Courage Is Calling: by Ryan Holiday
Fear holds us back from great things. So how do we conquer it? And should we?
From the cover:
Almost every religion, spiritual practice, philosophy and person grapples with fear. The most repeated phrase in the Bible is “Be not afraid.” The ancient Greeks spoke of phobos,panic and terror. It is natural to feel fear, the Stoics believed, but it cannot rule you. Courage, then, is the ability to rise above fear, to do what’s right, to do what’s needed, to do what is true. And so it rests at the heart of the works of Marcus Aurelius, Aristotle, and CS Lewis, alongside temperance, justice, and wisdom.
Why should you read this book?
In Courage Is Calling, Ryan Holiday breaks down the elements of fear, an expression of cowardice, the elements of courage, an expression of bravery, and lastly, the elements of hero'sm, an expression of valor.
A few key insights:
We fear that something bad might happen. We fear things not working out. We fear the consequences. We fear what people might think. But what, where, when, how, who? We can’t answer those questions because we haven’t looked into them. We haven’t actually defined what worries us.
Our fears are shadows, illusions, that we picked up somewhere.
But how likely are those fears? And if they happen, what might cause them? And how have we prepared ourselves to handle them?
When we expect, define, and wrestle with what can happen, we are making it less scary and less dangerous at the same time.
We need to cultivate the courage to think about all the things that could happen, the unpleasant, unexpected, unlikely. Not just to reduce our anxieties but to find certainty in the unknowns. Nothing possible should be foreign to us.
“Don’t worry about whether things will be hard. Because they will be. Instead, focus on the fact that these things will help you. This is why you needn’t fear them.” -Ryan Holiday
Sometimes people can be bold in one part of their life but show moral cowardice in another. People compartmentalize. We rationalize.
Who would you be if you existed during slavery, during imperialism, during the antisemitism? What would you have done? Would you have been able to go against the tides of your time? Would you have been brave enough to think differently?
Fear is what swings the votes to these answers.
No one can truly understand what it would be like to live in a different time and place. With different assumptions and biases of the world. But what we claim to have done back then, are we doing that today?
Courage is how we defeat fear. It’s the decision to take ownership, to assert agency, over a situation, over ourselves. We can curse the darkness or light a candle. We can’t wait for someone else to come and save us, or we can decide to stand and deliver ourselves.
What’s the opposite of fear? It’s not courage. Because courage can be used selfishly. It’s not fearlessness.
The opposite of fear is love. Love for one another. Love for ideas. Love for your country. Love for the vulnerable and the weak. Love for the next generation. Love for all.
It’s this profound love that allows one to rise above the logic of self-perseveration and achieve greatness. Shielding someone from a bullet or speaking out for the common good or fighting for a cause you know is right.
There is no selflessness without sacrifice.
“If courage by itself is unreasonable, then love in this highest form- the truly selfless kind- is insane. It is baffling in its majesty. It is real human greatness. It is us transcending logic, self-interest, and millions of years of our own biology to find quarter, however briefly, in a higher realm.” -Ryan Holiday
What we’re willing to give, our effort to a stranger, to a cause- that’s what takes us higher. This transforms us from brave to heroic.
About the Author
Ryan Holiday is one of the world’s bestselling living philosophers. His books, including The Obstacle Is the Way, Ego Is the Enemy, The Daily Stoic, and the #1 New York Times bestseller Stillness Is the Key, appear in more than forty languages and have sold over 10 million copies. He lives outside Austin with his wife and two boys ... and a small herd of cows and donkeys and goats. His bookstore, The Painted Porch, sits on historic Main Street in Bastrop, Texas.