that I read them in marathon sittings, wanting to get to the end but hoping they never finished.

Let yourself be gutted. Let it open you. Start here.