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

by Ryan Holiday

“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.”

As Epictetus, shaped by the empathy cultivated from his thirty years in slavery, would say, until we know someone’s reasons, we don’t even know that they acted wrongly.

If courage is never required in your life, you’re living a boring life. Put yourself in a position that demands you leap.

We like to think we can have an extraordinary life by making ordinary decisions, but it’s not true.

It’s ironic, the Stoics would say, that for all our selfish cares about ourselves, we seem to value other people’s opinions about us more than our own.

The freed slave Epictetus says, “If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid.”

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.

Later, you’re going to wish you did something. We always do. Which means, right now, you gotta go.