Courage Is Calling: Timeless Stoic values from the multimillion-selling author of THE DAILY STOIC

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.

“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.”

History is written with blood, sweat, and tears, and it is etched into eternity by the quiet endurance of courageous people.

“Somewhere inside, we hear a voice … ,” Pat Tillman would say as he considered leaving professional football to join the Army Rangers. “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. More times than not we are pointed in a predictable, straightforward, and seemingly positive direction. However, occasionally we are directed down a different path entirely.”

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.

“The world is a narrow bridge, and the important thing is not to be afraid.”

What we need to do is explore our impressions—for ourselves, for others. We must break them down logically, as Pericles did. Go to the root of it. Understand it. Explain it.

“Let other people worry over what they will say about you,” he said. “They will say it in any case.”

And there has never, ever been a time when the average opinion of faceless, unaccountable strangers should be valued above our own considered judgment.

“Exile, war, torture, shipwreck,” Seneca said, “all the terms of the human condition could be on our minds.” Not in the form of fear, but in that of familiarity. How likely are they? What might cause them? How have we prepared ourselves to handle them? 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.

We need also to cultivate the courage to think about all the things that could happen, the things that are unpleasant to think about, the unusual, the unexpected, the unlikely. It’s not just a matter of reducing our anxiety about exaggerated uncertainties, it’s also about finding certainty in the unknowns—the risk factors, what goes bump in the night, the plans of the enemy, the things that can and will go wrong.

Vague fear is sufficient to deter us; the more it is explored, the less power it has over us.

“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 good that it’s hard. It deters the cowards and it intrigues the courageous.

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 very easy to judge. It’s very hard to know.

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.

preferable to stand tall in a mud puddle than lick boots in the parlor.

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 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.

“What cowardice fears most of all,” Søren Kierkegaard said, “is the making of a resolution, for a resolution instantly dissipates the mist.”

hero.