Prepare Yourself To Answer The Call | Courage Is Calling: Preface & Introduction

Ryan explains why you must be prepared when you are called upon, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. Ryan Holiday’s new book Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave is out today! You can still get the preorder bonuses at https://dailystoic.com/courageiscallingSign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at DailyStoic.com.

• 0:26Ryan Holiday?

  Prepare yourself to answer the call. At some point, you're going to get it. Perhaps you'll hold elected office. Perhaps you'll witness something unethical at work. Perhaps you'll be a scientist pursuing a controversial or unorthodox idea. Perhaps you'll have a dream for a new business. Perhaps you'll be an athlete considering a political stand that will jeopardize your career, your endorsements. The exact circumstances don't matter. What matters is that one day, you're going to get the call for courage. 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.

• 1:11Ryan Holiday?

  What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour. In actuality, life offers many of these moments, and you will get many such taps on the shoulder. Maybe you will get the tap to serve, to take a risk, to challenge the status quo, to run towards danger while others run away, to rise above your station, to do a thing that people tell you is impossible. And the question is whether you will feel these taps when they come, or will you mistake them for any number of the many reasons you have to think that what is being asked of you is the wrong thing to do? Will you be pressured to put your dreams out of your mind? Will fear make itself felt?

• 1:55Ryan Holiday?

  Will you let it prevent you from answering the call? Will you leave the phone ringing? Will your moment find you unprepared? Will your finest hour pass you by? What a tragedy that would be. What could be more important than making sure that doesn't happen, than preparing, inching closer and closer to doing what you were put here to do? I would say nothing. Your job is to prepare for when the phone rings, for when you get tapped on the shoulder, because the one thing we know for certain is that the call is going to come. Will you be prepared to answer? And look, today is a very, very, very big day for me. My new book Courage is Calling hits shelves today. It's the first book in a four book series I've been hard at work on,

• 2:40Ryan Holiday?

  on the four virtues, courage, temperance, justice, wisdom. And this book means so much to me. It's been a labor of love. I wrote it in the middle of the pandemic as it felt like the world was breaking down. There are so many wonderful moments of courage, inspiration and leadership, and then many moments of the exact opposite. You know, courage has always been in short supply, but I think we have this sense now of how important it truly is and the costs of its absence. So I hope you can check out the new book. You can order it anywhere books are sold. We're still offering the preorder bonuses. If you go to dailystoic.com/preorder, it would mean so much to me for you to support it. This first week of sales matters a great deal. If you could go to dailystoic.com/preorder,

• 3:24Ryan Holiday?

  support the book, one copy, five copies, 20 copies. There's a bunch of awesome preorder bonuses I'd love for you to see, including a chance to have dinner with me here at my bookstore, The Painted Porch. Just go to dailystoic.com/preorder, pick up the book. We've got signed copies if you want them. Pick up the book, tell people about it. Do what you can to support it. It'd mean a lot to me. Writing this email, doing this podcast to you every day for so many years has been a great honor for me. If you could support the book, I would be so grateful. Courage is Calling, the first book in my Four Virtues series. Check it out, dailystoic.com/preorder. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another very special episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast

• 4:09Ryan Holiday?

  because today, September 28th, is launch day. You know, just a couple of weeks ago, I was in Bastrop State Park with my kids. We went on this long walk as a family. And one of the reasons we went was because, as I wanted to bring this sort of all full circle, almost exactly two and a half years previous, a little more than two and a half years previous, I had gone through, I'd gone for a walk with my kids and I put the work aside to go outside, do something that's not work. And this idea popped into my head, this idea about courage. Now, I didn't know where it was going to go. I didn't know it would be part of a series. I didn't know any of that.

• 4:53Ryan Holiday?

  But the idea popped into my head. And thus, in the midst of pursuing some momentary stillness and rest and pursuing a hobby, I had this massive work breakthrough that would tie up not just the next two or so years of my life, but, as it appears, several more years as I work out the other books in the series. And it was cool to be able to hold in that park the actual copy of the book, which had just arrived, just as it is now arriving in bookstores all over the country and, of course, to the people who pre-ordered it.

• 5:35Ryan Holiday?

  But in today's episode, I wanted to give you the intro of the book. There's a, the way this is set up, there's a preface about the four virtues that'll be consistent across all four books, and then goes right into the intro, which is sort of a celebration of the idea of courage and a call to courage, which, as I've said, I think is increasingly important and essential in today's world. I recorded the audiobook here in the depths of the July heatwave in Texas. It was stiflingly hot, but I powered through. Couldn't go to a studio to record it because of the COVID surge, but it was wonderful

• 6:20Ryan Holiday?

  to record it and to bring it to you. And in today's episode, I've got a sample of it. Penguin Random House audio was nice enough to allow me to post this to all of you. So if you have ordered the book, it should be on its way to you. If you haven't, now's your chance. It would mean so much to me if you could support Courage is Calling. We're still offering the preorder bonuses, which you can get at dailystoic.com/preorder. But you can order the book anywhere, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Audible, right? This is the audiobook, so that's, it's a sample of what you'll get on Audible or iBooks or wherever you get your audiobooks. You can get signed copies from me at my bookstore or at dailystoic.com. And I really hope you like it. I hope you support the book.

