Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers - How to Live More Courageously Part 1

Episode Date: November 28, 2021

We live in an age of cowards. Of people going along with the crowd because it’s the easy thing to do. It feels safer to throw stones at the other side than it does to stand for something positive and hopeful. There’s risk in questioning things and seeking other perspectives, whereas joining in the mob costs us nothing (except perhaps our character).But maybe things have always been this way. It’s still difficult for most people to wrap their minds around the Holocaust, how so many people just went along with it. The more I learn about psychology, the more I understand how it happened, but it doesn’t make the lack of courage any more appalling. As a kid learning about WWII, I had no doubt in my mind that I would have done the right thing had I been in Germany at that time. I’m less sure now that I’m older but I hope I would have acted like a man I learned about when visiting Berlin’s Topography of Terror. In a black and white photo at this museum, I saw a crowd of mostly men raising their arms in the nazi salute but one man did not join them.Wow. Can you imagine yourself doing the same? Courage doesn’t have to be as grand as being part of the nazi resistance. It can be as small as offering to help a stranger on the sidewalk. In your mind, you might debate, “Well, do they really need my help? Would I offend them if I offered to open the door for them?” And you might really worry about offending them, but you’re likely also worried, maybe more so, that they would make you feel bad if they took offense to your offer.Courage is about stretching out of your comfort zone and doing the right thing. You won’t always get congratulated for that, but, when it comes to helping people out, they are almost always appreciative of kind gestures.This episode discusses what courage is and how Stoicism and the Enneagram can help us cultivate more of it. Part 2 will dive into specific practices you can do to boost your bravery and good human cred.https://sarahmikutel.com/freedom/live-courage-stoicism❤️Hello! I'm your host, Sarah Mikutel. But the real question is, who are you? Where are you now and where do you want to be? Can I help you get there?Visit sarahmikutel.com to learn how we can work together to help you achieve more peace, happiness, and positive transformation in your life.Book your Enneagram typing session by going to sarahmikutel.com/typingsessionDo you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

Welcome to Live Without Borders, a travel and wellness show for expats, the expat curious, and globally minded citizens of the world. We are the travelers, the culturally curious, the experiences and not things kind of people. And we know that freedom is about more than getting on a plane. It's about becoming the most heroic versions of ourselves, which is why on this podcast you will hear insider travel secrets, inspiring expat stories, and advice on how to live abroad. but you will also hear episodes that will help give you the clarity, focus, and skills you need to create a life that will set your soul on fire. I am your host, Sarah Micatel, a certified clarity coach trained in the Enneagram, and I first moved abroad on my own at age 18, and I have been permanently enjoying life in Europe since 2010. If you are ready to make some big moves in your life

and want my help moving from someday to seize the day, visit live without borderspodcast.com. I'm currently reading Ryan Holiday's courage is calling, and in it he talks about a writer, Varlam Shalamov, who in the 1930s was sentenced to hard labor in a Soviet gulag, and this passage stood out to me. There he was, so this is Ryan writing, there he was in one of the darkest places a human could be, and what did he find? He found deep insight into the human condition, and then he quotes Varlam. I discovered that the world should be be divided not into good and bed people, but into cowards and non-cowards. Ninety-five percent of cowards are capable of the vilest things, lethal things, at the mildest threat. And then Ryan

shimes into add, when we think about courage, we are thinking about it precisely wrong. It's not our question to ask, for it is we who are being asked the question. End quote. We live in an age of cowards, of people going along with a crowd because it's the easy. thing to do. It feels safer to throw stones at the other side than it does to stand for something positive and hopeful. There is risk in questioning things and seeking other perspectives, whereas joining in the mob costs us nothing except perhaps our character. Maybe things have always been this way. It's still difficult for most people to wrap their minds around the Holocaust, how so many people just went along with it. The more I learn about psychology, though, the more I understand

how it happened, but it doesn't make the lack of courage any more appalling. As a kid, I learned about World War II, and I had no doubt in my mind that I would have done the right thing had I been in Germany at that time. I'm less sure about this now that I'm older, but I hope that I would have acted like a man I learned about when I was visiting Berlin's topography of Terror Museum a number of years ago. I saw this black and white photo in the museum, and it is a picture of a crowd of mostly men raising their arms in the Nazi salute, but one man did not join them. And I'll just read you the caption of this photo, because I actually wrote it down. Conformity and refusal, spectators and workers of the Blom and Voss shipyards during the singing of the national anthem and the

horsed vessel song following the furor's address given by Adolf Hitler on the occasion of the launch of the German Navy training ship, Horst Vessel. Hamburg, June 13th, 1936. While all those present raised their right arms in the obligatory German salute, one man refuses and crosses his arms. We have varying, sometimes conflicting information on the identity of the brave nonconformist. His name was probably August Landmesser. Wow. Can you imagine yourself doing the same, standing in this huge crowd, being obliged to do the Nazi salute? Hitler is there and you just stand back and fold your arms and not participate in this. Really think about that now and how courage plays out in your own life.

