We live in the age of Alexandria, when every book and every piece of knowledge ever written down is a fingertip away. The means of learning are abundant—it’s the desire to learn that is scarce.
Naval Ravikant
What I learnt from Courage is Calling by Ryan Holiday.
This is his four part book about the four key stoic virtues:
– Courage
– Discipline
– Virtue
– Wisdom
The biggest thing I got from the book is to never be afraid. The importance of facing life, to live it on edge, to take risks, because that is where growth happens. Never be afraid. He includes some interesting stories. Some of my favourite quotes are below:
I love how Ryan Holiday writes. It’s interesting how he connects it to to interesting stories so I am learning about history at the same time. The examples also give some more meaning rather than just explaining the principles.
There is no deed in this life so impossible that you cannot do it. Your whole life should be lived as a heroic deed.
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.
He tells the story of Florence Nightingale and how hard it was her to become a nurse.
This from the woman who a few months earlier was afraid to disappoint her hysterical mother. Now when a doctor—or anyone—told her that something could not be done, she replied with quiet authority, “But it must be done.”
Faith is so important. Believe.
Do you know what the most repeated phrase in the Bible is? It’s “Be not afraid.” Over and over again these words appear, a warning from on high not to let phantasiai rule the day. “Be strong and of good courage,” we hear in the book of Joshua, “do not be afraid nor be dismayed.” In Deuteronomy, “When thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, and seest horses, and chariots, and a people more than thou, be not afraid of them.” In Proverbs, “Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh.” In Deuteronomy, again, echoing the book of Joshua, Moses calls to Joshua and sends him to Israel. “Be strong and courageous,” he says to him, “for you must go with this people into the land that the Lord swore to their ancestors to give them, and you must divide it among them as their inheritance … Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”
How do we become more brave?
We often picture the worse case scenario. We need to visualise the best case. We have a tendency to be negative, for our survival. We are designed to survive, not to thrive.
The part of your brain that sees the worst, that extrapolates out the craziest scenario and consistently underestimates your ability to handle it? This is not your friend. Nor is it the truth. The voice that roots against you? The tendency to catastrophize and exaggerate? This is not helpful. It’s not giving you an accurate picture of the world. It’s certainly not making you braver!
Don’t care what people think of us. Be yourself. Boldly. Don’t fit in with the environment. Mould the environment to yourself. Be bigger than it.
This Is the Enemy 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.
Fear is the enemy also.
You can’t let fear rule. Because there has never been a person who did something that mattered without pissing people off. There has never been a change that was not met with doubts. There has never been a movement that was not mocked. There was never a groundbreaking business that wasn’t loudly predicted to fail. And there has never, ever been a time when the average opinion of faceless, unaccountable strangers should be valued above our own considered judgment.
The risks are probably not as big as you think.
The obstacles, the enemies, the critics—they are not as numerous as you think. It’s an illusion they want you to believe. There was another lesson too: Because what do you think those wolves did when they saw that Grant and his partner just kept coming and didn’t turn back in fear? The wolves ran away.
Don’t waste energy fearing
Focus on What’s in Front of You We can’t forget that all the energy we spend fearing that we’ll make it worse is energy not spent making it better.
Put it to work on something that is helpful.
If you fear it. You must do it.
“But what’s in it for me?” or “But what will happen to my access if I speak out?” are the wrong questions. Instead, what we must be strong enough to ask is, “But what if everyone acted this way?” “What if everyone put their own interests above everything else?” “What if everyone was afraid?” What kind of world would that be? Not a good one. Certainly not a safe one.
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.
What if there was certainty, if there was a well-lit, well-defined path? If life were like this, no courage would be required.
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. 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.
Don’t take the safe route.
We like to think we can have an extraordinary life by making ordinary decisions, but it’s not true. It’s actually all the ordinary decisions—the safe ones, recommended by every expert, criticized by no one—that make us incredibly vulnerable in times of chaos and crisis.
It’s like what Mark Zuckerberg says – the only risk is not taking a risk.
Fear is the signal of what we should face.
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.
Boldly be yourself.
By definition, each of us is original. Our DNA has never existed before on this planet. No one has ever had our unique set of experiences. Yet what do we do with this heritage? We push it away. We choose not to be ourselves. We choose to go along, to not raise any eyebrows. 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.
You just learn to stop thinking about what they think. You’ll never do original work if you can’t. You have to be willing not only to step away from the herd but get up in front of them and say what you truly think or feel. It’s called “public life” for a reason.
