The One You Feed - Navigating Fear and Hope: the Everyday Courage That Shapes Our Lives with Ryan Holiday

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

In this episode, Ryan Holiday explores navigating fear and hope and the everyday courage that shapes our lives. He unpacks how to confront our fears and how we need to do so, over and over. With great stories and insights, we are reminded that we don’t have to be fearless, we just have to begin. Key Takeaways: The concept of courage and its significance in everyday life. The relationship between courage and fear, including how to confront fears. The importance of personal agency and making choices that shape our lives. The role of vulnerability in fostering connection and understanding. Historical and contemporary examples of courage and heroism. The four cardinal virtues: courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom. The idea that courage is not just for heroes but is present in daily decisions. The impact of sharing struggles and experiences on personal and collective healing. The notion that hope requires courage, especially in the face of adversity. The importance of taking action and making decisions to overcome analysis paralysis. If you enjoyed this conversation with Ryan Holiday, check out these other episodes: Why Community and Courage Matter More Than Ever with Laura McKowen How to Overcome Cynicism and Embrace Hope with Jamil Zaki For full show notes, click here! Connect with the show: Follow us on YouTube: @TheOneYouFeedPod Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify Follow us on Instagram  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Really what courage is is the idea that I can change things whether it's this tiny situation or some globally complex situation Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have Quotes like garbage in garbage out or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do.

We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf. Every day we stand at a crossroads. One path is comfort, the other is courage. But courage isn't just for heroes on battlefields. It's in board rooms, classrooms, and kitchen tables. It's the decision to speak up, to start over, to keep hoping.

My guest today is Ryan Holiday, author of Courage is Calling and one of the most influential voices in modern Stoicism. We talk about fear, how to confront it, and how to act bravely, not just once, but over and over. From the Stoics to Steinbeck, from whistleblowers to warriors, Ryan brings stories and insights that remind us you don't have to be fearless. You just have to begin. I'm Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed. This is an iHeart Podcast. Why is a soap opera western like Yellowstone so wildly successful? The American West with Dan Flores is the latest show

from the MeatEater Podcast Network. So join me starting Tuesday, May 6th, where we'll delve into stories of the West and come to understand how it helps inform the ways in which we experience the region today. Listen to The American West with Dan Flores on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shankar. I host a podcast called A Slight Change of Plans that combines behavioral science and storytelling to help us navigate the big changes in our lives. I get so choked up because I feel like your show and the conversations are what the world needs, encouraging, empowering, counter-programming that acts like a lighthouse when the world feels dark. Listen to a slight change of plans on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Being able to say, I feel like crying, so I will cry. Today I'm a little depressed.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month and deeply well is a sanctuary for your healing. I'm Debbie Brown, healer, wellbeing expert, teacher, and fellow seeker. And each week we explore what it means to become whole through soul expanding conversations and practices. Today, wow, I feel really powerful and ready to serve and use my skills. And it's like, that's the heart of what it is to be an authentic woman.

To hear this and more ways to prioritize your piece, listen to Deeply Well from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything. Hi, Ryan. Welcome to the show. Yeah.

Thanks for having me. It is a pleasure to have you on. We are going to be discussing your latest book in a moment, but let's start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.

And the grandson stops, thinks about it for a second, he looks up at his grandfather and says, well grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Yeah, that's interesting. I talk about this in a couple different of my books. There's a wonderful quote from Martin Luther King

where he says that there's a north and a south in all of us, meaning, you know, sort of a good and an evil. And that these sort of forces are always at a kind of civil war with each other. And I think this idea that we have a higher self and a lower self, there's the part of us that knows what's right and the part of us that doesn't do what's right, you know, the sort of part of us that has good habits and the part of us that's bad habits. And the idea that you're ever gonna sort of perfectly be one or the other is probably unlikely, but I do think you give one more power than the other,

which to me is sort of what that parable is about. You know, sort of day to day, which one has more control? Who's winning sort of more often than not is kind of how I think about it. That pertains, That pertains to the idea in the new book too of courage. I don't think courage is this thing that you sort of magically perpetually are. It's something that sort of day in and day out, situation by situation, you either choose or don't choose.

