Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave (The Stoic Virtues Series)

by Ryan Holiday

“My dear Miss Florence,” Howe answered, “it would be unusual, and in England whatever is unusual is thought to be unsuitable; but I say to you ‘go forward,’ if you have a vocation for that way of life, act up to your inspiration and you will find there is never anything unbecoming or unladylike in doing your duty for the good of others. Choose, go on with it, wherever it may lead you.”

Indeed, in the so-called Hero’s Journey, the “call to adventure” is followed in almost all cases by what? The refusal of the call. Because it’s too hard, too scary, because they must obviously have picked the wrong person.

Fear does this. It keeps us from our destiny. It holds us back. It freezes us. It gives us a million reasons why. Or why not.

“How very little can be done under the spirit of fear,” Nightingale would later write.

There is nothing worth doing that is not scary. There is no one who has achieved greatness without wrestling with their own doubts, anxieties, limitations, and demons.

The Stoics, the Christians—they didn’t fault anyone for having an emotional reaction. They only cared what you did after the shine of that feeling wore off. “Be scared. You can’t help that,” William Faulkner put it. “But don’t be afraid.”

There is no room for fear. Not with what we want to do, anyway. This life we’re living—this world we inhabit—is a scary place. If you peer over the side of a narrow bridge, you can lose the heart to continue. You freeze up. You sit down. You don’t make good decisions. You don’t see or think clearly. The important thing is that we are not afraid.

It has been said that leaders are dealers in hope, but in a more practical sense, they are also slayers of fear.

You can’t let fear rule. Because there has never been a person who did something that mattered without pissing people off. There has never been a change that was not met with doubts. There has never been a movement that was not mocked. There was never a groundbreaking business that wasn’t loudly predicted to fail.

“There are always more of them before they are counted.” The obstacles, the enemies, the critics—they are not as numerous as you think. It’s an illusion they want you to believe.

You’re overestimating them . . . and they’re overestimating you.

They’re just as nervous as anybody else. They’re pretending too. And when you get up close, you’ll find the mismatch is hardly as great as you expected. A little awareness, a little empathy, it doesn’t make us soft. It gives us confidence. Now we see what’s really there. Now everyone else is more scared than we are.

But what, where, when, how, who? That we cannot answer, because we haven’t actually looked into it. We haven’t actually defined what so worries us. Our fears are not concrete, they are shadows, illusions, refractions that we picked up somewhere or glanced at only briefly. Well, that has to end. Here. Now.

Each of us needs to cultivate the courage to actually look at what we’re afraid of.

We need also to cultivate the courage to think about all the things that could happen, the things that are unpleasant to think about, the unusual, the unexpected, the unlikely. It’s not just a matter of reducing our anxiety about exaggerated uncertainties, it’s also about finding certainty in the unknowns—the risk factors, what goes bump in the night, the plans of the enemy, the things that can and will go wrong. Nothing human should be foreign to us. Nothing possible should be alien.

Foresee the worst to perform the best. When fear is defined, it can be defeated.

Don’t worry about whether things will be hard. Because they will be. Instead, focus on the fact that these things will help you. This is why you needn’t fear them.

Our bruises and scars become armor. Our struggles become experience. They make us better. They prepared us for this moment, just as this moment will prepare us for one that lies ahead. They are the flavoring that makes victory taste so sweet. If it were easy, everyone would do it. If everyone did it, how valuable would it be?

Be like the athlete, knowing what a hard workout gives you: stronger muscles.

“There is no better than adversity,” Malcolm X would say. “Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.” How could you possibly trust yourself if you had not been through harder things than this? How could you possibly believe that you might be able to survive this if you had not survived other things before?

It’s not bad that this is happening to you. It’s good training.

This moment is a test. They’re called “trying times” for a reason. It’s good that it’s happening now, instead of later—because later, you’ll be better for having gone through it today. Got it? You think it’d be better if things were easy. You wish you didn’t have to take this risk. If only the leap didn’t look so damn dangerous. That’s just the fear talking. It’s good that it’s hard. It deters the cowards and it intrigues the courageous. Right?

Does this anxiety help us? Cataloging all the dangers and problems? Letting our fear loom large? No!

It’s better to just get to work. To face what you’ve got to face sooner rather than later.

It’s when we imagine everything, when we catastrophize endlessly, that we are miserable and most afraid. When we focus on what we have to carry and do? We are too busy to worry, too busy working.