How often do you stay silent or go along with the crowd because it feels better than standing apart? Courage does not have to be as grand as being part of the Nazi resistance. It can be as small as offering to help a stranger on the sidewalk. In your mind, you might be having this internal debate. well, do they really need my help? Would I offend them if I offered to open the door for them? I used to have those internal debates myself. I didn't want to offend them. But at the same time, if I really thought about it, I might truly be worried about offending them, but I'm also worried maybe more so that if they rejected my offer, then I would feel bad. Maybe if they took offense to my offer

to help, I would feel offended or embarrassed. And I realized at some point, you know, that's a risk that I'm willing to take. And I found that like 99% of people who you see who are struggling and you offer to help are so grateful for that help. And if they don't want my help, then that's fine. They're not obliged to take my help. They have their own reasons for not wanting help. And so I'd rather make the offer to serve one than to say, stay silent. Courage is a bit of out stretching out of your comfort zone and doing the right thing. And you won't always get congratulated for that. But when it comes to helping people out, they are most always appreciative of kind gestures. The root of the word courage is core, which is the Latin word for heart.

And Brunei Brown says that in one of its earliest forms, the word courage meant to speak one's mind by telling one's heart. So if you're thinking about giving somebody, a compliment, but for whatever reason, are holding back, give them the compliment. And if you're the type of person who brushes off compliments and you can't really receive nice words about yourself, honor the person who is speaking to you by receiving their words and really feeling them. And sometimes courage means having more difficult conversations as well. While I am sharing the Latin root of words, here is another one. Viers is the Latin root for the word energy. And in the enneagram workshops that I've taken, they talk about

energy as a free-flowing life force, our virtues. Serenity, courage, right action. These are expressions of our life force, our virtue. You may recall in the Enneagram 101 episode that I did that all nine enneagram types have a vice, also known as a passion, that keeps us stuck in a pattern that's particular to our eneagram type. So this is our autopilot way of being. And each person has a virtue, which is the antidote of that passion. If you can't remember what anagram types are, you can go to sarah megatil.com slash anagram 101 for a refresher. So why am I bringing this up now? Courage isn't just taking action on an external situation. Courage is also taking a look at the shadow side of ourselves, our blind spots, and doing the growth work to improve our well-being for our own sake as well as those around us. Robert Vizwas Diener, I don't know if I suppose it or not right. I'm sorry, Robert, if I did, discusses this in his book, The Courage Quotient.

quote, researcher Cynthia Peary and her colleagues draw a distinction between two types of courage, general courage and personal courage. General courage is what most people think of when they think of bravery. General courage is present in all those dramatic acts of bravado that would scare the pants off just about anyone. A soldier rushing out into gunfire to help a fallen comrade, a parent jumping into a freezing river to save a child, an employee, blowing the whistle on an in a legal company practice, a camper yelling to fray in a bear out of a campsite. Personal courage, by contrast, is in evidence in an act performed by an individual for whom that act is scary. It might not be present when the same act is performed by anyone else.

That is, personal courage represents overcoming a personal limitation, even if others would not be intimidated under the same circumstances. We may not all be likely to climb into a burning vehicle to save an accident victim, but each of us has the potential to face down our own psychological demons, overcome them, and get on with the business of living. Personal courage represents our best possible return on any investment we make in learning courage-enhancing strategies. End quote. So personal courage looks different for all of us. As a refresher, according to Enneagram theory, we were born perfect, a blank slate. With everything, we need, but then we lose it as we acclimate to the world. We put up defenses, we protect ourselves.

We bury our life force, our veers, our virtue, to fit in and to feel safe. And we contract emotionally. But when we do the inner work to break our ego-driven survival patterns and tame our fears, we expand our awareness and move from personality to essence. We are shifting from this deep contraction to expansion from vice to virtue and opening ourselves up to the vitality of our life force. So what does this look like for the individual types? When type ones, the improvers can move past their passion of anger that everything needs to be fixed, they can relax into the virtue of serenity, accepting life as it is, seeing multiple ways of looking at things without judgment and feeling at peace. When type 2's, the helpers or the givers

can move past their passion of pride that they are responsible for everything and the world would crumble without their service. This is often an unconscious thought. A lot of these motivations are unconscious. They can relax into the virtue of humility, knowing what is theirs to do and not to do, and gracefully receiving love and help from others. When type 3s, the performers or achievers, can move past their passion of deceit, and that is self-deceit, that who they become and what they do to please others is really who they are, they can relax into the virtue of honesty, feeling their emotions, and gaining clarity on who they really are and what they really want in life. When type fours, the individualists, or the romantics, can move past their passion of envy, and that is their