And the fact that you've chosen it before doesn't mean that you'll keep it forever. And the fact that you've screwed up and fallen short in the past also doesn't mean that you can't make a better choice now. Yeah, in your books in general, I see a lot of you looking at historical figures as ways of really seeing how other people have, to stay with the analogy, fed their good wolf to sort of remind us. Because I think, you know, it seems like there's two parts to this. One is even orienting to what does that mean? What does it mean to feed my good wolf? Or what does it mean to live a good life or a life of

virtue? Then there's the actually doing it. Yeah, although I would also point out that I do try to look also at examples of where the bad wolf has won out, again, to further the analogy. I try to do both inspiring stories and cautionary tales. The idea being we can sort of learn from the experiences of others, the costs and the benefits of those decisions and that they might stick with us when we are faced with

choices or temptations or difficult situations. I think we tend to learn by story. We certainly remember stories and they sort of help us explain what we're going through in the present moment. So I tend to look as you said for stories that sort of remind us either of what we're capable of, positive or negative, and what the potential consequences of that could be either way. Yep. So we're going to get into your book in more detail. It's called Courage is Calling, Fortune Favors the Brave. But before we go deep into courage, I'm going to ask you to sort of set it up because this is the first in a four-part series of different virtues. So, say a little bit about what the different

virtues are and why did you choose them? So in both ancient philosophy as well as in Christianity, and we see some similar renderings of it in Eastern philosophy as well, there's this idea of the four cardinal virtues. Cardinal doesn't actually have a religious connotation. It comes from the Latin word cardos, which means hinge, but the idea that there's sort of four pivotal virtues that the good life depends on. And those four virtues in Stoicism and Christianity are courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom. So this book is the first book in a series on those four virtues. Cour courage being, I think,

if not the most important virtue, certainly the virtue that all the other virtues require almost from the outset. Okay, I can give you a quick definition of courage or a quick definition of justice or a quick definition of wisdom or temperance, but what does that actually look like in the real world? How does one apply it? How have people applied it? And how might we learn from them? That's sort of what I'm trying to do in this book.

As I do with all the other books, I usually pick a theme, as you said, and then sort of illustrate it with stories that are memorable and inspiring and sort of allow us to get into the particulars of, okay, when you mean courage, you mean not show fear? No, it's more complicated than that. So we're trying to explore what courage looks like in reality.

And I'm going to ask you to define courage in a minute, but I want to start where you end the book to a certain degree, which is with basically the end of one of my favorite books of all time, which is East of Eden by John Steinbeck, which I've read every couple years for, I don't know, 30 years now. And so I was wondering if you could just, you know, share with us kind of how you end the book around

sort of the pivotal idea that ends East of Eden. Yeah, so at the end of East of Eden, and actually Steinbeck talks about this at length, he has this wonderful book called A Journal of a Novel, where he's sort of writing to himself as he's working on the novel, and you see him sort of struggling with these themes, but he ends up talking to his editor about this,

but he has this sort of breakthrough that the commandments are not, thou shall not, which sounds like you're not allowed to do these things. And he says, actually, the rendering is closer to thou may not or thou should not, right? Meaning that we have a choice and that the choice is everything. In the choice is, as you said, if you only had one wolf inside you, and it was the good wolf or the bad wolf, well then you wouldn't really have any responsibility

or accountability for who you were day to day. If you were a good person, that would be great, but it wouldn't be really much of a credit to you because you were simply born that way. If you were a bad person, you really couldn't be held accountable for that either because it's not your fault. It'd be like being short or tall. It's not on you. It's not a reflection of you. And so this idea that we have the individual choice, the basis of free will to choose, to follow the

ideas, to choose virtue, to choose which wolf we feed is in fact everything. I closed the book with that story, but I opened the book with a similar story that has no religious connotation, which is the so-called choice of Hercules. Hercules is said to come to a crossroads. At either side of the crossroads, there are two goddesses. One goddess is the goddess of virtue,

