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

by Ryan Holiday

“Virtue” can seem old-fashioned. Yet virtue—arete—translates to something very simple and very timeless: Excellence. Moral. Physical. Mental.

In the ancient world, virtue was comprised of four key components. Courage. Temperance. Justice. Wisdom.

The “touchstones of goodness,” the philosopher king Marcus Aurelius called them. To millions, they’re known as the cardinal virtues, four near-universal ideals adopted by Christianity and most of Western philosophy, but equally valued in Buddhism, Hinduism, and just about every other philosophy you can imagine. They’re called “cardinal,” C. S. Lewis pointed out, not because...

What good is courage if not applied to justice? What good is wisdom if it doesn’t make us more modest?

North, south, east, west—the four virtues are a kind of compass (there’s a reason that the four points on a compass are called the “cardinal directions”). They guide us. They show us where we are and what is true.

Physical courage is a knight riding into battle. It’s a firefighter rushing into a burning building. It’s an explorer setting out for the arctic, defying the elements. Moral courage is a whistleblower taking on powerful interests. It’s the truth teller who says what no one else will say. It’s the entrepreneur going into business for themselves, against all odds. The martial courage of the soldier and the mental courage of the scientist. But it doesn’t take a philosopher to see that these are actually the same thing. There aren’t two kinds of courage. There is only one. The kind where you put your ass on the line. In some cases literally, perhaps fatally. In other cases it’s figurative, or financial. Courage is risk.

Churchill had to persevere through a difficult childhood with unloving parents. It took courage to ignore the teachers who thought him dumb. To head off as a young war correspondent, then to be taken prisoner and make a harrowing escape. It takes guts to run for public office. It took courage each time he published something as a writer. There was the decision to change political parties. To enlist in World War I. The awful years in the political wilderness when opinion turned against him. Then there was the rise of Hitler, and standing alone against Nazism in his finest hour of finest hours. But there was also the courage to carry on when he was tossed ungratefully out of political life again, in the wilderness again, and the courage to come back once more. The courage to take up painting in old age and put his work out in the world. To stand up against Stalin and the Iron Curtain, and on and on and on . . .

In an ugly world, courage is beautiful. It allows beautiful things to exist.

It’s impossible to beat an enemy you do not understand, and fear—in all its forms, from terror to apathy to hatred to playing it small—is the enemy of courage. We are in a battle against fear. So we have to study fear, get familiar with it, grapple with its causes and symptoms. This is why the Spartans built temples to fear. To keep it close. To see its power. To ward it off.

The brave are not without fear—no human is—rather, it’s their ability to rise above it and master it that makes them so remarkable. In fact, it must be said that greatness is impossible without doing this.

Each of us has had some version of this conversation, when an adult does us the cruel injustice—whatever their intentions—of puncturing our little bubble. They think they are preparing us for the future, when really they’re just foisting upon us their own fears, their own limitations. Oh, what this costs us. And what courage it deprives the world.

It’s a terrible paradox: You’d have to be crazy not to hear them when they tell you you’re crazy.

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.

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.

Do you know what the most repeated phrase in the Bible is? It’s “Be not afraid.”

“Be scared. You can’t help that,” William Faulkner put it. “But don’t be afraid.”

It’s an essential distinction. A scare is a temporary rush of a feeling. That can be forgiven. Fear is a state of being, and to allow it to rule is a disgrace. One helps you—makes you alert, wakes you up, informs you of danger. The other drags you down, weakens you, even paralyzes you. In an uncertain world, in a time of vexing, complicated problems, fear is a liability. Fear holds you back. It’s okay to be scared. Who wouldn’t be? It’s not okay to let that stop you.

The receiver can’t catch the football if they flinch in anticipation of the hit. The artist can’t deliver the performance if they tremble at the ready pens of the critics. The politician will rarely make the right decision if they worry about the consequences at the polls. The family will never get started if all the couple can think about is how hard it’s going to be. There is no room for fear. Not with what we want to do, anyway.

F.E.A.R. False impressions that feel real.

People would rather be complicit in a crime than speak up. People would rather die in a pandemic than be the only one in a mask. People would rather stay in a job they hate than explain why they quit to do something less certain. They’d rather follow a silly trend than dare question it; losing their life savings to a burst bubble is somehow less painful than seeming stupid for sitting on the sidelines while the bubble grew. They’d rather go along with something that will tarnish their legacy than raise their voice ever so slightly and risk standing alone or apart for even ten minutes.

“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.

“It occurred to me at once that Harris had been as much afraid of me as I had of him,” Grant would write. “This was a view of the question I had never taken before; but it was one I never forgot afterwards. From that event to the close of the war, I never experienced trepidation upon confronting an enemy, though I always felt more or less anxiety. I never forgot that he had as much reason to fear my forces as I had his. This lesson was valuable.”

