Kind: captions
Language: en
[Music]
ryan holiday welcome back to the show
yeah it's good to be back dude your book
courage is calling i love it the most
part of the stoic virtues series this is
book one of the series this is book one
of four okay the first time i've ever
done something i think we talked about
the four virtues before but if you don't
mind rattle them off real fast and we're
gonna dive into courage courage
temperance justice wisdom the only one
that i think people are unfamiliar with
is temperance which basically means
self-discipline
or moderation some combination of those
two things but the cardinal virtues are
the cardinal version virtues of
christianity of stoicism of a whole
bunch of different philosophical schools
um
and so i'm this is my first attempt at
doing
a series of interconnected intertwined
books why do you think virtues matter
like what is the
so much has been made of this and like
the whole stoic philosophy is around it
and much of philosophy quite frankly
yeah well i mean i think what virtue is
true the idea of virtue tries to answer
the question of like how should a person
be like what code should you live your
life by what sort of
standard should you
hold yourself to how should you evaluate
your behavior what should you struck
what is the mark that you're striving
for and what i like about
courage temperance justice and wisdom is
first off they're all
interrelated and impossible to actually
separate right like
justice uh is impossible without courage
but also uh
courage
if not in pursuit of justice isn't
anything to admire right and so they're
all really and then you take something
like wisdom the pursuit of wisdom is the
scariest thing in the world
why i would not i would have said
courage is way scarier
well
i'm what i'm saying is you need courage
to pursue truth because truth challenges
us
right truth can put us on in the
minority of something right truth can
uh
force us to see uncomfortable things
about ourselves um the the pursuit of
knowledge
is a journey that most people are afraid
to go on right they just take what other
people tell them or their do you think
they're actually afraid to go on that
journey or do they just by default i
mean i think it's it's a default but
what is behind the default why don't
people pursue things right and i think
fear is obviously a sort of a through
line in a lot of people's lives but i
think the idea of the virtues is they're
all related to each other but there's
not a single situation
of any significance or importance in
life that does not call upon
at least one of those virtues from us
and so to me it's sort of like
uh
the load star of like
what direction you're going in life
okay have you thought at all about why
having because i think everybody should
live by a code obviously the stokes do
you everything that you put out in your
book certainly intimates that there's uh
meaning behind that
do you have a sense of what that
foundational sort of axiomatic reason to
have a code is
well you know william james talks about
he says the person you should pity the
most in the world
is the person who's having to wing it
every day like the person who's having
to decide everything anew because of
discomfort poor decision-making right
like imagine like you don't have a diet
you don't have a code you don't have a
set of priorities in your life you don't
have something you're working towards
you don't have a way that you like to do
things then every single decision you
have
to think about
consciously right as opposed to
being able to instinctually know or sort
of measure against something so his
point is like you want to make good
habits you want to sort of build these
virtues or this code into your life so
you're not spending every just just like
the person who has to decide every
morning what could i wear this morning
or what can i wear today and having to
choose from hundreds of things that that
is not what steve jobs does or obama did
in office obama had had i think two
suits right it's like black or blue and
you pick one right so i think one of the
things that a code does or that the idea
of the cardinal virtues does
is it just narrows down the
considerations
that you have to weigh or consider in
the course of a day that's not to say it
makes it easy because the decisions
themselves are still often hard or
there's risks involved
but you're not having to
weigh an infinite amount of
possibilities
i also find and i'm curious to see if
this is true for you in your life i'm
distressed by the fact that if somebody
were to ask me a question one day and
then ask me the same question six weeks
later i might give you a different
answer and one of the answers is better
than the other and so
you know ray dalio wrote the book
principles and his whole sort of thesis
is hey in life everything you encounter
is another one of these yeah it's
another situation where either courage
is needed or temperance is needed wisdom
or just specifics like you handle like
ideal and business a lot so you handle
this particular situation let's say
terminating an employee this way and
when you handle it this way you know
even though some things are different
that on average that's going to be the
most wise thing and so his idea is you
turn everything into a principle a way
of doing things
and
do you does that factor into what you're
saying here with the virtues i think so
absolutely you think about like a
professional sports coach they know
just like a card player set of
probabilities what you do if it's in
these different parameters because again
imagine the football coach who's having
to consider
all the possible plays in each situation
there you're you just don't have the
time or the bandwidth to do that right
especially when your opponent is trying
to speed up the game
and misdirect you so you make the wrong
decision or you make let's make
sometimes you're making a gut decision
and that's correct sometimes you're
making a conscious decision and that's
what's incorrect but the idea is you
sort of set a
it was funny actually um someone once
criticized uh franklin ben franklin he
had like his 12 virtues again they
fluctuate but he had 12 virtues and they
said it was like he hemmed himself in in
a paddock like a
fence they make around on a horse they
would make around a horse and then he
trotted inside the paddock and this was
their sort of condescending intellectual
critique of ben franklin but i think
that's actually the perfect way to live
like here's all the boundaries that i
have here's the things that i don't do
that i don't think about that are off
the table for me because i consider them
immoral or unjust or cowardly or stupid
or whatever the thing is and then here's
all the things that i have to worry
about it's a much smaller sphere to
consider
and so i i think that's kind of the idea
of virtues is is to create
sort of a structure that you can live in
that guides you so you're not again
winging it on these critical
decisions um and you know i think about
one of the things i talk about in the
book is this you know you go but what
about me right or what would happen if
right we ask ours this is how we sort of
psych ourselves out of doing things
that uh you know don't fit with the code
because we're suddenly considering a
bunch of other stuff that's actually
irrelevant to to like
how we've decided to live our life
the idea of hemming yourself in of
building that offense i think makes a
lot of sense when you think about
virtues in the context of it's not just
that i'm making decisions easier and
then i'm avoiding the mental fatigue of
having to pick clothes and things like
that but that it's about a life well
lived and the idea of well-lived becomes
one of the most important questions
anybody is going to answer in their life
and you know my initial question for me
as i think about okay what's my answer
it's it's really about suffering
okay and
i one of the things that so i always
journal on a guest before they come in
like what was it i liked about the book
the way they're thinking
and
you know one of the ideas
that i'm asking myself is how much of
courage is innate and how much of
courage is cultural meaning if you
if somebody weren't taught the express
virtue of courage would they not still
have a sense of revulsion when they were
acting cowardly and i have a feeling
that they would i have a feeling that
nature has given us the virtues from
these are the things that keep you alive
that make you a good contributor to a
social um situation and you know these
were the things that increased our
likelihood of surviving and so as i
think about okay there isn't going to be
um
just total parody that every society
through all time will have the same
virtues but i have a feeling that a lot
of them are going to rhyme because of
that sort of innate suffering that rises
up
uh when you think about
not acting courageously or going you
know always with your emotional whims
and just somehow your life doesn't add
up and you're not able to get where you
want and you see this a lot with you
know people in their 20s are very
impetuous and then as they get older
they think what the [ __ ] am i doing with
my life you know what i mean and and
that impulse to what am i doing with my
life even though it was pleasurable
you know six months ago you weren't even
thinking about it
at some point there's some subconscious
thing that kicks in that just makes you
feel uneasy
yeah i mean i think for almost all of
human history courage has existed
as a virtue because
what we wouldn't have survived as a
species without courage right you could
say wisdom or justice or
temperance these are
i don't want to say sort of uh
modern problems but they
they matter
they matter less primally than just like
can you be brave under pressure under
threat whether it's from a woolly
mammoth or an attacking tribe or
something like that so you know when you
when you study
the history of courage for most of human
history courage meant like sort of
physical courage like courage under fire
right um and it's only
somewhat recently in the last few
thousand years that we also had this
better understanding of moral courage
right what one does
under pressure under the threat of a
tyrant
you know the pursuing of truth or
of one's own sort of way of living or
you know being true to oneself so there
are there's sort of two components to
courage there's physical courage and
moral courage
but as i studied the literature and i
decided sort of what direction i wanted
to check the book in what really struck
me is the
two things what those two types of
courage have in common is that it's
about putting your ass on the line in
some way right and i think there is no
such thing as a good life
if you don't put your ass on the line so
i think a person who never risks it who
never puts themselves out there
even if their comforter even if they're
comforted sorry even if they're
comfortable even if all of their needs
are taken care of at the end of the day
they probably have some
nagging sense that more was possible so
even in that sense cowardice sort of