one is the goddess of vice. Vice says, look you can have everything you want, it's gonna be fun, it's gonna be easy, it's gonna be wonderful, you'll never have to care about anything again. And then the goddess of virtue says, I can't make that promise. She says it's gonna be hard, it's gonna be sacrifice,

there's gonna be difficulty, it's gonna challenge you. But she says it will make you great. Won't be easy, but the challenge will be everything. And so this choice that Hercules makes is obviously said to be the sort of founding of his mythological greatness. And so the idea that we have this choice, that it's up to us, to me, is the essence of what we're talking about. Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

So let's go into courage, talk a little bit about, to start, how do you define courage? Well, I struggled with this at the beginning because there's said to be two types of courage. There's moral courage and there's physical courage. Then it's like, do I wanna focus on physical courage or moral courage? What's more interesting?

How do they pertain to each other? How are they different? And then I really, as I thought about it more and more, I realized that what do they have in common? What are their similarities? What's their connection? And I realized that at the core, all forms of courage are about risk.

It's basically, did you put your ass on the line? Like, did you physically step up and run into a burning building? Did you follow orders under fire? That would be physical courage, of course. But what is a whistleblower? What is a truth teller? What is an artist who pushes the boundaries

of what we accept? Well, why do we admire that? Why does that count as courage? They're not risking their lives, of course, but they're risking their livelihood. They're risking their reputation. They're risking being looked at strangely or criticized. So, you know, they're still putting their ass on the line.

They might not die, but they could die as some form of social death. And so the idea at the core of courage to me is the willingness to risk and to put yourself out there. Yeah, you say that courage is the management of and the triumph over fear. It's the decision in a moment of peril or day in and day out to take ownership, to assert agency over a situation over yourself, over the fate that someone else has resigned themselves to. I just love that idea. And the other thing you say, I think it's so important around this,

is that inherent in this is the belief that an individual can make a difference. Yes. You know, we talk about this idea, it's sort of now falling out of fashion, the great man of history theory. And I don't think it's fallen out of fashion because it's sexist It's the idea that like an individual can change the course of human history

There's first off a certain amount of courage just in in that belief But it's easier to sort of look at the idea that it's all hopeless that it's all complicated That it's all too big for an individual to possibly affect and so I think really what courage is is the idea That I can change things whether it's this tiny situation or it's some globally complex Situation there's a great expression one again. These are all little sexist So I'm not the corner of the phrase, but there's another one that's like one man with courage makes a majority I'm not the coiner of the phrases, but there's another one that's like, one man with courage makes a majority.

Meaning that almost all things start as a person who is alone, but it's through their courage, it's through their commitments, through the actions that they take because of that courage, that they are able to make that thing a reality. They bring people to them, or they bring people along with them. That's what courage is about.

The way you've structured the book is you start off by really talking about what gets in the way of courage for most of us, which is fear. So let's take a step or two back, at least as far as the order of the book, and talk about what are some of the things that get in our way as far as fear. Yeah so fear gets in the way but what is fear? Fear is a bunch of specific fears right? Fear of what other people will think, fear of the consequences, fear of standing out, fear of looking stupid, right? Fear of any number of things but I think the irony is often it's not even those things we're afraid of. We just have this vague fear, right? This sort of undescribed, unspecified, vague sense that it's not worth it or it'll be hard or it'll be difficult.

And so when we think of fear, I think one of the first things we want to do is just like, well, what am I actually afraid of here? Right? You know, you're jumping off a high dive. What are you afraid of? Well, you're probably afraid of dying. Right? Well, like, let's actually think about whether that's physically possible here. That doesn't mean it's magically going to be easy, but you can sort of logically get to a place where you know, okay, the fear I have is irrational. So if I push past it, I'll be fine. Now it's really just a matter of do I have the willpower to push past it. I think about this when I dropped out of college, you know, I was really scared. It was like I was 19 years old. I had no life experience. I had no sense of how the world actually works.

