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

by Ryan Holiday

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.

“sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage.

Do one thing each day that scares you.

“Always do what you are afraid to do,” Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Spartans never asked how many of the enemy there were, only where. Because they were going to attack anyway. They were in it to win.

The buck stops with you. Always. “It’s not my fault.” “It’s not my problem.” “Don’t blame me.” These are not phrases that can exist in your vocabulary.

If you’re going to speak out: Sign your name. Sign your name on everything you do. That’s the brave—no, the basic—thing to do.

Courage says, Over my dead body. Courage says, Not if I can help it. Courage says, I’m doing things my way, according to my own code, no matter what you say.

Indeed, it was a lack of courage by almost all the German generals, many of whom found Hitler deranged and repugnant but could not bring themselves to break military protocol and challenge him as he hijacked their country. These were some of the bravest men in the world, men who had faced fire and death many times, yet in conference meetings they fearfully fretted and hoped someone else would do something. Waiting, hoping, cowering, they were complicit in heinous crimes. We’ll never fully understand their wrassling, but inaction sealed their fate.

As General Mattis said, cynicism is cowardice. It takes courage to care. Only the brave believe, especially when everyone else is full of doubt.

“Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence,” he said, “I would advise violence.”

Violence is rarely the answer—but when it is, it’s the only answer.

will to protect itself. Without bravery, without the warrior ethos, no one—and no nation—survives long enough. There are plenty of brave pacifists out there, but even they understand at some level that their idealism is feasible only because others are willing to be pragmatic in their place. Sometimes physical courage is required to protect moral courage. There

The boldness, the gamble, the sheer tenacity and determination? They might not be the most educated, they might not be the most wealthy, some of them might well be leaving mistakes and failures behind them, but immigrants are by definition exhibiting a virtue we all admire. Tired? Meek? These are indefatigable warriors. They are the descendants of pioneers and explorers. Where would we be without this kind of courage? Who would not want it infused into their economy and culture? Who can’t learn something from this in our own cushier, safer lives?

“Courage is a sort of endurance of the soul.” Socrates can’t leave it at that, of course, because enduring in the wrong thing, staying and continuing in a foolhardy or impossible endeavor, can hardly be described as wise.

“Any dangerous spot is tenable if brave men will make it so,” John F. Kennedy said.

It’s not a stretch to argue that all the accomplishments of Western civilization, from the Renaissance to the American Revolution, would not have happened were it not for the sacrifice at Thermopylae.

Theirs was not to reason why. Theirs was to do and to die. As the ancient inscription at the battlefield reads, “Tell the Spartans passerby, here obedient to her laws we lie.” Their example of courage and selflessness stands eternal. None of them survived, yet they turned out to be far more immortal than the Persian troops who killed them.

The opposite of fear is love. Love for one another. Love for ideas. Love for your country. Love for the vulnerable and the weak. Love for the next generation. Love for all. Is that not what hits us in the solar plexus when we hear Leonidas’s final, tearful words to his wife before he leaves? “Marry a good man who will treat you well, bear him children, and live a good life.”

The CEO who stares down incredible odds to further an exploitative, toxic business. The anti-vaxxer risking opprobrium and illness, literally going against the herd. The dictator who seizes power in a dazzling, daring coup. The police who resign in solidarity when an officer is punished for pushing over an old man in Buffalo. The soldiers taken into custody for refusing to testify against Second Lieutenant William Calley after My Lai. Courage. Hollow courage.

The difference between raw courage and the heroic lies in the who. Who was it for? Was it truly selfless? Was it for the greater good? There is a logic to heroism, even as illogical as it is to override your own self-preservation.

It’s good to be brave. The world does want to know if you have cojones. But the why, the where, the when of it counts. The cause makes all.

but what about someone who makes a difference and is able to fit in and function in society?

And nothing is more immoral than unnecessary conflict.

These are heroic questions. If it can be avoided—it should be. Discretion, goes the expression, is the better part of valor.

If you operate from a place of fear or from selfishness, you’ll miss this. You’ll find yourself caught in an escalation trap. Nobody wins a war—metaphorical or literal. Sun Tzu would say that it is best to win without fighting—to have maneuvered in such a way that the enemy has lost before it has even begun. That’s right.

“Every prophet has to come from civilization,” Churchill would explain, “but every prophet has to go into the wilderness. He must have a strong impression of a complex society . . . and he must serve periods of isolation and meditation. This is the process by which psychic dynamite is made.”

“Greater love hath no man than this,” reads the Bible verse, “that a man lay down his life for his friends.”*

John Wooden talked about how it wasn’t how tall you were but how tall you played.

Jackie Robinson said, a life is meaningless except for its impact on other lives.

“Happy is the man who can make others better,” Seneca writes, “not merely when he is in their company, but even when he is in their thoughts.” Even if this kills us, even if we’re not around to enjoy the fruits of our sacrifice because it got us fired or killed or worse, it’s still worth it. Our memory lives on in the mind of the witnesses.

Our duty was never just to be the best ourselves, but to help others realize their best. Even if, as is sometimes the case, this effort comes at our own expense.

Fortune may favor the bold, but it offers no guarantee. The only certainty is that if we hesitate at the moment of crisis, we’ll accomplish nothing and save no one.

“moral luck.”

If they don’t know they’re licked, this will convince them.”

wasn’t quite the same as facing artillery fire, but it likely required even more discipline and commitment. Churchill called it the single most courageous act of World War II. Never once did MacArthur think of his personal safety, only the groundwork for peace and reconstruction.

A leader cannot sit in some ivory tower or behind thick castle walls. They cannot protect themselves from every danger and risk while they let their followers or employees or soldiers take the brunt of what the world throws at us.

“We should cherish the body with the greatest care,” Seneca said. Same goes for our profession, our standing, the life we have built for ourselves. “We should also be prepared, when reason, self-respect,

Courage forces us to ask, “If not now, when?” and “If not me, then who?” It pushes us to be bold. It also asks: What if everyone was selfish? What would things look like? It encourages us to gamble on ourselves, to carve out an unconventional path. But we can’t forget the other side of the rabbi Hillel’s question is equally important. “If I am only for me,” he asks, “who am I?”

“Character,” de Gaulle reflected at the end of his life, “is above all the ability to disregard insults or abandonment by one’s own people. One must be willing to lose everything. There is no such thing as half a risk.” That’s a damn good definition of heroism too.

Marcus Aurelius was reminding himself that “you can also commit injustice by doing nothing.”

We must be willing to lose the job, lose the client, lose our good standing, break from our friends, make the sacrifice.

It’s nihilism, as we’ve talked about, a dark reason not to have to care or try.

Remember: Leaders are dealers in hope. Nobody wants to live in a world without a tomorrow, without a reason to continue, without some dot on the horizon they’re aiming at. And if we want that, we’re going to have to make it. For them and for ourselves, heroically.

That’s what a hero does. They burn not only the boats behind them, but the white flag too.

No one is saying they can’t eventually beat you, only that surrender is a choice. Quitting on your cause—that’s on you. Resistance unto . . . whatever you’ve got left to give.

no one can defeat us. That’s our call. That’s in our power. And it only happens when we give up. The only way to lose is to abandon your courage.

Defeat is a choice. The brave never choose it.

The Stoic heals themselves by focusing on what they can control: Their response. The repairing. The learning of the lessons.

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.”