dogs there's an expression like of
cowards nothing is written because they
don't do anything that's notable
or memorable right um it's
it's hard to put yourself out there but
on the other side of that risk is like
good stuff that really hit me for some
reason like strangely emotionally uh of
cowards nothing is written there's so
many amazing quotes in your book
and i want to read one
that
this one like stopped me dead in my
tracks
there is no deed in this life so
impossible that you cannot do it your
whole life should be lived as a heroic
deed
was that you i can't i didn't understand
okay i didn't write down whether it was
here or somebody else that's [ __ ]
amazing it's a great quote i loved it he
has this beautiful book called uh
calendar of wisdom
uh which is like it's like a favorite
quote from him every day and some
meditations on it um which is that him
speaking through a character or
that's in a calendar of wisdom okay um
but i think i think that's
a good way of thinking about your life
right which is that
um
if you think of your life if you live
your life as a coward it will be a
cowardly unimpressive life but if you
live your life as if it matters right
like
um
if you don't believe that you can be
heroic or make a difference or do
anything in this world
you're right in the sense that you will
not be that person right like they talk
about the great man of history theory um
can an individual change the course of
history
what we know for certain is that people
who don't believe in the great man of
history theory are very unlikely to be
the great man or woman of history right
so like uh
change
uh greatness success depends on by
definition believing that you're capable
of doing and that you're willing
to do it
and so
there is a certain
obviously courage is much more
complicated than that but it starts
there like it starts with if you believe
that nothing matters if you believe that
it's all hopeless that we're all uh you
know uh
uh victims of the system or of
circumstance that it's all about you
know these structures and forces and
that it's impossible and then it doesn't
matter
um
you're right
it's a great quote in the book nihilism
is cowardice yes do you remember who
said that general mattis said cynicism
is cowardice cynicism thank you and it's
this you talk about nihilism a lot in
the book
but sorry i conflated two things no no i
think they're they're
nihilism is just the extreme version of
cynicism to me again if you think that
it doesn't matter if it doesn't count if
it's hopeless
um
not only is it unlikely that you'll ever
make a difference or change things or
have an impact but it's also that's a
wonderfully
safe place to be it's sad
right but it's also freeing because then
nothing you do has any significance
uh the stakes are extremely low
nobody's watching you can't fail you
can't let anyone down there's no
potential to
waste or further away
and so i think there is courage just in
the earnestness
of
like caring and i think i think you and
i both see this in the stuff that we
talk about like
you'll hear from people who are like oh
this is so lame or this is just
motivational [ __ ] right like you know
people who look down on people who are
just earnestly trying to get better
and that's not to say that there isn't a
certain amount of cheesiness sometimes
or that it it it's like uh physics or
something you know that's not it's it
it's not as rigorous as this that or the
other but
there is something powerful about
earnestly
caring and trying
and i remember robert greene uh he wrote
this in one of his books but he talked
to me about it because it sort of
encapsulated my teenagers like i didn't
really have anyone that believed in me
when i was younger and so i didn't
really believe in myself i was a good
runner um
but i never tried like i
i not only slacked off in practice i
tried to like get away with not
practicing i remember i ran
a 502 mile whoa in the middle of my
senior year while slacking off yeah i
was i was good right but i remember
thinking
if i
502 if i stop here
i won't have to feel
shitty
if
i just sort of shrug like if i just
shrug my shoulders and go 502 is close
to sub five
then i'm protected from trying
and failing oh my god you know what i
mean yes i've lived my whole life like
that that's a very common idea if you
don't try you can't fail and if you
don't put yourself out there you can't
feel like a piece of [ __ ] if you fall
short so there's real there's real
courage in the earnestness
in the effort
in trying
um and and i would say as someone who
you know didn't naturally come to
writing or to videos or podcasts or any
of the stuff that i do now public
speaking like
it's scary to suck at something at first
do you know what i mean yes
and and and like
like a lot of people aren't
able to sit with that so they don't do
it
facts dude you literally just described
my 20s i was
i was haunted by the fact that some part
of me knew that i was taking smaller and
smaller jobs because i really wanted the
person i was interviewing with to look
at me and go god you're so smart why are
you applying for this job
and
to live for that moment is so foolish
but to see how many years of my life
that need to be thought of as smart
right um because i didn't want to suck
at something i didn't want to be foolish
i didn't want to face the thought that i
may be you know not as smart as i wanted
to be
um
and it was just
giving me the life essentially that i
deserved based on the choices that i was
making which was one that you know left
me sort of laying face down on the
carpet of my unfurnished apartment just
like spiraling into darkness when it's
harder too when what you
are thinking about doing is a
public-facing thing
right like
uh making videos or books or whatever
all music
putting yourself out there that's like
that's the hardest part right to go out
for something and be rejected for it
just as to tell someone how you feel
about them or to you know decide hey i'm
going to quit my job and move across
country and do x y z that's
that makes a person so vulnerable
and so
again
the courage to run into a burning
building to save someone or to throw
yourself in front of a bullet or you
know to stare down you know someone
bigger and stronger than you that is
courage and that is what courage has
been for thousands of years but there is
also courage in being yourself and
taking an unconventional path in
trying and failing right and trying and
failing again over and over and over
again that that is this at the core for
my definition of courage is putting your
ass
on the line i love that i want to
like really beat to death this idea of
earnestness which was one of the
the things that i loved most about the
book is
the acknowledgement of the thing that
not a lot of people put their finger on
which is
there's kind of a goofiness and
uncoolness to um
believe in heroism and heroic acts and
it's become like passe and we do take
that cynical look
and
i love that and i love some of the
stories that you tell like dude the
the movie i'm sure people seen 300 about
the battle at thermopylae but the way
that you tell it which by the way this
book is
be interested to see if you agree with
this one of your mo more poetic
was that intentional
i i'm always trying to get better as i
write and
uh
i think
what i was really trying to do is focus
on story in this book because for almost
all of human history how have we
instilled courage in people it's through
story which actually goes to what you're
just saying about um the sort of the
cynicism so there's a great line from
one of theodore roosevelt's biographers
they said you know theodore roosevelt
grew up uh theater as a young man
theodore roosevelt
read stories about the great men and
women of history and decided to be just
like them and the way they sort of
phrase it when i heard it the first time
i actually picked up like a hint of a
sneer right like like what a what a
ridiculous person right and that was
kind of the like now we sort of see
theodore roosevelt in in sort of 100
years distant in a bunch of different
ways we we knock him for the imperialism
and some of the racism and and things
like that but we also sort of we see him
as an inspirational figure this guy who
sort of conquers his asthma and becomes
a politician we see it we love his
energy and his enthusiasm but at the
time these were like
those that was prime the primary
criticism of him that he like cared too
much that he was uh he was too energetic
that he was he was a clown right that
like he
they mocked him for his sincere
commitment to these things that it
wasn't serious and dignified like he was
trying too hard right and for an
aristocratic you know young man of
immense means and
and privilege that's like not
gentlemanly like to have ambition and to
care and to try
um
but i love that and i love that idea of
like yeah if you read about the people
of history and you don't think i want to
be like them what that doesn't make you
cool that makes you a loser like by
definition to me right like so i love
the idea of like no i actually like i
actually care and i actually believe in
this stuff like these the the characters
in my books are not like
are not just like words on a page like i
i
i admire and i'm fascinated with and
like
these people are sort of swirling around
in my head and my heart and they guide
me and inspire me and challenge me and
also service cautionary tales too but
just the idea that like
life has meaning that you matter
that you can make a difference
that history is not just a parade of
shitty people and crimes and awfulness
and hypocrites that we are making
progress and that things are getting
better and that it's getting better
because people
were courageously committed to ideas and
ideals
and risked themselves and their
reputations to try to make those things
more real i want to get back to 300 but
first i have a quote uh that goes with
exactly what you just said
um which i think is
really extraordinary it's long bear with
me this is you
the existential vacuum that began in the
20th century continues to suck us into
its dark ma religion patriotism industry
each day collective belief in these
pillars of humanity weakens just look at
what we tell ourselves about history do
we choose to see ourselves as the latest
descendants in a long line of ancestors
who have been struggling valiantly
against the odds towards a better world
or are we the bastard children of
irredeemable racists pillagers and
monsters are we the future of humanity
progress or are we the plague upon this
earth
yeah i mean take someone like thomas
jefferson right um when you really study
thomas jefferson he was
awful like he owned not just a few
slaves but a lot of slaves he
impregnated those slaves and therefore
owned his own children which he did not
free from slavery he tricked uh
sally hemmings to come to europe with
him telling him that he would free her
when they got back what she then didn't
do um
all of which to say is that they're and
it goes without saying that their
relationship was impossibly uh uh
corrupt and broken because he owned her