comparison and feeling of lack. That's what we mean by envy here. They can relax into the virtue of equanimity, feeling emotionally balanced, present, and complete. When type five's, the observers can move past their passion of Averisse, which shows up as an extreme vigilance of their time and energy. They need a ton of space, a ton of privacy, and they don't want other people to steal it away from them. They can relax into the virtue of non-attachment, which means opening up their heart to the abundance of energy and realizing that energy flows through connections with others. And it doesn't need to be hoarded. Other people can actually give you energy. They don't always take it away. When type 6s, the loyal skeptics can move past their

passion of fear, they can let go of all of their what if anxieties and relax into the virtue of courage, taking action, feeling the fear and doing it anyway, and trusting themselves as the leaders of their own lives. When our type 7s, the epicures can move past their passion of a gluttony, and that means their constant cravings for the next day. best thing. They like to jump around. What's next? What's fun? They can relax into the virtue of sobriety, meaning gratitude and fulfillment in the here and now. They can be present, really be here for this moment, and commit to what's important, and feel a wider range of emotions and deeper connection to those emotions. When AIDS, our challengers, or our protectors, can move past the

passion of a lust, and that means their excessive tendencies to really charge hard at everything they do. Lust here doesn't just mean sex. It's everything in life. They are just going for it. They are not the overthinkers. Lanny Grim chart by any means. But when they can relax these tendencies, they can sink into the virtue of innocence, releasing their reactivity and defensiveness, and allowing for more vulnerability and seeing the goodness in the world. And type nines are peacemakers when they can move past their passion of inertia, otherwise known as sloth. And this doesn't mean that they're lazy. When we're talking about sloth here, we're talking about them falling asleep to their own priorities and getting really distracted. So they can work really hard for other people. But when it comes to their own needs, they have a really hard time. But when they move toward their virtue of right action, they can focus on what's most important to them, take action, and feel that they matter as much as everybody else does. Epic Titus said that managing our passions is essential if we want to be

rational people who can handle what life throws at us. Letting go of the passions holding us back not only helps us, it also helps us show up better for other people and to make more courageous decisions. Courage, of course, is one of Stoicism's four Cardinal virtues and cardinal virtues might sound religious, but it's not. So here's more Latin for you. Cardinal comes from cardo, which means hinge, as in all other virtues, hinge upon these core four. So to live with Arate, to live with excellence, you need to live with wisdom, which is understanding, decision-making, curiosity, moderation, which is self-control, self-awareness, justice, which is kindness, compassion, fairness, and courage, moral courage, doing what's right.

Even though the Stoics accepted the world for what it was, that didn't mean that they didn't try to change things for the better. I had a client once who said to me, I don't want to accept things because it feels like giving up. But acceptance doesn't mean rolling over. Acceptance means coming to terms with reality, accepting it for what it is. and then making a plan to move forward with a clear head. And not getting too attached with the outcome of this plan. You form the plan. You have a certain outcome that you're targeting.

But in the end, you know that it's out of your hands because of many external factors. What is in your control is your thoughts and actions. So fate permitting, you're going to hit that target. But if you don't, it's not the end of the world. Now, the opposite of acceptance is resistance. That tightening and contraction of the body. rumination and wishing for something different. Not much progress is made when we let our emotions and our passions in the Stoic Enneagram sense run wild, as you've witnessed when you see people

screaming at each other in the streets, making rash decisions, or maybe doing the opposite, going really silent and withdrawing. And the power of now spiritual author Eckert Tolle wrote, To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. this state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. Again, it's about expansion, dropping that resistance that we have, dropping our fight against reality in life, and opening yourself up, which requires a lot of self-awareness. Attention to oneself was very important to the ancient Stoics. They called that proso-soka. And this was important, not just because it improved their own well-being and helped them flourish this like monitoring of thoughts and feelings.

The self-awareness helped them and us, of course, live more heroic lives, live more courageously. The ancient Stoics didn't sit on the sidelines, as I mentioned before. They were teachers, politicians, playwrights, emperors, and they courageously spoke out against injustice and tyranny even when it got them exiled or cost them their lives. Now, not all of them lived up to such a high moral code, of course. They were human beings, not saints or sages. They messed up all the time. They reflected on it.

They journaled on it. And then they shook it off and began again. So how does fear show up in your life? What are you avoiding out of fear? How is that affecting your relationships? Your job, your character. Okay, that is a lot to take in and ponder. So I'm going to split up this episode into two episodes.

next time I will share ancient and modern practices that you can start doing every day to increase your courage and confidence. That's all for now. Go ahead and follow the show or hit subscribe so you can hear more episodes like this. And if you would like my help taking bold action on your own dreams, like living abroad, changing careers and other life transitions, visit live without borderspodcast.com. Thanks for listening and have a beautiful week wherever you are. or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot. I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use

so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarahmicatel.com slash blank no more.