• 7:02Ryan Holiday?

  And I am very excited and honored to bring you this, the introduction of my new book, Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave.

• 7:15Ryan Holiday?

  The Four Virtues.

• 7:18Ryan Holiday?

  It was long ago now that Hercules came to the crossroads. At a quiet intersection in the hills of Greece in the shade of knobby pine trees, the great hero of Greek myth first met his destiny. Where exactly it was or when, no one knows. We hear of this moment in the stories of Socrates. We can see it captured in the most beautiful art of the Renaissance. We can feel his budding energy, his strapping muscles, his anguish in the classic Bach cantata. If John Adams had had his way in 1776, Hercules at the crossroads would have been immortalized

• 7:59Ryan Holiday?

  on the official seal of the newly-founded United States. Because there, before the man's undying fame, before the 12 labors, before he changed the world, Hercules faced a crisis, one as life-changing and real as any of us have ever faced. Where was he headed? Where was he trying to go? That's the point of the story. Alone, unknown, unsure, Hercules, like so many, did not know. Where the road diverged lay a beautiful goddess who offered him every temptation he could imagine. Adorned in finery, she promised him a life of ease.

• 8:43Ryan Holiday?

  She swore he'd never taste want or unhappiness or fear or pain. "Follow her," she said, "and his every desire would be fulfilled." On the other path stood a sterner goddess in a pure white robe. She made a quieter call. She promised no rewards except those that came as a result of hard work. "It would be a long journey," she said. "There would be sacrifice. There would be scary moments." But it was a journey fit for a god. It would make him the person his ancestors meant him to be. Was this real? Did it really happen? If it's only legend, does it matter?

• 9:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, because this is a story about us, about our dilemma, about our own crossroads. For Hercules, the choice was between vice and virtue, the easy way and the hard way, the well-trod path and the road less traveled. We all face this choice. Hesitating only for a second, Hercules chose the one that made all the difference. He chose virtue. Virtue can seem old-fashioned, yet virtue, erete, translates into something very simple and very timeless: excellence, moral, physical, mental. In the ancient world,

• 10:08Ryan Holiday?

  virtue was comprised of four key components: courage, temperance, justice, wisdom. The touchstones of goodness, the philosopher-king Marcus Aurelius called them. To millions, they're known as the cardinal virtues, four near-universal ideals adopted by Christianity and most of Western philosophy, but equally valued in Buddhism, Hinduism, and just about every other philosophy you can imagine. They're called cardinal, C.S. Lewis pointed out, not because they came down from church authorities, but because they originate from the Latin cardo, or hinge. It's pivotal stuff.

• 10:50Ryan Holiday?

  It's the stuff that the door to the good life hangs on. There also are four topics for this book, for this series: four books, four virtues, one aim, to help you choose: courage, bravery, fortitude, honor, sacrifice; temperance, self-control, moderation, composure, balance; justice, fairness, service, fellowship, goodness, kindness; wisdom, knowledge, education, truth, self-reflection, peace.

• 11:29Ryan Holiday?

  These are the key to a life of honor, of glory, of excellence in every sense. Character traits that John Steinback perfectly described as pleasant and desirable to their owner, and makes him perform acts of which he can be proud, and with which he can be pleased. But the "he" must be taken to mean all of humankind. There was no feminine version of the word "virtus" in Rome. Virtue wasn't male or female, just was. It still is. It doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman, it doesn't matter if you're physically strong or painfully shy, a genius or of average intelligence. Virtue is a universal imperative.

• 12:12Ryan Holiday?

  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. Aristotle described virtue as a kind of craft, something to pursue just as one pursues the mastery of any profession or skill.

• 12:56Ryan Holiday?

  "We become builders by building, and we become harpists by playing the harpy rights. Similarly then, 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. Not once, for Hercules's crossroad was not a singular event. It is a daily challenge, one we face not once but constantly, repeatedly. Will we be selfish or selfless? Brave or afraid? Strong or weak? Wise or stupid? Will we cultivate a good habit or a bad one? Courage or cowardice?

• 13:40Ryan Holiday?

  The bliss of ignorance or the challenge of a new idea? Stay the same or grow? The easy way or the right way? Introduction

• 13:55Ryan Holiday?

  There is no deed in this life so impossible that you cannot do it. Your whole life should be lived as a heroic deed. Leo Tolstoy. There is nothing we prize more than courage, yet nothing is in shorter supply. Is that just how it goes? That things are prized because they are rare? Possibly. But courage, the first of the four cardinal virtues, is not a precious stone. It is not a diamond, a product of some billion-year timeless process. It is not oil which must be drawn from the earth. These are not finite resources doled out randomly by fortune or accessible only to some.

• 14:39Ryan Holiday?