as a person so you could say that all
their you know sort of interactions are
are forcible and and uh you know consent
is impossible
awful he said you know
of slavery he said i tremble for my
country
when i realized that god is just like he
knew that slavery was a horrendous
unspeakable evil
and yet did nothing right he didn't free
his slaves washington's the only founder
that frees his slaves they all found
slavery to be morally contemptible and
challenging and yet none of them did
anything about it so when you study
someone like thomas jefferson and we
hold up as this great american when you
really look at it it like it breaks your
heart you're like [ __ ] this guy right
but also he writes
you know we hold these truths to be
self-evident that all men are created
equal so what are you gonna when you
look at someone like thomas jefferson i
guess what i'm saying is the nihilist
view is that all these people were
hypocrites they all sucked uh it's all
meaningless it was all based on a lie
and i definitely get why they're
activists we're getting a little bit of
injustice i get why there are activists
and historians who dedicate who look so
narrowly at this that it's hard not to
become a cynical nihilist right um
and yet
what thomas jefferson writes down
is also what abraham lincoln and
frederick douglass and martin luther
king use his own words
to
take the country from where it was in
1776 to where it was in 1865
to where it was in 1965 to where it is
now and so
i guess and i think about this now that
i have kids and i think about this in
this racial reckoning we're in
we have to decide
are we going to take the easy path out
which is to say that's all hopeless it's
all awful it's all fruit from the poison
tree or
are we gonna say and ralph ellison says
this an invisible man which is one of
the great uh great novels of the 20th
century he says you know you can love
the ideas but not the men who created
the ideas
and i think again it's easy
to
to dismiss it all it takes courage to
say no like i actually believe in this
and i actually believe in it more than
thomas jefferson did and i believed in
it more than the generation after and
after and after and then i'm going to
fight and it's worth sacrificing for and
it's worth committing to
to help make them a little bit more real
damn
i cannot wait to read your book on
justice sounds like this is going to be
interesting i and i totally agree man
look to me frame of reference is
everything and it is very easy to look
at the past and see only horrible things
and i'm sure if i looked at to bring
this
back around to the guys at 300 that if i
looked at who they were in real life i'd
be mortified to my [ __ ] core
but
there are ideas to your point you know
why the spartans were so yolked and and
like good at fighting it's because
the spartans existed as a warrior
culture and then there was uh basically
a secondary race called the helits who
did all the other work right like it was
a slave it was a military slave society
in which slaves did all the work so the
guys could uh train all the time and be
the greatest warriors ever right and so
yeah when you get when you dig into it
you can you can
cut it up in so many pieces that it
becomes impossible to see anything of
any significance or meaning um
so are you going to do that as an excuse
to not have to care to not have to try
to not have to risk yourself or
are you going to look at the incredible
sacrifice and heroism that these 300
guys and a bunch of their slaves marched
out and faced down
probably the worst odds in the history
of warfare and
succeeded
in the sense that they knew they would
die
but their objective was to buy time
which they paid for with their lives
dude that that is such a
a big idea i've never heard anybody talk
about it
but the way that we slice it up the way
that we look at it is going to determine
what we take from it is going to
determine our inspiration is going to
determine how we act in fact oh god you
say something in the book uh i probably
wrote it down but it would take me too
long to find
the idea being that
ultimately your
beliefs inform your behavior and
therefore
like what you decide to believe it was
like oh god
your beliefs become your virtue i'm
gonna have to [ __ ] look this up can
you
vamp and buy us time if you know what
i'm talking about roughly yeah peter
thiel talks about effective truths right
so if you don't believe something's
possible it's not possible
of course just because you believe
something is possible doesn't mean that
it is but it starts of course with the
belief
but i thought that idea was really
powerful that
what matters are your behaviors but what
is it that gives birth to your behaviors
it's ultimately your beliefs and as we
you know right now what i feel like
we're living through with social media
and the the way that ideas can spread so
quickly
is this becomes a framing device and
when you look at
um there there are like debating tactics
where it's like if you can control the
frame of the argument then you can frame
the argument in a way that you can win
it yeah and so this is this is sort of
the crazy making thing that happens on
the internet is people can shift the
focus of an argument to something and if
you don't challenge the very sort of
framing of what we're talking about then
you you know you get into something that
isn't productive that doesn't help
and so
what you're talking about now with your
300 example of yes you could look at
that and just be mortified to your core
but then you also miss the opportunity
to look at this other thing this
courageous act this thing that we should
all aspire to well you take someone like
winston churchill right and it's been
kind of because he's for a long time
been sort of the hero of the 20th
century this is the guy who stares down
the nazis does he also contribute to a
famine in
uh in the middle east uh does he uh
not support gandhi uh does is he uh
for much of his career like let's say
opposed to a female suffrage a whole
bunch was he maybe an alcoholic yeah
like
all true right um and so you can focus
on that
and decide and you should focus on it in
that in so far as true and to deny that
it is true is to reject the virtue of
wisdom right so when people go like the
civil war wasn't about slavery like
that's not what we're talking about you
don't get to stick your head in the sand
and deny that facts are facts but you
have to decide what facts are you going
to take and integrate into your
understanding of the world and what your
imperative as an individual is and so
what i think say churchill is a
wonderful example of is i talk about him
in the end of the book he says look
destiny taps us on the shoulder and he
says it would be a shame
if in the moment of your potential
finest hour
you weren't ready or you rejected it now
were there little moments where he did
reject opportunity to be even greater
than he was absolutely and i think we
should talk about that why was he so
afraid of someone like gandhi why did he
have regressive beliefs about x y and z
and let's also look at the penalties he
paid for those when when winston
churchill gets basically kicked out of
public life for like 10 years leading up
to the second world war it's because of
his failures on these issues
but
when the nazi menace is staring him down
when tyranny has overrun europe and a
generation of british leaders has
appeased it and appeased it and appeased
it
uh
churchill says no like churchill says
like
this isn't right churchill says
you know i think we should fight to the
very end um his his his daughter-in-law
asked him and
every time i think about it i get chills
she says like well what do we do if if
they land i remember this quote um
you know what do we do if the company
says what's stopping you from going into
the kitchen and grabbing a butcher knife
and i so it's like taking a few of these
bastards with you yeah like he was
committed to the very end
that this was
he knew irredeemable evil when he saw it
and he drew a line which to me is what
courage is about again he's not perfect
there was a bunch of other things he did
wrong there were many moments that the
british empire when he was in charge of
it did evil things
but
when the worst evil of the 20th century
appeared when
destiny tapped him on the shoulder he
was ready and i think that's what
courage is about now
it may be that you and i don't get
enormous moments like that but we will
get the smaller moments and when i say
that like courage is calling that's what
i'm talking about it's that it's always
there the opportunity to be courageous
is always there the stoics say like we
don't the stoics believed not so much in
predestination but they believe that the
vast majority of our circumstances were
out of our control so epictetus is born
a slave not his control mark subrealist
is chosen to be emperor not as not in
his control this is a high place and a
low place but both of those situations
demand
courage in their own way
and i think
if we accept that okay the vast majority
of our life is predetermined by
circumstances and evolution and uh the
moment we're born and all of that
great
but what do you do with the little
moments that life offers you do you
think the brave choice
or the cowardly choice do you think
about do you say what about me or do you
think about
uh i think a good question is what would
the world look like if everyone
did what i'm about to do right like if
everyone turned away and said
that's going to cost me too much right
we wouldn't we would not be in a good
place and so i think that's
when you decide how you're going to look
at history it's
are you going to be inspired by the
people who stepped up
or are you going to use the failures of
history as an excuse
to not have to try
i want to go back to this idea which i
am utterly gripped by of
your ability to look at a historical
figure to learn from the bad and also be
inspired by the good and how do you want
people to think about that as so many
people either ignore the bad and only
look at the good or they only look at
the bad and they ignore the good well i
think one of the things i think about is
like
they're all dead so who gives a [ __ ]
right so like they say it matters in the
sense that people you know um
look backward and say this is all bad to
your point they end up either nihilistic
or that this is all bad and because it's
the
fruit of the poisonous tree it all has
to be torn down so it can matter
no what i mean is the people who who are
afraid to look at the warts of
the people and trends and places and
countries they admire like uh a great
quote i heard um was like um
you can be responsible without having to
be accountable right so like the fact
that our
ancestors did x y and z
we're responsible for that because we
all live
in the society and world
they created and there's like you know
positive benefits and negative benefits
of that that doesn't mean like i have to
be held accountable for the holocaust
right but it does mean that i am
responsible for understanding what the
holocaust is and why it happened and