He references so many great and inspiring stories about facing fear
we cannot fear. We must, as Shakespeare said, “meet the time as it seeks us.” Our destiny is here. Let’s seize it.
He also speaks of Charles De Gaulle and how he led the resistance from UK. He shown a vision and stood by it.
It has been said that “one man with courage makes a majority,” and so it went with de Gaulle. “In every fundamental thing you have done, weren’t you always a minority?” the writer and Resistance leader André Malraux would ask de Gaulle at the end of his life. “I was in a minority, I agree,” de Gaulle replied. But, he said, “I knew that, sooner or later, I should cease to be so.” “nothing is lost while courage remains.”
I love the idea that the world is testing you. Giving you problems and quests, for you to learn to grow and overcome. This is something Oprah talks about. Life is trying to tell you something. Listen to the signs.
“The world wants to know if you have cojones. If you are brave?”
That’s why this question is so important. The world wants to know what category to put you in, so it sends difficult situations your way. These are not inconveniences or even tragedies but opportunities, as questions to answers: Do I have cojones? Or perhaps, less gendered, Do I have a spine? Am I brave? Am I going to face this problem or run away from it? Will I stand up or be rolled over? You answer this question not with words but with actions. Not privately but publicly.
The book inspires you to stand up for what you believe. It gives many stories of people who did that.
“If not me, then who? If not now, then when?” Or as John Lewis put it: “If not us, then who?” Because it does have to be done.
This is also something that Alex Hormozi talks about
Preparation Makes You Brave Are other people naturally braver than you? Or are they just better prepared?
Have a speech? Prepare for it. To 1 person? To 100 people? Maybe 20 hours preparation is fair. 1000 people? Maybe 100 hours is enough. Their time is valuable. Respect it and prepare for it. You probably won’t feel as scared if you prepare.
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.
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.”
Just Start Somewhere. Just Do Something. The French speak of petites actions—those first small steps, We don’t need to lead a grand charge. Put aside thoughts of some death-defying gesture. Sometimes the best place to start is somewhere small. Go!
Something I’ve been learning about is to focus more on opportunities than problems. Problems expand according to the time you have available for it.
Are there risks? Of course. It’s not unreasonable to be worried about them. But there is no chance of success if you do nothing, if you don’t even try. No one can guarantee safe passage in life, nothing precludes the possibility of failing or dying. But if you don’t go? Well, you ensure failure and suffer a different kind of death. Later, you’re going to wish you did something. We always do. Which means, right now, you gotta go.
It’s Good to Be “Difficult” Remember what they said about Serpico. What they said about de Gaulle. What they said about Nightingale. You’re difficult. Of course they were. The well-behaved rarely make history. Had these men and women been a little more conciliatory, a little more willing to accept the role expected of them, had they cared a little bit more about what other people thought, were they a little bit easier to deter, there wouldn’t have been an independent stand to take in the first place. They’ll try to punish you. Which is why, day in, day out, you have to defy them. You have to be combative. You have to be determined. You have to be confident. No, that’s not how this is going to go. No, what you’re proposing is not “best for everybody.” No, I am not going to keep my mouth shut. No, this isn’t over. No, I’m not going to “tone myself down.”
Make It a Habit There is that clichéd bit of advice: Do one thing each day that scares you.
“Always do what you are afraid to do,” Ralph Waldo Emerson said. Or as William James wrote, we want to “make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.”
This book is a constant reminder for me to be more bold and be more brave
Whatever it is, whatever you’re doing, you must pursue it aggressively. When you operate out of fear, when you’re on our heels, you have no shot. It’s simply not possible to lead that way. To succeed, you must take the offensive. Even when you’re being cautious, it must come with the assumption of constant advance, an insistent move toward victory always. You have to demand control of the tempo. You have to set the tempo—in battle, in the boardroom, in matters both big and small. You want them to fear what you are going to do, not the other way around.
I’d like to leave on this one:
“Be not afraid of greatness,” Shakespeare said. Let it enter your blood and spirit. Fight for it.
My only minor critique of the book is the imbalance in criticising Winston Churchill, yet praising Julius Caeser. They were both men of their time with different morals. The greats of ancient rome were no saints, and this deserves some analysis too for balance. This could be an interesting line of inquiry. How we have a tendency to portray leaders as 100% good or 100% bad and we have trouble recognising that leaders can do very good things, and very bad things at the same time.