  No, it is something much simpler. It is renewable. It's there in each of us, everywhere. It's something that we are capable of in a moment's notice in matters big and small, physical, moral. There are unlimited, even daily, opportunities for it in work, at home, everywhere. And yet, it remains so rare. Why? Because we are afraid, because it's easier to not get involved, because we have something else we're working on and now is not a good time. "I am not a soldier," we say, as if fighting on the battlefield is the only form of courage that the world needs.

• 15:23Ryan Holiday?

  We'd rather stick with what's safe. Me? Heroic? That seems egotistical, preposterous. We leave it to someone else, someone more qualified, better trained, with less to lose. It's understandable, even logical. But if everyone thinks that way, where does it leave us? Must one point out the writer and Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn said that "from ancient times a decline in courage has been considered the first symptom of the end." Conversely, the greatest moments in human history all share one thing, whether it's landing on the moon or civil rights, the final stand at Thermopylae, or the art of the Renaissance, the bravery of ordinary men and women,

• 16:06Ryan Holiday?

  people who did what needed to be done, people who said, "If not me, then who?"

• 16:15Ryan Holiday?

  Courage is courage is courage. It's long been held that there are two kinds of courage, physical and moral. Physical courage is a knight riding into battle. It's a firefighter rushing into a burning building. It's an explorer setting out for the Arctic, defying the elements. Moral courage is a whistleblower taking on powerful interests. It's the truth teller who says what no one else will say. It's the entrepreneur going into business for themselves against all odds. The martial courage of the soldier and the mental courage of the scientist. But it doesn't take a philosopher to see that these are actually the same thing. There aren't two kinds of courage.

• 16:58Ryan Holiday?

  There is only one, the kind where you put your ass on the line. In some cases, literally, perhaps fatally. In other cases, it's figurative or financial. Courage is risk. It is sacrifice, commitment, perseverance, truth, determination. When you do the thing that others cannot or will not do. When you do the thing people think you shouldn't or can't do. Otherwise, it's not courage. You have to be braving something or someone. Still, courage remains something hard to define. We know it when we see it, but it's hard to say it. Accordingly, the aim of this book is not definitions.

• 17:39Ryan Holiday?

  Rarer than a rare gem, courage is something we must hold up to inspect from many angles. By looking at its many parts and cuts, its perfections, its flaws, we can come away with an understanding of the value of the whole. Each of these perspectives gives us a little more insight. But we do not do this to understand virtue in the abstract, of course. Each of us faces our own Herculean crossroads. Perhaps we hold elected office. Perhaps we've witnessed something unethical at work. Perhaps we're parents trying to raise good kids in a terrifying, tempting world. Maybe we're a scientist pursuing a controversial or unorthodox idea. Maybe we have a dream for a new business. Maybe we're a foot soldier in the infantry on the eve of battle or an athlete about

• 18:24Ryan Holiday?

  to push the limits of human performance. 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 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. It's more accurate to say that life has many of these moments, many such taps on the shoulder.

• 19:06Ryan Holiday?

  Churchill had to persevere through a difficult childhood with unloving parents. It took courage to ignore the teachers who thought him dumb, to head off as a young war correspondent, then to be taken prisoner and make a harrowing escape. It takes guts to run for public office. It took courage each time he published something as a writer. There was the decision to change political parties, to enlist in World War I, the awful years in the political wilderness when opinion turned against him. Then there was the rise of Hitler and standing alone against Nazism in his finest hour of finest hours. But there was also the courage to carry on when he was tossed ungratefully out of political life again, in the wilderness again, and the courage to come back once more.

• 19:48Ryan Holiday?

  The courage to take up painting in old age and put his work out in the world, to stand up against Stalin and the Iron Curtain, and on and on and on. Were there failures of courage along the way, too? Mistakes made? Opportunities not taken? Undoubtedly. 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. In the lives of all the greats, we find the same themes. There was a pivotal moment of courage, but there were many smaller ones, too. Rosa Parks on the bus is courage, but so too were her 42 years of life in the South as a black woman without losing hope, without becoming bitter.

• 20:30Ryan Holiday?

  Her courage to pursue her legal case against segregation was simply the continuation of the courage it took for her just to join the NAACP in 1943, to work there openly as a secretary, and even more in 1945 when she successfully registered to vote in Alabama.

• 20:49Ryan Holiday?

  History is written with blood, sweat, and tears, and it is etched into eternity by the quiet endurance of courageous people. People who stood up or sat down, people who fought, people who risked, people who spoke, people who tried. People who conquered their fears, who acted with courage, and in some cases briefly achieved that higher plane of existence. They entered the hall of heroes as peers and equals. Courage calls each of us differently at different times and different forms. But in every case, it is, as they say, coming from inside the house. First, we are called to rise above our fear and cowardice.

• 21:30Ryan Holiday?

  Next, we are called to bravery, over the elements, over the odds, over our limitations. Finally, we are called to heroism, perhaps for only just a single magnificent moment, when we are called to do something for someone other than ourselves. Whatever call you're hearing right now, what matters is that you answer. What matters is that you go to it. In an ugly world, courage is beautiful. It allows beautiful things to exist. Who says it has to be so rare? You started listening to this book because you know that it doesn't.