what the failures of good people and bad
people were that contributed to it and
i'm responsible for integrating that
information into my life and decisions
going forward so i'm all like and and we
talked you you sort of questioned that
earlier like why does how is the pursuit
of wisdom require courage
well maybe it just
forces you to go
oh man my parents or my grandparents or
my great-grandparents or the country
that i'm proud to be from
has a real awful track record right and
that's uncomfortable and we see
how
uh
quickly
people
come face to face with that and then
uh respond
not by
facing it by by turning away from it by
banning that idea by giving it some you
know scary label like critical race
theory or whatever and then deciding
it's a boogeyman right
james baldwin said that not everything
that's faced can be changed but nothing
can be changed
if it's not faced right and so courage
when we're looking at history or people
or even your own
life
right
it's
it's very rare that you're going to
study any of these things and be like
that person was perfect least of all
your own right i think about this
looking
back at my
own life like i think about my wife and
i talk about this where so my wife and i
have been together since we were 19
years old wow so i knew that but it's
shocking every time it's crazy
but so like you know normally like i
would look back like let's say i dated a
bunch of different people she dated a
bunch of different people then we got
together in our 30s or mid-30s or
whatever we would look back at the
stupid things that we did in our 20s and
it would be a problem of another
relationship right it would be like i
remember when i did x y or z and that
was embarrassing or that was cruel or
that was stupid or that was selfish or
that was cowardly or whatever it is
that that baggage would exist
in another relationship
but if you're with someone for a long
time that baggage is there between you
two
just as the baggage is there between you
and your siblings and you and the
neighborhood that you live in and you
and the country you live in or the
political party that you support or
whatever it is and so it takes courage
to to look
and go like man i was not courageous
right or to go like oh i i [ __ ] up i
did this i shouldn't have done that um
but unless you're willing to do that
there is precisely zero chance that you
will learn from it and change and be
made better for it so it the study of
history is not for the faint of heart
and you have to be able to do that
without getting lost
in that right so if all you did was
dwell on the dumb [ __ ] that you did at
the beginning of your relationship you'd
never be able to move forward right so
is if they're dwelling on it it's
impossible for you to exist in the
moment now well said so my wife and i
have a show called relationship theory
and we talk about that like
can you actually move on like it's one
thing to
to say that you forgive them but can you
let it go like can you
actually we call it not letting dust
settle so it's like
you have this moment you say that you
forgive it but like if you really
cleaned the surface because if not that
dust just builds and builds and builds
and you get this resentment where you're
looking in from the outside of
somebody's relationship you're like what
is it bringing you like it looks gnarly
like that does not look like fun i don't
know why you're doing that and the
ability to actually let go of that stuff
is really hard well then just think
about the courage like let's say someone
has done something in a relationship
that's hurt you
um
it takes courage to forgive right
because
by forgiving and staying or you know
continuing to have a relationship with
the person
you are by definition saying i am
willing to get hurt again
right so kur again courage is not just
uh can you jump out of an airplane or
can you you know immigrate from one
country to another with you know five
dollars in your pocket but it's also
can you
you know be willing to put aside
resentments or suspicions or
fears
and
tell someone what you feel or you know
stay in a relationship that has uh
baggage or history um
that's you want to get into one of the
really complicated ideas of your book
okay all right so
in it you talk about hey there's a
difference between just sort of rushing
headlong and doing something
recklessly
versus being brave walk us through
because you're for people that haven't
yet read it
one of the interesting things is you
really address it from like every
conceivable angle like here is courage
in a balanced way here's courage when it
becomes reckless here is like hiding
from courage and
that one i thought was really
interesting well it's funny because i'm
now in the middle of writing the
temperance book and i don't know i when
i'm writing i'm always tweaking like up
till the end so there may be stuff that
i've moved uh before it went to final
print that i don't remember exactly but
i'm thinking about this a lot now
because
actually for the virtue of moderation
aristotle uses courage as the example
he says there's a golden mean so he says
that think of a spectrum and on one end
of the spectrum you have cowardice you
might think that on the other end of the
spectrum is courage actually no courage
is in the middle between
cowardice and recklessness
and so
when we talk about [ __ ] crazy to
think these guys live thousands of years
ago i mean this yes that's some
insightful [ __ ] but and not only is he
talking about that in theory he's also
the philosophy instructor of alexander
the great who is like having to think
about that in a very real way
right so when we think of philosophy
sometimes we think of these like
caricatures of our university professors
or something like people who had no
experience in real life i mean she's
talking about courage like as he's
tutoring one of the bravest most
brilliant strategically bold
military commanders to ever walk the
earth
but i think that's a really important
way of thinking about it because
courage is not just doing whatever you
want taking any risk in fact there's a
great spartan story about this one
spartan in like the heat of battle he
rips off his armor he defeats all these
guys like one on one it's like the
bravest thing that anyone had ever seen
but the the spartan elders when he gets
back from battle instead of like
throwing him a parade they find him they
find him for
endangering
uh an important spartan asset himself
right and so i love that right so uh and
actually as i was researching the book i
talked to a friend of mine who is an
instructor at the naval academy and he
was saying he's like you know jumping on
a grenade is not brave
unless you're doing it to protect
someone else right so it's like if you
just jump on the grenade because you're
like a grenade like and you're just
instinctually brave you're actually
being reckless which is a vice right
you've you've just killed yourself
for
zero
return on that investment now if you
jump on the grenade and it protects a
room full of innocent people that's an
incredibly that's not just courageous
that's heroic it's selfless but if you
just do it
it's selfish uh if the only person it
affects is you so um when we think about
boldness you know there's this
expression fortune favors the bold when
we think about boldness it's within
again those limitations of the other
virtues
if the fight doesn't need to happen
it's not courageous to start it um
if
uh you don't need to go all in on this
hand
uh going all in on it is not courageous
it's stupid and reckless um and so
deciding what battles need to be fought
what risks need to be taken
uh how risk can be taken off the table
if it's not necessary this is an
important part of of course it's not
just
i don't feel fear if you don't feel fear
you are not thinking
it was interesting reading the book i
was like
it's so inspiring and it makes you want
to be a better person which is like the
highest praise i can give a book
uh and one of the notes that i took was
sometimes though
being lacking courage
or being reckless it's not clear which
is which like it's not clear like wait
if i do this am i being
wise because to
push forward would be
reckless or am i not doing this because
i'm afraid and not doing this as
cowardice and i was like sometimes a
lack of courage is just straight
confusion well there's a story about
theodore roosevelt it's not in the book
but i was reading when i was researching
the book basically there's some sort of
inter-party split over like corruption
or something early on in his career and
a bunch of his friends all leave the
republican party in
disgust and anger over and this is so
far distant that there's no connection
to what republicans or democrats are
today so let's put politics aside but
basically they all leave
and
theodore roosevelt stays
now is this cowardice or is it
courageous because he wouldn't have been
able to become the republican president
like 10 or 15 years later had he left in
a huff right and another good example of
this is like what if uh your job
is asking you to do something unethical
or morally
frustrating or you're just not cool with
it
but by storming out in disgust or
whatever you are then leaving your
family destitute i had um alexander
vindman on my podcast a few weeks ago
he's the um the whistleblower who got
trump impeached again put politics aside
but he
sees something he says something and i
talked to him about it and i said like
you know were you worried about
like how do i pay for my daughter's
college education and he said these are
kind of the things that you think about
right we often self-deter we go
well
uh i don't want to do it because it
would be irresponsible for the following
reason so it there i don't want to make
it seem like it's clear-cut because it's
not it's [ __ ] really hard and it's
not like a hell yes hell no thing like
you just know
and
it's it's often
very morally ambiguous
it's very morally ambiguous and
challenging
and
if you're not
torn about it
it's probably
uh probably not super high-stakes
situation um but there's a moment i do
talk about in the book where theodore
roosevelt and i this is a good test that
i like theodore roosevelt is considering
asking booker t washington to have
dinner with him at the white house the
first african-american to be invited to
dine at the white house as a guest of
the president now it's not fair to say
he's the first african-american to eat
at the white house plenty of them had to
eat at the white house they were just
never allowed to be guests of honor so
this is a major political statement uh
in the early 1900s and
theodore roosevelt is considering doing
it
and then he thinks about why no one has
done it before him which is
the southern states won't like it his
southern relatives won't like it the
newspapers will make it a thing it could
cost him a close election
and then he says in a letter to a friend
he was like precisely because i
hesitated
i felt disgust with myself
and i knew that i had to do it so often
i find that the thing you're hesitating
on doing the considerations
are usually very helpful
