The Daily Stoic - How Stoicism Can Help You Be Brave (7 Practical Tips)

Episode Date: October 3, 2021

Ryan Holiday’s newest book Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave is out today! Check it out at https://dailystoic.com/courageiscallingIn a world in which fear runs rampant—when people would rather stand on the sidelines than speak out against injustice, go along with convention than bet on themselves, and turn a blind eye to the ugly realities of modern life—we need courage more than ever. We need the courage of whistleblowers and risk takers. We need the courage of activists and adventurers. We need the courage of writers who speak the truth—and the courage of leaders to listen. We need you to step into the arena and fight.LinkedIn Jobs is the best platform for finding the right candidate to join your business this fall. It’s the largest marketplace for job seekers in the world, and it has great search features so that you can find candidates with any hard or soft skills that you need. And now, you can post a job for free. Just visit linkedin.com/STOIC to post a job for free. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal and most importantly to prepare for what the week

ahead may bring. Hey it's Ryan, welcome to the Daily Stoke Podcast. Today's episode is about how stoicism can help you be brave. The great thing about stoicism is that it's practical. You're designed to use it for real life. And the reality of real life is that we are constantly put in scary trying, challenging, overwhelming situations. And how do we combat that? How do we push through that? What do we draw on to help us get through difficult circumstances?

As you know, my newest book, Courage is Calling, is All About Courage. I wanted to give you some of the ways Stoics practiced their philosophy with bravery. Of course, Courage being the first of the four cardinal virtues. And this episode isn't just about how to be brave, but also how to excel in what you do, which requires bravery. To be great is a scary thing to face your own weaknesses in order to become better. It's also scary. So all this stuff is tied up in each other and I'm excited to

bring you some riffing on courage. And of course, please check out the new book. I'm grateful for all of you who have supported it. If you haven't yet, you can check out the Amazon reviews if people are loving it. I've heard from so many awesome people known and unknown who have gotten a bunch out of the book in Professions everything from firefighters to soldiers to public speakers and professional athletes as well as just ordinary people have had to go through this you know crazy Insane last 18 months. So I hope you check out the new book courage is calling fortune favors the brave Support your local retailer pick it up as an ebook or on audible or iBooks, Barnes & Noble. You can even buy signed copies here at the

Painted Ports, my bookstore and Bastery Texas. I'll stop talking and go right in today's episode about hostosism can help you be brave. General James Mattis says, never believe that you're impotent. Always know that there's something you can do. You have the power to change your condition to alter the course of your life. This takes immense courage to believe in this, to believe in your own agency when everyone is saying that things are systemically broken, that they're impossible, that no individual can make a difference, that it's too far gone, that things are hopeless, that your helpless. It takes courage to believe that it's easier to be an analyst, it's easier to give up, it's easy not to care, you have to have the courage to believe not just in yourself but

in the future, and that's what stoicism is about. Yes, there's so much of it that's not in our control. But what is in our control is how we respond to things. What is in our control is what we do with the hand that we've been dealt in this life. Marcus really said, Meditations is working through stuff all the time. He says, look at this. Why is that so scary? He says, look at what it really is. He says, strip it of the legend that encrusted. See it for what it actually is. It's a strip of the legend that encrusted. See it for what it actually is. Use logic to break it down.

Paracles is famous for this. Once during an eclipse, all his men were scared. And he says, look, if I put a cloak over your head, would you be scared? And they said, no. They said, well, what's the difference? If the cause of the darkness differs. Most people are afraid of death.

But the funny thing is, most people are afraid of public speaking even more funny thing is most people are afraid of public speaking even more than death. Jerry Seinfeld jokes that in a funeral most people would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy. And I think that's because we're afraid of what people think. That deep down beneath all of the fears that we have, it's what will other people think of me. That's why we don't like doing things in public. That's why we don't like getting up in front of a crowd. That's why we don't like speaking up. We're worried what other people are going to think and we're usually worried that what they're going to think is something negative

about us. Mark some of this says it's crazy. We love ourselves more than other people but for some reason we care about other people more than our own. There's nothing important you're going to do in this life that does not involve doing it in public. It's not going to involve making mistakes in public. If you're afraid of what other people think, if what you mostly care about is what other people think, I got bad news for you. You're never going to do anything important. You're never going to matter. You're never going to get over what's holding you back. And that's a real shame. Courage. You need courage to get up in front of the audience to speak up, to put yourself out there, to not care what other people think.

Hey there listeners! While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduka Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Codopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight.

