#Ego

A Bracing Lesson in Confidence and Clarity

Still, the quote doesn’t have to be read as an attack on humility itself; it can be read as an insistence on intellectual honesty. Genuine humility recognizes limits while still naming strengths plainly. Meir’s jab targets false humility: the kind that exaggerates weakness to seem virtuous, or that invites reassurance from others. This distinction matters because accurate self-knowledge is a foundation for growth. If you pretend to be worse than you are, you may avoid opportunities that would develop you; if you pretend to be better, you become reckless. Meir’s sentence compresses that idea into a blunt correction: be neither inflated nor theatrically small. [...]

Saving Money: Ego, Income, and the Gap

Finally, widening the gap is less about grand gestures and more about default settings. Automated transfers, spending rules that cap lifestyle upgrades, and waiting periods for big purchases all reduce the ego’s ability to impulse-spend in the moment. Equally important is choosing peers and environments that don’t demand constant signaling—because social expectations can quietly rewrite what feels “necessary.” Over time, these small structural choices create a stable separation between what you earn and what you feel pressured to display. And that is Housel’s point in action: the healthiest savings rate often comes from a smaller ego, not merely a larger income. [...]