in in reminding you of what actually
matters but if you're not thinking about
this if you're just
plunging ahead
you know you're probably also going to
charge off a cliff from
at some point yeah man this stuff gets
so interesting and to your point about
alexander the great like i mean and even
just backing it off just that
it will play out in your life whether
it's something big or small philosophy
really is about a life well lived
and in the book i can't remember if it's
you that said it or you're quoting
somebody else we all know there's
something worse than death
and when you create that haddock for
yourself and you have defense of you
know what my virtues are and how i'm
going to behave
you know like what things you would
actually be prepared to die for
where your sort of line of recklessness
is and you [ __ ] better define that
before you find yourself in that
situation
and in the book you give an example
where i'm like ah i don't know if that
was reckless or if i'm like really
inspired and the example is the guy
in the senate in ancient rome
and he is
he's expressly told if you speak against
me
it's not going to end well for you yeah
he does it anyway
and i'll i'll leave you to fill in the
the gaps in the story so i think are you
saying that you think i was saying he
was reckless i'm saying i don't know if
i'm i'm blown away that he had the balls
to say what he thought was true because
for him to lie because he tells the guy
just don't ask if you don't ask i won't
say anything but if you ask i'm going to
tell the truth right and i was like i'm
impressed and at the same time like if
you know people get killed for this [ __ ]
i don't know what i would have done in
that situation yeah so this is uh
the senator is named helvidius and i
actually talked about in my book lives
of the stoix too but he's one of those
the stoic uh senators in in uh the sort
of middle roman period and
and rome has had this series of really
bad corrupt awful emperors
and they're in the middle of another one
and you know the job of the senate was
sort of to advise and consult as it is
now
and
a lot of people take that to mean don't
tell the boss what he doesn't want to
hear
right don't uh you know the nail that
stands up gets hammered down don't say
anything controversial just wait this
out uh and then hopefully things will
get better and he basically says i'm not
going to do that like uh my job is to do
uh is to say what i think is true and if
if uh you know not going to go around
screaming
and and sort of being reckless but like
if you ask me a question i'm gonna give
you the answer
uh that
that i think is true and he's willing to
die over that principle
um which is i think
uh incredible um and and again is that
to say that you should die over every
you know little thing no but i think it
is to say what are you willing to risk
for
the principles that you have i remember
a friend of mine is a senator and i
remember uh he i won't because it'll get
controversial get into it but he's taken
some you know political stand and i
emailed him and i said congratulations
like it's really impressive and then i
said i said you know what is the point
of having six years of guaranteed job
security if you're not going to use it
to say what you think
is true if you're not going to vote
according to what you think is right but
it is really interesting like you see
academics with tenure lifelong
employment guarantees you see senators
or congressmen you and i don't have
to we we always are sympathetic to
congressmen because and and women
because you know they're they're always
up for re-election i mean you and i
don't have two years of guaranteed job
security very few people do so i'm
actually not sympathetic to that at all
like you have two years or six years of
guaranteed job security
and
you're not gonna do what you think is
right because
you might lose your job over it i mean
your job is to do what you think is
right what did you get into politics for
uh if not to do that this isn't like
uh
this isn't this is a a profession of
service right and so
i do think these these situations can be
seen from different angles but i think
generally um the idea of like
i'm going to do my job come what may uh
solzhenitsyn has a line he says let evil
enter the world but not through me
[ __ ]
dude he blows me away that [ __ ] guy
like
obviously you've read um
the gulag archipelago
oh
wow like would you be willing to go to
the gulag for what you believe yeah
that's that's that's a real
would you
would ryan holidays depends on what it
is right that that's the
that's the question but i remember you
and i we talked like a year ago and we
were talking about something that was
like politically charged controversial
and you said something that stuck with
me that i've thought about since you
said
you know um
i i thought what i thought and then i
found myself not saying it because i
knew people would be upset by it and
then i realized
that
uh to not say what i think is true for
business reasons
is
uh not a good way to live made me feel
like a coward yeah and and i think
that's um
i think that's a really good test
because
you know you watch people accumulate
power or influence or a platform
and then what do they use it for it they
use it for the perpetuation and
expansion of those same things
i i'll get emails from people i'll say
something that's political or whatever
and they'll why did you do this you had
to know you would you know piss people
off and go
what
do you think i built this platform for
like i didn't write these books and
build this email list and this youtube
following on this instagram following
whatever to then censor myself to not
lose those people i mean the whole point
of having it
is to use it to say what i think is true
that is the job right the job of a
writer or an artist or
a thought leader whatever you want to
call it is to
explore and articulate what they think
is true and believe to be important so
if you don't do that because you see the
numbers and the numbers tell you that it
drives unsubscribes or unfollows or
angry comments
you're not just being a coward but
you're betraying
the whole reason for doing it like
there's a there's a exchange with lyndon
johnson as he's
uh pushing through civil rights which a
whole bunch of other people were much
more
fervently in favor of than he i mean
he's a southern senator he'd done
basically nothing on civil rights most
of his career
but what johnson knew was how to get
stuff done right
johnson knew how to get stuff done so
after the assassination of kennedy
he decides like in
uh memory of kennedy he's going to ram
this thing through and he thinks he can
do it and i think he does come to
earnestly believe in the ideas even
though he'd been very slow to adopt them
and perfectly fine to you know
experience the benefits of segregated
society for most of his life but
some aide comes to him and says you know
this is going to be politically
disastrous you're going to
are you sure you want to do this blah
blah and he says what the he says ah
what the hell is the presidency for
right like if the perp you you work your
whole life as he did successive offices
offices offices you slave away in
obscurity you finally get to wield the
levers of power
and it's really important that people
realize this when you get that when the
the
the game is in your hands like when
you're in control your impulse is not
now
i'm gonna really do things my way
because if they were you probably
wouldn't have gotten
to that point you would have done this
earlier right so the impulse is not now
that i have power i'm going to use it to
do the things that i believe in that
that would be the courageous thing that
the
this is where the cowardice comes in and
you go ah
but you'll lose
the midterms right you'll not get
re-elected your donors will be upset the
newspapers will criticize you and i
think that's what theodore roosevelt was
saying too about inviting booker t
washington he's like
what the what [ __ ] good is it to be
the president of the united states of
america if i can't invite who i want to
invite to dinner right not only is that
morally repugnant
it's
it's pointless right but this is where
we get people you watch
you know powerful people in all
different facets of life not
say or do what they think is right and
i've been guilty of in my own life i'm
sure you have two
because you have your considerations
yes and
there's a couple things in there so one
the theodore roosevelt thing i find
really interesting because of that like
you listen to that gut instinct right
it's the same obviously on a much
smaller scale but it's the same feeling
that i had of no one
in the outside world knew that i was
starting to feel like a coward right but
i knew and i didn't want to feel that
way and that very thing because i'm
always trying to get people to
understand the whole purpose of life is
to feel good about yourself when you're
by yourself yes and so whether the
outside world thinks you're amazing if
you're at home contemplating suicide you
have [ __ ] all like you have absolutely
nothing
and if the whole world thinks you're an
[ __ ] but you really believe to the
core of your being that you stood up for
the right thing
you're still going to feel good it
doesn't mean that you're not going to
face hardships it doesn't mean you're
not going to wonder how am i going to
pay for my kids college but
man you have something that's really
really powerful and learning to listen
to that to translate the feeling into an
idea that you can articulate i think is
very important and something a lot of
people never take the time to do and so
they don't understand their own emotions
i think that's really powerful and then
you know just getting to the point where
you recognize the complexity of things
so for instance with um
[Music]
you and i might be in slightly different
positions maybe it'll be interesting to
say this out loud and see how you think
about it so
i'm not
a writer
and
the only reason that i stepped in front
of the camera was one i wanted to impact
people's lives positively obviously
and then two i want to build
the next disney so i want to build a
brand that is bigger than me when we
started we were like what do we call
this thing everybody was like bill you
studios all day long the show should be
called the tom bilyeu show and i was
like [ __ ] that no one is going to tattoo
tom bill you on themselves other than my
wife who strangely wants to and i
absolutely refuse uh but
i knew that they could feel a sense of
ownership over impact theory so all of
that to say
i can damage my own brand sure by
saying things to not feel like a coward
so now i'm in this like sort of doubly
complex thing of i'm only in front of
the camera to positively impact people's
lives
the more that i can be almost
transparent in that interaction and just
give them something that they can own
that will you know give them the ideas
they need the ideas they don't need me
and so i'm like god like am i just going
to trip myself up by going up but
because i know that all of this is for
naught if i don't