Together, they discussed their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So, if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondaria. You have to be willing to look stupid. That's what EpicTidus says. He says, if you wish to improve, you must be willing to look clueless or stupid about some things. I think that means one you have to be willing to ask dumb questions. If you

don't ask, you can't learn. If you're afraid of what other people think, you'll never learn what you don't know. But I think the other part is you have to be willing to not care about stuff, right? To be like, I don't care about that. I'm not following that. I'm out of touch about that. That's one part. Then I think the other part is you have to be willing to be bad at stuff, right? To be at the beginner stages, to be embarrassingly figuring it out, to be mediocre, to be in the process of rediscovering or changing or growing. So if you want to improve the stokes, that you have to be willing to look stupid, to look embarrassed, to be ridiculous, to not be good, because that's how you get from where you

are, to where you want to go. You know, Sennaeneca talks about how we waste our most valuable resource, which is time, right? And I think as far as an entrepreneur, someone who runs a company, where do you find yourself wasting the most amount of time? It's in hiring people. And that's why when we hire people here at Daily Stoic,

or when I'm looking for researches, or any kind of job, we always post on LinkedIn jobs. You can create a free job post in minutes on LinkedIn jobs.com for your network. You can focus on candidates with the skills and experience you need and that they have. You screen in questions to get your role in front of only the most qualified people and then use the simple tools on LinkedIn jobs to quickly filter and prioritize who you'd like, who you'd like to interview and hire. LinkedIn jobs helps you find the candidates worth interviewing faster, more than 40 million jobs seekers visited LinkedIn

in the last week. So post your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash.doic. That's LinkedIn.com slash.doic. To post your job for free, terms and conditions apply. Churchill says that destiny taps us on the shoulder and is it going to find us ready? Are we going to be there in our finest hour? And the answer is most people don't. Most people turn away when destiny calls. I talked about Florence Nightingale and my book courage is calling. For 16

years she declines the call. She wasn't ready. Finally the call says are you going to let other people get in the way of answering my call to service? And then she realized how silly that was. But that's true. We let things get in the way we know it. We're supposed to do, we know it. We wanna do, we know what the right thing is to do,

but we don't do it. We let other things get in the way. Courage calls, but we ignore it. But what history needs, what the world needs, what you need is to answer that call and not let anything get in the way. What is the history of the way? Hello, as famous question was,

if not me, then who? And then he said, if not now, then when? And I think this is a really important stoke question. And this is why you see the Stoics stepping up in moments of crisis and difficulty throughout the history of Stoicism, up in moments of crisis and difficulty throughout the history of Stoicism because they knew that if they didn't do it, if Kato had simply rolled over, then no one would have stood up.

If Marcus Aurelius had declined being the emperor, because what he really wanted to do was be a philosopher, then who would have taken his place? I think even Seneca realizes this in neurosurface. He says, if I don't do this, someone else worse will do it. And I think this is just such a key question. If you're not gonna do it, who's gonna do it? And if everyone backed out, if no one stepped up,

where would that leave us? That's the idea in the new book, Courage is Calling. If not you, then who? And if not now, then when? Courage isn't always charging calling, if not you then who, and if not now, then when. Courage isn't always charging ahead. Sometimes it's retreating. Sometimes it's knowing when you're beaten. There's a story about Socrates,

Alcy Abide is one of his students, says, the bravest thing he's ever seen is the way Socrates retreated in a battle, not running headlong, not broken, not terrified, but with discipline, and how Socrates retreated in a battle, not running headlong, not broken, not terrified, but with discipline and how Socrates is disciplined and self-control inspires the other soldiers around them to gather themselves up, to not be scared to retreat in an orderly fashion. So when we say that, you know, courage is calling, it's not always to do the brave, bold, obvious thing. Sometimes it's to back up. Sometimes it's to live, to fight another day.

Sometimes it's to strategically regroup. Sometimes it's to tactically beat a retreat. So it's not always charging a head. Courage can mean a lot of different things. And if you think it's only charging a head, you're probably not being courageous. You're actually being reckless. Remember, courage is calling Fortune favors the Brave,

is now available everywhere, and go to your local bookstore and pick it up, and come to the painted porch, and pick it up. We are still offering the pre-order bonuses, we've extended it to the end of this week, so you can get that at dailystilic.com slash pre-order, but you can also get Audible, you can get e-books, you can get whatever you want from wherever you want it. But I would very much like you

to support the new book. Courage is calling Fortune favors the brave. Hey, prime members. You can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. Is this thing all? Check one, two, one, two. Hey, y'all.

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