It’s very easy to judge. It’s very hard to know.

To know what another person is going through. To know what their reasons are. What interrelated risks they are trying to manage, who and what they are trying to protect.

Don’t bother with “What would I do in their shoes?” Ask: “What am I doing now?” In your own life. With your own fears.

right now we’ve

got plenty of our own stuff in front of us to focus on. Let us mind our business. Let us put in the work where it matters—not in condemnation or investigations. The bums in Washington . . . The bureaucrats in Brussels . . . The fools back in corporate. Yeah, they’re cowards. But what about you? What are you doing? If we are going to indict anyone for their cowardice, let it be silently, by example. Waste not a second questioning another man’s courage. Put that scrutiny solely on your own.

Fear determines what is or isn’t possible. If you think something is too scary, it’s too scary for you. If you don’t think you have any power . . . you don’t. If you aren’t the captain of your fate . . . then fate is the captain of you.

We go through life in two ways. We choose between effective truths: that we have the ability to change our situation, or that we are at the mercy of the situations in which we find ourselves. We can rely on luck . . . or cause and effect.

Yet it was because of his experiences in the Holocaust that Frankl was not ready to despair. He posed an urgent question to all future generations: Why did we bother to survive that awful hellscape if none of this has any meaning? What gives you the right to be so damn cynical? Still, the insidious modern phenomenon remains. People don’t think anything matters.

Scholars remind us that the opposite of andreia—the ancient Greek word for “courage”—is not cowardice. It’s melancholia. Courage is honest commitment to noble ideals. The opposite of courage is not, as some argue, being afraid. It’s apathy. It’s disenchantment.

It’s despair. It’s throwing up your hands and saying, “What’s the point anyway?”

The brave don’t despair. They believe. They are not cynical, they care. They think there is stuff worth dying for—that good and evil exist. They know that life has problems but would rather be part of the solution than a bystander.

We have to insist there is a point to all this—a point to our lives, a point to our decisions, a point to who we are. What is that point? It’s what we do. It’s the decisions we make. It’s the impact we seek.

All growth is a leap in the dark. If you’re afraid of that, you’ll never do anything worthwhile. If you take counsel of your fears, you’ll never take that step, make that leap.

If they could, if it wasn’t scary, everyone would do it. And then it wouldn’t need to be done by you, now would it? The coward waits for the stairs that will never come.

You are here for such a brief time. On this planet. In this job. As a young, single person. Whatever. How do you want to spend it? Like a coward?

Put yourself in a position that demands you leap.

We tell ourselves it’s about options . . . really it’s paralysis by analysis. All the while, somebody or someone else is making progress.

All certainty is uncertain. You’re not safe. You never will be. No one is. In putting safety above everything, we actually put ourselves in danger. Of being forgotten. Of never coming close. Of being complicit. How will you handle the danger? “What will happen to me?” No one can tell you that. But with courage, you can say yourself, “I’m not sure, but I will get through it with my soul intact. I will make the best of it. I will not be afraid.”

No rule is perfect, but this one works: Our fears point us, like a self-indicting arrow, in the direction of the right thing to do. One part of us knows what we ought to do, but the other part reminds us of the inevitable consequences. Fear alerts us to danger, but also to opportunity. If it wasn’t scary, everyone would do it. If it was easy, there wouldn’t be any growth in it. That tinge of self-preservation is the pinging of the metal detector going off. We may have found something. Will we ignore it? Or will we dig?

The pressure wants to smooth down the edges, lessen the resistance . . . or else. Or else what? we have to ask. “Though an army besiege me,” Psalm 27 reads, “my heart will not fear; though war break out against me, even then will I be confident.” It doesn’t matter who or how many come at you, you have to be you. Confidently. Authentically. Bravely.

Be original. Be yourself. To be anything else is to be a coward. Don’t let the opinion of cowards influence what you think or do. The future depends on it.

You just learn to stop thinking about what they think. You’ll never do original work if you can’t.

We don’t get to succeed privately.

You won’t get any of this if you don’t ask. You won’t get what you’re afraid to admit you need. So ask now, right now, while you have the courage. Before it’s too late. We’re in this mission together. We’re comrades. Ask for help. It’s not just brave, it’s the right thing to do.

You can’t win a battle or make a change you’ve quit on.