feel good about who i am if i don't feel
that i've contributed in a meaningful
way if i don't feel that i've done
something honorable is probably the word
i would use with my life and so
that feeling that's why you know one of
the big questions i'd read in your book
is how much of this is just inescapable
that we're all like if you fail to be
courageous you will suffer no matter
what the world thinks they could all be
like maybe they
you get celebrated for
being the biggest hero in the world but
inside you know it wasn't you like the
don draper effect if you watch mad men
where he like took a hero's identity and
so people are constantly like you know
thank you for your service and he knows
that he was a total coward
and
ah just like that's so gnarly and i just
cannot when this is this is where that
stoic idea of sometimes it's like hey
are you speaking up about current events
or it's like hey suddenly you know
you've witnessed some
calamity and you're the only person who
can speak up about it right so there's a
certain amount of sort of randomness to
it they call this a moral luck right
like were you of age born in this
country when
they were deciding who was going to land
at normandy you and i were not so that
wasn't an opportunity for us to be
courageous
and
uh you know or were you there when the
police were brutalizing someone and you
had the courage to take out your camera
and film it despite their threatening
you know to arrest you if you continued
or what so there's a certain amount of
luck um and if you want to call it luck
in the kind of destiny that that is
chosen for us but then there's also the
sort of little moments of like are you
living up to what you believe in are you
uh using the assets that you have
to be the person that you know you want
to be and i think it is important right
like
what good is success
if you have to send to yourself right
so you you have the next disney but you
knew you had to compromise on all the
things that were important to you to get
there
yeah um
the bible talks about the the man who uh
gaineth the whole world but loses his
soul right and i think that's sadly very
common
um
and i think this is particularly common
in politics in business
uh
in the creative fields where
to
make your way up through the system you
have to show
that you're not
a threat
right to sure you're not a threat yeah
so um
okay in the beginning of the pandemic
there was a captain uh i think i forget
in his first name but it's captain
crozier he's like the head of the uss
theodore roosevelt
and it pulls into new york harbor
there's a coveted outbreak on the ship
and
he doesn't feel like people are taking
it seriously that the people inside the
navy are taking it seriously and so he
has
uh
a moral
and he has a moral quandary do i
continue to do i just follow my orders
and let the people i'm entrusted with
leading suffer as a result or do i take
more desperate measures that will
involve repercussions for me
professionally and speak up about it
and he speaks up about it i think he
likes cc's a reporter i forget the
specifics but he ends up basically
losing uh his job as the job he wanted
his whole life to be the captain of an
aircraft carrier uh and he loses his job
over what he believed was the right
thing
but i think it's important to zoom back
and go you don't like people like oh
this is reckless let's say or something
um
you don't become the captain of an
aircraft carrier if you're not a pretty
good rule follower right like uh
think of all the years he had to spend
in the navy
following
the rules uh putting in his time not
being disruptive not being like for the
entrepreneurs have a different
career trajectory than most almost any
other profession right where like you're
an outsider who starts their own thing
so from the beginning there was courage
but what about like tim cook right
people like tim cook's not as courageous
and ground breaking as steve jobs well
if he was do you think he would have
lasted very long at that saying like
they they that doesn't work so there's
different
different career paths for different
people but the question is
when you find yourself in that situation
do you do the courageous thing or the
cowardly thing when it really matters
right
um
and i think the sad truth is a lot of
times we don't
in the book you catalogue a time when
you didn't feel you had acted very
courageously speaking of business
um
it's
fascinating that in a book about courage
that people actually advised you not to
include that which by the way the
weirdest [ __ ] thing and of course
when you're on the other side of it you
can't convince yourself that it's true
but it made me think you far more
courageous that you included it in the
book and it made me like you that much
more and it was elements of the story
i'd never heard before um but it'd be
great to hear both what happened and why
you included it in the book well it's a
tricky thing writing a book about
courage when you're not jocko willing or
something right like like i'm not
writing this from the perspective of
a soldier or a courageous whistleblower
or something like that um
that's not what i do right that like i'm
a writer my job is to study trends to
incorporate my own experience but to
study history and psychology and
philosophy to communicate sort of
timeless ideas um but i felt like it
would be very disingenuous to write a
book about
uh courage and the importance of courage
and somehow present
this
like by association this uh idea that
like i was the perfect embodiment of
these ideas in fact i think the reason i
write my books whatever i'm writing
about whether my last book was about
stillness whether i was writing about
ego was learning about obstacles
i'm always trying to write about the
thing i am struggling with and if i am
not struggling with it if it's very
clear and obvious
and second nature to me
it's not
interesting enough to write a book about
you know like i think you write about
what
you
want to spend years of your life
studying and exploring and learning
about so when i was sort of trying to
think about how i wanted to wrap up the
book i mean i could i could have talked
about dropping out of college i could
have talked about taking a you know when
i left my corporate life to be a writer
i could have talked about things that
required
no small amounts of courage but i felt
like it would
be
first off it would pale in comparison to
the examples in the book right um
you know whether it's florence
nightingale or churchill or
or de gaulle or the 300 spartans it
would just seem silly um so part of it
was just a creative decision to be
perfectly honest like what what is
the final thought that you want to leave
the readers with do you want to make it
really uh
lofty and aspirational or do you want to
make it accessible and real so part of
it was that but then the other part was
just it was something that has been
weighing on me for a long time
and
as i studied these people it kept coming
back to me well what about
when you fell short
and so i was telling a story about when
i was at american apparel where i was a
director of marketing for many years and
i was asked to do something that was
unethical not just unethical probably
illegal
and
unquestionably stupid um and
and i didn't do i said i'm not gonna do
it and i thought there was a chance i
would lose my job over it but i also
was taking like half the risk right like
i said i wouldn't do it
but i knew that someone else was going
to do it
and
i don't remember all the videos but i
knew that and i knew that it was
happening right i just decided like
i just i i said you know we're talking
about that solzhenitsyn quote let evil
enter the world but not through me
in a sense that's not enough right you
can't just plug your
ears and close your eyes and turn away
from something if you know that it's
happening you don't do anything to stop
it
aren't you
letting it happen through you right
you're at least
uh marx really says in meditations that
you can commit injustice by doing
nothing also and i did nothing and i
watched this thing happen
and in retrospect i think what ages
the least well about it to me is like
why would i think that there was a part
of me that said you know you could lose
your job over this do you want to like
rock the boat do you want to like is
you're not going to go toe-to-toe with
the ceo and owner
of the company um with a hand-picked
board of directors like it's you're not
going to be able to do anything about
this so you'll probably lose your job
over it if you make too big of a fuss of
it
but then in retrospect it's like what
kind of job is worth keeping if
stopping someone from doing this thing
makes you lose it
and the other irony for me is that like
i was already planning on leaving to be
a writer i was just
i was thinking about
my
personal safety i was thinking
well here's my plan
and this disrupts my plans and if i lose
my job it would be this or that and like
i was thinking about myself and not
the other people involved in the thing
and that doesn't that doesn't hold up
well um
and what do you think about the owning
that and putting it in the book and is
there some sort of catharsis around just
owning it
i think so i mean there are some there's
definitely some concern catharsis like
deciding to like go back and like ask
people who were there when it happened
what did they remember of it what did
they remember about it and like
it was actually reassuring talking to
some of the people because i was worried
like was this like
an isolated instance or like i went it
this is a company that had a lot of me
too issues basically but i went and i
asked like the female employees that
worked for me not not like wanting them
to reassure me but i wanted to know like
like was i like part of the problem here
like did i
uh was this like a pattern of behavior
or something that i was like a protest
and they were like no on the opposite
like they told me it was the opposite
that it was
what i was telling myself when i didn't
get involved or when i didn't actively
stop it was that i would be in a worse
position to help the people who i was
responsible for
and it was reassuring to hear from them
that like no they really felt like i
was responsible for them and that i was
protecting them at the same time that
doesn't excuse it explains it but it
doesn't excuse it right and so there was
some catharsis there was some it was
actually just sort of personally helpful
to explore it so i could learn from it
um
but i also what i wanted to show too is
that courage isn't this thing
where like you're either courageous or
you're not
like um
it's more a thing you do
like day to day um
and so there's been courageous moments
in my life and then there's been moments
like this like ones you wish you could
get back
and
[Applause]
it's really about how do you learn from
those
as you go forward and can you get to a
place where more often than not
you make the courageous call
that was a really interesting way that
you end the book
um do you remember the sort of
paraphrased words that you use i can get
you close but i wouldn't okay i could i