But you have to understand: They are not nearly as formidable as your mind makes you think. Whether it’s the fear you feel approaching a famous person at a party, talking to your kids about sex, or asking your boss for a raise, the reality is that both sides are uncomfortable, if not afraid. The trepidation is mutual. You’re overestimating them . . . and they’re overestimating you.

The gruff director your first day on set, the drill sergeant with a fresh batch of green recruits, the front office executive negotiating your contract—their aura of certainty is an illusion. They’re just as nervous as anybody else. They’re pretending too.

It was Aristotle who said that the optimistic are the most vulnerable, because “when the result does not turn out as expected, they run away.”

Foresee the worst to perform the best. When fear is defined, it can be defeated. When downside is articulated, it can be weighed against upside. When the wolves are counted, there are fewer of them. Mountains turn out to be molehills, monsters turn out just to be men. When our enemies are humanized, they can be better understood. What we thought were incredible costs turn out to be clear calculations—calculations well worth making. The risks, it is revealed, were far outpaced by the rewards. Black swans come into view and can be prepared for. Attacks that we’ve anticipated can be repulsed. The spectrum of possibilities is reduced, the scope of Murphy’s Law is diminished. Vague fear is sufficient to deter us; the more it is explored, the less power it has over us. Which is why we must attack these faulty premises and root them out like the cancers they are.

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.

“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.”

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.

It could be said that fear is the one thing we all have in common. We all feel anxiety, worry, doubt, stress. From kids to kings, soldiers to stay-at-home parents, we all feel it sharply in moments big and small.

“Don’t let your reflection on the whole sweep of life crush you,” Marcus Aurelius said. “Don’t fill your mind with all the bad things that might still happen. Stay focused on the present situation and ask yourself why it’s so unbearable and can’t be survived.”

We can’t forget that all the energy we spend fearing that we’ll make it worse is energy not spent making it better.

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.

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.

Then we wonder why nobody has any courage. What would be the point? While sad, this attitude is safe because it’s based on “facts.” It lowers the stakes. It eliminates judgment, pressure, the idea that we can let ourselves or anyone else down. It gives us the excuse to continue as is, never risking, never trying, never needing to put ourselves in danger.

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?”

If you fear that there isn’t anything you can do, chances are you will do nothing. You will also be nothing. A protected, self-justifying nothing.

No one can tell you that your plan will succeed. No one can tell you what their answer to your question will be. No one can guarantee you’ll make it home alive. They can’t even tell you how far down the hole goes. 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?

As the song goes, even if you choose not to decide—even if you put things off—you still have made a choice. You are voting for the status quo. You are voting to let them decide.

“What cowardice fears most of all,” Søren Kierkegaard said, “is the making of a resolution, for a resolution instantly dissipates the mist.” What you fear is consequences. So you keep deliberating, hoping you can put them off. Can’t lose if you don’t choose? Of course you can. You lose the moment. You lose the momentum. You lose your ability to look yourself in the mirror.

Fear speaks the powerful logic of self-interest. It is also an inveterate liar.

It’s actually all the ordinary decisions—the safe ones, recommended by every expert, criticized by no one—that make us incredibly vulnerable in times of chaos and crisis.

It is risky to try to make the future in business, the strategist Peter Drucker has written, but it’s riskier still not to even try. Because eventually it will happen—someone will try, and then you’ll be on the wrong side of the outcome, or at the very least behind the curve. And that’s when you’ll lose the initiative.

As the author Rich Cohen writes, “This was the dividing line, the moment of truth. Jimmy Caan put on the slippers and tights, so his name appears in the credits as, say, Sonny Corleone in The Godfather. Jerry Weintraub, because he was filled with normal, decent human shame, did not put on the slippers and tights, so his name appears in movie credits as producer.”

There is no change, no attempt, no reach that does not look strange to someone. There’s almost no accomplishment that is possible without calling some attention on yourself. To gamble on yourself is to risk failure. To do it in public is to risk humiliation. Anyone who tries to leave their comfort zone has to know that. Yet we’d almost rather die than be uncomfortable.

Even as a master, he still experienced doubt—still felt waves of overwhelming anxiety and fear crash over him before he went onstage.

When we flee in the direction of comfort, of raising no eyebrows, of standing in the back of the room instead of the front, what we are fleeing is opportunity. When we defer to fear, when we let it decide what we will and won’t do, we miss so much. Not just success, but actualization.

You’re not looking to get an unfair advantage. You’re taking advantage of the opportunities and the protections that were designed for precisely the situation you’re in.

Fear, before you’re actually in the battle, is a normal emotional reaction. It’s the last step of preparation, the not-knowing . . . This is where you’ll prove you’re a good soldier. That first fight—that fight with yourself—will have gone. Then you will be ready to fight the enemy. Army Life (handbook), 1944

Courage is the management of and the triumph over fear.