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

by Ryan Holiday

Courage,

Temperance,

Justice,

Wisdom,

The virtues are interrelated and inseparable, yet each is distinct from the others. Doing the right thing almost always takes courage, just as discipline is impossible without the wisdom to know what is worth choosing. 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.

we become just by doing just actions, temperate by doing temperate actions, brave by doing brave actions.” Virtue is something we do. It’s something we choose.

“If not me, then who?”

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

What these situations call for is courage. In real terms. Right now. Will we have it? Will we answer the phone that’s ringing?

“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 ...

unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which...

But let us look to the courageous moments and learn from them rather than focus on another’s flaws as a way of excusing our own.

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.

On England’s annals, through the long Hereafter of her speech and song, That light its rays shall cast From portals of the past. A Lady with a Lamp shall stand In the great history of the land, A noble type of good, Heroic womanhood.

They only cared what you did after the shine of that feeling wore off.

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

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.

premeditatio malorum, the deliberate meditation on the evils that we might encounter.

maxim: The only inexcusable offense for an officer is to be surprised. To say, I didn’t think that would happen.

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.”

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

“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.”

There is plenty for you here right now. That’s why the Stoics talked about sticking with “first impressions.” Just what you see. What’s here. Not everything else that may or may not someday be related to it.

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

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.

Judge not, lest ye be judged.

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

This is how it goes, whether you’re a billionaire or an ordinary person, no matter how physically tough or brilliant you are. 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.

“Courage is in shorter supply than genius,” Thiel once wrote.

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.

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? 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.

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.

“Never yet,” Theodore Roosevelt reminds us, “was worthy adventure worthily carried through by the man who put his personal safety first.”

Fear speaks the powerful logic of self-interest. It is also an inveterate liar. This self-preservation it promises, the comfort it claims it will protect. Is it even real? How safe are you, really?

And yet Washington went. Undaunted. Unintimidated. Roosevelt’s niece, Eleanor, later talked about doing the thing you cannot do. It is almost always the thing you should do. When something tells you that you’re not allowed. When someone tells you that you’ll regret your decision. When the pit in your stomach makes you hesitate.

We should listen closely and then do the opposite.

Out of fear, we conform. Out of fear, we don’t do what’s right. We mute ourselves. We don’t even want other people to be themselves, because it makes us uncomfortable.

But if we do, on the outside, look the same as everyone else, we better make damn sure that on the inside everything is different. That we are truly who we want to be, how we know deep down it feels right to be. 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.

“public life” for a reason. We don’t get to succeed privately.

Courage is the management of and the triumph over fear. It’s the decision—in a moment of peril, or day in and day out—to take ownership, to assert agency, over a situation, over yourself, over the fate that everyone else has resigned themselves to.

“nothing is lost while courage remains.”

Since we know that de Gaulle was ultimately victorious, we have chosen to remember that France was united in resistance to its occupiers. This is sadly not the case. People were afraid. They made excuses. They looked at the odds and told themselves it was hopeless. They were willing—shockingly so, in fact—to accept Hitler’s bridle and yoke themselves to the Nazi cause if it meant that normal life could quickly resume. French labor was used to power the German war machine. Countless French Jews were sent off to die.*

“I discovered that the world should be divided not into good and bad people but into cowards and non-cowards,” he wrote. “Ninety-five percent of cowards are capable of the vilest things, lethal things, at the mildest threat.”

If Not You, Then Who?

“If not me, then who? If not now, then when?” Or as John Lewis put it: “If not us, then who?”

To borrow a famous phrase from Allen Iverson: We’re talking about practice? Yes, we’re talking about practice. Because it’s the most important thing. With practice, you go through the actions in your mind. You build the muscle memory of what you do in this situation or that one. You learn how to fortify and are fortified in the process. You run through the drills, you play your scales. You have someone ask you purposely tough questions. You get comfortable with discomfort.

“He who does something at the head of one regiment,” Abraham Lincoln reminds us, “will eclipse him who does nothing at the head of a hundred.” Better to win a small battle than continually to defer for some larger, perfect battle in the future.*