could look at them but oh yeah that's
right we have the book why don't you
pull it out what is it literally your
sign off which i thought was really
interesting where you're like
something to the effect of be courageous
no wait
yeah i said uh courage calls to each of
us will we answer or maybe that's too
much can we get better at answering can
we step up more times than we step back
let's start there
i like that a lot
okay that's not so bad
uh how do we get
more courageous so that we answer that
call more often
well i think the more you can make it a
habit right in in the same way that
exercise like this morning uh
obviously i like don't want to work out
but i decided to and so i did right
and then i remember standing in the
shower and it was nice and warm and then
when you crank that handle you know to
the cold part even if it's just for a
few seconds i think one of the things
you're doing is like reminding yourself
who's in charge
and who is in charge
i'd like to think the courageous side of
me is in charge like the side that does
the hard thing
the side the the the side that does the
uncomfortable thing
this the side
the cut that the conscious side can
override the emotional side or vice
versa depending on what it is right but
it seneca talks about the reason to
treat the body rigorously so that it's
not disobedient to the mind
which i love i think about that all the
time
you know like who that's who's in charge
right like you
or your desire to be comfortable to be
well liked
uh
to accomplish what you're trying to
accomplish like who's in charge
and
i think if you think about courage as
like
very rarely the easy way
and almost always the harder way
um you can build that as a muscle like i
do the harder thing
i don't
read the comments right like i say what
i think is true
and i don't flinch you know is this
gonna be bad for me or not like
uh that doesn't mean you go around
half [ __ ] but like i
i don't flinch from stuff i do that hard
thing to me that's the habit that we're
trying to build and i think one of the
ways we do that bring this full circle
is by not just studying history but by
like integrating those people into your
lives like what would they do here like
what tradition are you an heir to
um
[Music]
there's a great poem by longfellow where
he talks about um
that the lie he says the lives of all
great men remind us we can make our
lives sublime
and then he says um and then in doing
that we can leave behind us footprints
in the sands of time
that for another person says sailing
over life's solemn maine can take heart
from right so i think if you think about
it as this like
sort of series of
like this unending
procession of
torches like that were one torch is
lighting another is lighting another
sliding another and that you you
you are a descendant
uh literally or figuratively of people
who
have endured like unimaginable
difficulties
and persevered through it
and so can you and
in so doing you are reassuring the
people
that come from you again literally or
figuratively
that
they also have what it takes
talk to me about the idea of burning the
white flag
well i think when you look at a lot of
courageous acts whether it's you know
sort of resistance in war or you know
somebody who
you know enacted some political change
or whatever there was this sort of
tenacious refusal to surrender like
um
seneca talks again quote santa claus
says if they can force you to do it you
don't know how to die
whoa
meaning that like
uh
you can lose
but
quitting is a choice
i think uh have you read old man in the
sea by hemingway no it's a beautiful
very short book but um you know he says
a man can be defeated but not destroyed
or is it destroyed and not defeated but
the point is those are not the same
thing right and that the decision to
quit
the decision to give up the decision to
concede
that's ultimately a power that you
always have
um again you can you're going to end up
on the losing side
that happens
um
but you decide if that's it
i think that might even be the
that idea was when you brought up
churchill talking to his daughter-in-law
because if i remember right the quote
about
there's nothing stopping you from going
into the kitchen and getting a butcher's
knife and taking a few of these bastards
with you i'm not saying that they can't
eventually beat you just that you don't
ever have to give up or something like
that i think that's right i think that's
right although there is another great
churchill quote where he says never ever
ever ever ever ever give in
it says accept
in matters of taste and good sense or in
in except in matters of honor or good
sense so are there some times where it
makes sense to concede yes that is my
all-time favorite quote i [ __ ] love
that so much it's so good i mean he just
walked into a school of boys and just
you're supposed to give like a 30-minute
address that's what he said it's amazing
have you seen the movie our finest hour
uh yeah yeah oh god i love this so much
look he there's no doubt that he's a
complex figure who did also dumb [ __ ]
yeah but
to think and in fact this is an idea
that comes up in the book over and over
and over again and is very inspiring to
me which is this idea of one person
showing courage can become a majority
and the courage is contagious as they
say
yes give me more about that well there's
a quote it's attributed to andrew
jackson we don't know if he actually
said it but he said um
uh one man with courage makes a majority
and i don't know if there's like a viral
video of like some guy at like a concert
and uh no everyone's sitting on the
grass he just starts dancing and then
like suddenly more and more have you
seen this one and like suddenly i
haven't seen the whole crowd is dancing
but it's a it's a nice metaphor for what
we're talking about and de gaulle was
asked this uh towards the end of his
life um you know people think like for
instance the french resistance everyone
was in the french resistance like the
nazis overran france
and five percent of the population
resisted whoa five percent so it's not
just like oh hey like a new political
party came
and uh like we didn't really like it but
like no like the worst cause in human
history takes over your country and only
five percent of people were like i
object right like people were like i
don't like this but only five percent of
people
maybe less actively participate in the
resistance now of course retroactively
everyone says we were with you that's
not how it was but de gaulle was asked
you know
is it isn't it true that you were always
in a minority in everything you did and
he said yes but i always believed that
someday that would cease to be so and
you think about this the first video
that you post
first book that i write the first time
anyone does anything creatively
financially
entrepreneurially
nobody thought it would work
right like
you were the only one that believed in
it or else they would have done it right
like and sure maybe five people but the
point is the vast majority of people
thought it was either thought it was a
bad idea or
couldn't even
muster up enough care to tell you it was
about it like they were just ignorant of
your entire existence right so you you
are in a fundamental minority when you
start anything
and you have to have this belief and
again we talk about the courageousness
of earnestness
you have to have a belief that one day
that will cease to be so
um
you know when i
saw my first book about stoicism i'd
written two successful marketing books
and my publisher told me after
that um
you know they
were not interested in what became the
obstacles away really at all they
offered me half
what i got paid for my first book for
what was my third book the obstacles
less than half
um and i remember my editor said
something like
i asked her like this like last year and
she said you know we were just hoping
you would get this out of your system
and go back to doing what we thought you
should be doing right
and you know i get it like in retrospect
like obscure books about
uh
books about an ancient obscure school of
philosophy are not like the most sexy
but that's what i wanted to do and more
importantly i had seen what it had done
for me and i believed
that it would be bigger than they
thought it would be but there was a
moment where that was not empirically
you know evident and you know it took
it took uh it didn't hit the obstacles
we had no best seller list when it came
out uh and it did not hit
any bestseller list although it sold
consistently did not hit a single
bestseller list for the first six years
that it was the world um
and it shrugged along until eventually
it hit number one
and when it hit number one of course
everyone said well obviously you know
this is a popular school of ancient
philosophy like of course you know right
um
and i think anyone that's unearthed
anything or popularized anything or
invented anything new
experiences that like everyone tells you
it's a bad idea until you definitively
prove it was a good idea and then the
curse
is that it looks
like it was obvious all along
you actually give an example of that in
the book um
oh god which person it was the kennedys
and uh the shriver i think
i forgot his first name yeah yeah um
in 1960 martin luther king is arrested
for integrating a restaurant in georgia
and
this is like
not
like
oh he was just arrested and he was going
to be treated well in jail like it was
very
real there was a very real threat that
he would be lynched or murdered in
police custody and even if he wasn't he
was sentenced to four months on a chain
gang
um which again was likely a pretext for
him to be killed while escaping or
lynched or you know mysteriously
disappear
um and so coretta scott king you want to
talk about courage she's raising two
children she's pregnant with her third
she says i'm going to call
kennedy and nixon the two guys running
for president i'm going to call the next
president of the united states and see
if they can't intervene to help my
husband and nixon
going back to the roosevelt thing we're
talking about nixon says i don't want to
get involved uh it's going to be bad for
me politically when i'm president i'll
be in a position to help you
um and the worst part about it is that
he was actually friends with martin
luther king he knew him personally
they'd socialized uh he'd worked with
him when nixon ran eisenhower's civil
rights
[Music]
projects and but in the moment of truth
he wasn't there and kennedy um was
advised by
people looking at the same political
calculation to also not get involved
except his brother-in-law
uh says no man you gotta do this like
it's not just the right thing it's like
the only thing like you can't let this
the civil rights leader of our time you
know be murdered in a georgia prison
again what good is becoming president if
you can't do this and so uh kennedy and
his brother robert f kennedy get
involved they call the judge they call
the governor they pull some strings and
they get king released basically they
put enough attention on it that it was
no longer possible for something bad to
