By Joe Byerly
I caught The Lumineers in Raleigh this week. During the show, Wes Schultz mentioned that he and his bandmate Jeremiah Fraites have been writing and playing music together for over two decades.
If you are a music fan like me, you know that’s rare!
Most bands don’t even make it past ten. Even one of the most popular groups in history couldn’t hold it together. As Dr. Colin Fisher points out in The Collective Edge: “The Beatles burned brightly for seven or eight years, but by the end, John, Paul, George, and Ringo avoided even being in the same room together.”
So what makes some bands fall apart while others last?
Ego.
In telling his story, Wes said, “To make magic you have to lay your ego down.”
Ego is that voice in our heads that craves credit, that needs validation from the crowd, that would rather look like we have our act together than actually put in the work to, in fact, have our act together.
Ryan Holiday puts it even more directly in Ego Is the Enemy: our egos are “an unhealthy belief in our importance. Arrogance. Self-centered ambition.” He believes it so deeply that he had the words Ego Is the Enemy tattooed on his arm as a constant reminder to himself!
Ego would rather break up the Beatles instead of keep making magic.
And it’s not just in music. We all have egos—and more often than not, they block us. They keep us from healing. They keep us from connecting. They keep us from growing. Our egos would rather have us believe we’re smart and competent than do the humbling work of actually becoming smarter and more competent.
I remember when I was a company commander and realized I wasn’t a great marksman. My ego wanted me to fake it. To have an excuse not to go to the range that day. But instead, I laid my ego down and asked Staff Sergeant Tommy Glasgow to coach me.
For several hours, we walked through every step of the firing process. He—a person several rungs below me on the hierarchy—critiqued my breathing, my finger placement, my posture. It sucked. It was humbling. But I got better. A lot better.
Looking back on it, the toughest part about the entire experience wasn’t the instruction—it was the fight against my ego.
And while that was a success story, I’ve had far more failures. Times when my ego pushed me to keep arguing long after I should’ve shut up. Times when I answered a question I didn’t know, just to look smart. Times when I shrank from a challenge, afraid the feedback would expose that I wasn’t as good as I thought I was.
Egos don’t just trip us up on stage or in our careers. They trip us up in life—in our families, our friendships, our marriages. No part of life is immune because ego isn’t outside us—it’s part of us. If we are there, so is our ego.
That’s why I pulled out my phone in the middle of a concert to capture Wes’s words: “To make magic you have to lay your ego down.”
Even as he celebrated two decades with Jeremiah, Wes was naming something that gets all of us. If, like Wes and Jeremiah, we can lay our egos down, we create space for magic. We say we’re sorry. We ask for help. We grow instead of just pretending we’re grown. And most importantly, we keep making music with the people around us—instead of letting ego break the band apart.
Joe Byerly is a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel with 20 years of service, including tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and command of a cavalry squadron in Europe. He earned numerous prestigious awards, including multiple Legion of Merits, Bronze Stars, the Purple Heart, and General Douglas MacArthur Leadership Award. In 2013, Joe founded From the Green Notebook.
A passionate advocate for self-knowledge through reading and reflection, he authored The Leader’s 90-Day Notebook and co-authored My Green Notebook: “Know Thyself” Before Changing Jobs, a resource for leaders seeking greater self-awareness. If this post resonated with you or sparked any questions, feel free to reach out to him at Joe@fromthegreennotebook.com.
