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.

Aristotle described virtue as a kind of craft, something to pursue just as one pursues the mastery of any profession or skill. “We become builders by building and we become harpists by playing the harp,” he writes. “Similarly, then, we become just by doing just actions, temperate by doing temperate actions, brave by doing brave actions.” Virtue is something we do.

There is no deed in this life so impossible that you cannot do it. Your whole life should be lived as a heroic deed. Leo Tolstoy

Because we are afraid. Because it’s easier not to get involved. Because we have something else we’re working on and now is not a good time.

“Must one point out,” the writer and Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, “that from ancient times a decline in courage has been considered the first symptom of the end?” Conversely, the greatest moments in human history all share one thing—whether it’s landing on the moon or civil rights, the final stand at Thermopylae or the art of the Renaissance: The bravery of ordinary men and women. People who did what needed to be done. People who said, “If not me, then who?”

Courage is risk. It is sacrifice . . . . . . commitment . . . perseverance . . . truth . . . determination.

“To each,” Winston Churchill would say, “there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.”

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.

“Our voice leads us in the direction of the person we wish to become, but it is up to us whether or not to follow.

Nightingale was not the exception in this—in the 1840s or today. 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. That’s the conversation Nightingale had with herself, not for a little while but for sixteen years. 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.

What we are to do in this life comes from somewhere beyond us; it’s bigger than us. We are each called to be something. We are selected. We are chosen . . . but will we choose to accept this? Or will we run away? That is our call.

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.

“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.

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

The only way through is to attack that fear. Logically. Clearly. Empathetically.

At the root of most fear is what other people will think of us.

The paradox of course is that almost everything new, everything impressive, everything right, was done over the loud objections of the status quo.

“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.

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.

For Seneca, the unexpected blows land most heavily and painfully. So by expecting, by defining, by wrestling with what can happen, we are making it less scary and less dangerous at the same time.

A bit depressing? Perhaps. But better to be pessimistic and prepared than the alternative. 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.

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.

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 tricky: Sometimes people can be bold and fearless in one part of their life and exhibit extreme (usually moral) cowardice in another. Because people compartmentalize. Because we rationalize.

Waste not a second questioning another man’s courage. Put that scrutiny solely on your own.

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.

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?”

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. We believe that despite all the doubters and evidence to the contrary. Because we know we have been called to make it true.

“But what if everyone acted this way?” “What if everyone put their own interests above everything else?” “What if everyone was afraid?”

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.

The coward waits for the stairs that will never come. They want to know the probabilities. They want time to prepare. They want assurances. They hope for a reprieve. They’re willing to give up anything to get these things, including this moment of opportunity that will never, ever come back.

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? If fear is to be a driving force in your life, fear what you’ll miss. Fear what happens if you don’t act. Fear what they’ll think of you down the road, for having dared so little. Think of what you’re leaving on the table. Think of the terrifying costs of playing small. The fear you feel is a sign. If courage is never required in your life, you’re living a boring life. Put yourself in a position that demands you leap.

In truth, we are paralyzed with fear. Overwhelmed by options. By second guesses. By that hatred of making mistakes. So what we’re really doing is making ourselves miserable. We tell ourselves it’s about options . . . really it’s paralysis by analysis. All the while, somebody or someone else is making progress.

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 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.

Because the courage to be different is the courage to think different, to see what others don’t see, to hear what others don’t hear. It’s not a coincidence that so many whistleblowers and artists were weirdos. It was precisely their weirdness that allowed them to see what everyone else was unable to see.

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.

We’re in this mission together. We’re comrades. Ask for help. It’s not just brave, it’s the right thing to do.

We choose what voice we will listen to. We choose whether we’ll play it safe, think small, be afraid, conform, hide, or be cynical. We choose whether we will break these fears down, whether we’ll go our own way, whether we look down over the side of the narrow bridge and turn back—or keep going. To have courage? To brave fear? That’s our call.

That is the thing about courage: Just like fear, it is contagious.

The world is asking you about your courage. Every minute of every day. Your enemies are asking you this question. Your obstacles are too.

Seneca would say that he actually pitied people who have never experienced misfortune. “You have passed through life without an opponent,” he said. “No one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you.”

If you don’t start that business, who will?

Although fear can be explained away, it’s far more effective to replace it. With what? Competence. With training. With tasks. With a job that needs to be done.

Training is not just something that athletes and soldiers do. It is the key to overcoming fear in any and all situations. What we do not expect, what we have not practiced, has an advantage over us. What we have prepared for, what we have anticipated, we will be able to answer. As Epictetus says, the goal when we experience adversity is to be able to say, “This is what I’ve trained for, for this is my discipline.”

Perhaps the way to align these ideas is that we can indeed begin with petites actions but on our magnum opus. Start small . . . on something big.

In the words of the decorated Navy SEAL Jocko Willink, to get over the fear, you go. You just do. You leap into the dark. It is the only way. Because if you don’t, what looms? Failure. Regret. Shame. A lost opportunity. Any hope of moving forward.

The Greek word for this kind of courage was parrhesia. It was the speaking of truth to power. It was refusing to buy the lie or to play it false. Socrates was the classic parrhesiastes, a man who said what others were afraid to say to the people they were afraid to say it to.

We need people to challenge the status quo.

There’s a great expression: Whatever you’re not changing, you’re choosing. Later, you’re going to wish you did something. Whether it’s leaving an abusive relationship or starting a company, don’t fight it—decide it. Now.