happen in the shadows
in any case king gets out he's uh
devastated that his friend betrayed him
and you know
impressed at the balls on kennedy uh
that that hey this isn't just some like
rich kid from boston uh with you know
powerful parents uh this is like a guy
with real courage and real commitment to
you know the ideals of what america is
supposed to stand for and so kennedy so
ken king comes out and says like this is
what john f kennedy does for me and uh
john f kennedy wins
the presidency by like 30 000 votes um
almost entirely due to the
switch of black turnout most
in 1960 actually the republican party
was the party of uh african americans
not the democratic party and so it flips
and he wins the presidency so when we
talk about courage it's like
first off it's not always going to be
obvious people can be telling you it's
precisely the wrong thing to do
but then also just like a few seconds of
courage can change
not just the course of your life but
talk about the great man of history
theory it can change the course
of an entire society do i remember i
also that people told shriver dude don't
this is not advice you want to give yeah
because
if he feels pressured by you he's gonna
never wanna hear from you again and
you'll be iced out of the campaign and
if he ends up taking your advice
everyone's gonna forget that you just
took this big risk well this is how all
bureaucracies function basically all
organizations where you know you don't
people don't have real skin in the game
it's
all downside and no upside to to speak
up right if you if you push for the risk
and it doesn't work you're the idiot who
screwed it all up and you get fired
and
and if it works out
of course
you were right
it was obvious
and here's your pat on the back you did
your job
you know and so he he he had to call and
he called in his own his
he he basically said look
i'm family
i'm
calling in my one chip right like you
have to do he put it all on the line
and uh
again yeah who remembers it nobody
uh he got no credit for it kennedy gets
the credit um kennedy became president
right he got all of it um and that is
i think another important sort of
you know i talk about in the book i talk
about courage is this like sort of rare
gem you hold up different angles produce
different
sort of reflections but like
we often think of the courageous
president the courageous ceo the
courageous whistleblower whatever but we
also often forget the sort of ordinary
courage of the people who spoke up
inside of an organization
people who put forth this little policy
or made this little tweak or pocketed
this piece of paper to prevent some bad
thing from happening like
courage is not always sexy and obvious
and it's not you know riding a galloping
horse you know or it's not flashed
across the headlines it can often be
very unsung as well
yeah it's there's a an interesting quote
from steve jobs in the book where he
says one way that we remember who we are
is when we remind ourselves of who our
heroes are which i thought was really
interesting i'm curious who are your
heroes
yeah i think what what
jobs is talking about is the same thing
i'm
talking about in how i approach things
and what i try to do in my books which
is like
who whose standard are you trying to
live up to like whose shadow are you
walking in who are you who are you
trying not to let down
and if you think about those and you
think about who those are for apple you
know they have the famous sort of
misfits commercial um
the weird ones or whatever it is um
you know who are those people for you
and can you make them real to you and
again thinking about like who your
heroes are is really clarifying
i think i have obviously have a bunch of
ancient heroes of course uh the stoics
being the ones i talk about the most and
you know i return to the same characters
in the books quite often that's not
something i have to sometimes be careful
with i'm fascinated by ulysses s grant
abraham lincoln florence nightingale was
someone i'd been wanting to write about
for a long time and hadn't been able to
um but as far as living i don't i always
feel weird doing the living one because
i'm all for dead
like who are some of your favorite
stoics and why well
so
what's fascinating to me about stoicism
is the spectrum
on which the stoics exists so
if epictetus is born a slave you have
marcus aurelius who's born into
privilege and then is chosen to be
emperor and so you have extreme
adversity
an extreme advantage
and yet they both
sort of play the hand that fates that
fate deals them
with such sort of grace
virtue
and
[Music]
self-control
and wisdom that i just i love that
because
the reality is we're
somewhere in the middle of that spectrum
almost all of us right
we're unlikely to lead the free world
we're unlikely to be thrown into chains
but we're
either dealing with too much or not
enough of something and how do you
sort of stand up
to that to me is what it's all all about
so i i
what i love about stoicism and why i
found it just so fulfilling to write
about is like
they were real people
like not academics
not
uh
ev even even seneca the sort of the
probably the greatest writer of the
stoics
is like the second most powerful man in
rome
and he's a playwright like on the side
like he's
he's
in the arena you know like doing doing
the work
and i i think ideas that
don't have that component it doesn't
really matter to me how brilliant they
are
uh they haven't been tested
and i think what i take from the stoics
is like they've been tested in every
imaginable way in context
now
somebody that
has gotten into your universe and i he
wrote something on the cover of your
book and i know wrote you an email that
you have hung on your wall that you take
as a reminder i would assume daily yeah
is general mattis
i would definitely be a living hero for
me for sure
i wondered about that and how did you
guys connect
um through stephen pressfield
interesting what is it about mattis who
i find fascinating that you
uh think is worthy of that kind of
praise well i mean anyone that works in
public service for decades you know i
think uh
is
worthy of our sort of respect and
gratitude uh particularly something like
the marines you know serving actively in
combat and all different positions of
leadership but i think
you know anyone that lives by a code
kind of seems like apart from the rest
of us because they're
they're
there's something really difficult it's
like we know how difficult that is
and we know how challenging it is
and
we know that it's it's
we know they could get away with less
right so i always admire someone
even when i disagree with them i really
admire
people who live by a code like
politically so many things i might
disagree with with say a john mccain but
clearly this is a man who lives by a
code has real skin in the game
pertaining to that code
and under pressure at various times in
his life in some cases unimaginable
pressure like being a prisoner of war
um
he stuck to the code when again he
didn't have to
and so i admire people
and i try to follow
in my own small way in the footsteps of
people who
have stuck with that code even when it's
cost them so mattis famously resigns on
principle
um
when
when the u.s pulls out of syria
his
also though
believes that you know basically you
don't criticize sitting presidents so
even though he disagreed vehemently with
the president who he resigned
said nothing critical
uh and again i just i just admire
someone who lives by code but he and i
were emailing and um we're talking about
something that had just happened in the
world i forget what it was specifically
but some major event and i was sort of
down on it and i
was pointing out um you know i was i'm
sort of asking like is this is this as
bad as i think it is and he was like
yeah
it's like it's worse right um
but he but he said something reassuring
he said you know sometimes it's darkest
before the dawn and then uh gave me some
sort of reassurance and i said like
well if you're saying that and you've
seen some like you've seen some of the
worst things that human beings
do to each other which is what war is
and you still have hope i was like what
excuse do i have and he just said hold
the line which is sort of like the
mantra that he
has
sort of introduced uh it's given a
couple famous speeches about it um and
it's sort of like that's his thing this
is hold the line and it's a great it's a
great little mantra because i think it
what is the line right i think the line
is virtue like what is what does your
oath tell you to do what does your
conscience tell you to do what does your
professional obligation tell you to do
um
what does virtue tell you to do and i
think that's what he was saying it's
like doesn't matter what's happening in
the outside world
doesn't matter if this is
you know i think what he was joking he
was like it's always darkest before the
dawn um
but uh sometimes it just stays dark or
something like that right like he wasn't
saying like it's all sunshine and rose
it's all gonna be good what he was
saying is like
could be great could be horrible
but like you know what your job is if i
remember right because i just recently
heard you read this he quoted mccain
oddly enough and said or as john mccain
says sometimes it is darkest right
before it gets darker yes yes that's it
exactly
and yeah that is uh
very interesting the idea of holding the
line even when you know that things
are in a gnarly place and they could get
gnarlier but we burn the white flag we
don't give up we have courage we lean
into that
[Music]
it's really
an inspiring concept i loved the book
dude really really enjoyed it
i enjoyed it though because of its
usability and and just to sidestep for a
second because of the
the sort of poetic nature
that allowed me to step outside of any
cynicism that might that i actually
don't have but i can sort of feel at the
edges of society it gave me um
permission to really lean into like
heroic deeds and that i can live my own
life like a hero which i think is really
awesome
um
where can people find you there's three
more of these bad boys yes that's that's
my cross to bear i now have to write a
book a year for the next three years um
and it's it's like it's much more
complicated right like so obstacle ego
and stillness were three are part of a
trilogy but it was not intentionally a
trilogy right so
i didn't have to think about like well
how does this connect to this and so
it's been it's been certainly a
challenge but i love if you're not
challenging yourself if you're not
getting better at what you're doing why
are you doing this sort of my belief but
um yes the next three books will come
out this one is out probably by the time
people watch this and then i do a daily
email about stoicism totally for free at
dailystoic.com
and then
videos about stoicism every day
youtube.com dailystoic and then i'm at
ryan holiday pretty much everywhere love
it
courage is calling everybody and
speaking of things that are calling to
you if you haven't already be sure to
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be legendary take care peace