So I was afraid basically that if this didn't work out, I would end up under a bridge somewhere, right? Like I was afraid that by leaving college, I was cutting the only safety net that possibly existed between me and homelessness, right? Which was of course fundamentally irrational. And so it was really helpful to have someone in my life, I had a mentor who was like,

Ryan, I got sick for a year in college. I remember he told me this. He's like, I got sick for a year in college. I had to take a year off and I was in the hospital the entire time. And he was like, do you know how often this has ever come up in my life since that I was gone for a year of college?

It took five years instead of four years. He's like, it's literally not once come up. He's like, this happens all the time. People leave and they have to come back. People leave and they never come back. But he's like, it's not what you think it is. It's not as irrevocable as your fears are telling you that it is. And it was like, oh, okay, that makes sense.

So then I decided to do it and that was the other part. So I went and did it. I remember I walked into the registrar's office and I said something like, you know, I'm here to drop out of college. And they were like, that's not even one of the options. They're like, you can take a semester off, but your credits are good for 10 years.

And so this thing that I've been so afraid of, actually I had a 10 year like undo button that I could press at any time. And so it's really important that one, that we break things down, and then the benefit of breaking them down and proceeding, whether it's jumping off a high dive or dropping out of college,

is now the next time there was one of those decisions in my life, I was much more savvy and aware that it wasn't as scary as I thought it would be, and that there's almost always a way out. Yeah, that's so good. I was just working on recording a short cast thing for Blinkist this morning, and we were talking about that exact point of like, A, about your fears like really move out of the vagueness you

know like everybody will think I'm an idiot and is more like well there'll be three people there so three people will think I'm an idiot right like you know get specific and how many of them are even paying attention right and give a shit right and so you're you realize like often you're like imposter syndrome, right? That's a real fear a lot of people have. Well, what if they really investigate and they find out that I'm not as good as I think or whatever. And it's like, they're not thinking about you at all. They don't care. You know, like they are consumed with their own problems. Your obsession with yourself is making you think this is a bigger

deal than it actually is. Totally, totally. Yeah. And then that second part of that that you think this is a bigger deal than it actually is. Totally, totally. Yeah. And then that second part of that that you said really is like, okay, well, if my fear comes true, how will I respond? I love the word it's not irrevocable. And I think that's so important is to recognize like, I mean, some decisions are irrevocable, but the vast majority of them are not and you can change. I mean, when I left my full-time job to start doing this podcast and the coaching and stuff full-time, you know, I just had to spend a little bit of time and think, well, if this doesn't work, here's the 13 different fallback plans I could have. Right? The risk, am I taking a risk? Sure. But like to your point, it's not like this either works or I'm homeless. It's like, well, this either works or I get another job. Like, it's not the end of the world. Yes, there's consequences, right?

We're not saying like, don't be afraid. There's zero consequences. There's consequences, but it's the vagueness, the indescribable this of those consequences that makes them loom much larger than they actually are. There's a story I tell in the book about the Ulysses S Grant this goes to your point about you know Sort of how many people are watching he's crossing the plains of Texas as a young soldier And he hears these wolves like and he thinks it's like hundreds of wolves

He thinks they're about to be devoured by this rabid pack of books to go to the idea of this show and The guy he's with is a tad more experienced and he says something like, you know, Grant, how many wolves do you think there are? And Grant doesn't want to sound like a, like a wuss. And so he says, I don't know, 20. And he was like, that was like half what I actually thought there were.

You know, he thought there were so many wolves. The guy hears this, he just sort of smiles. They finally come upon the wolves and there's two of them. There's two wolves. And what what he realizes is and he says, I never forgot this for the rest of my political and military life. He said there's always fewer of them when they are counted. Right? So you take your fears, you take your risk, you think about the worst-case scenario, then you actually go like, okay I'm gonna inspect this. I'm gonna like really look at it.

You know, you're like, well, I don't wanna say this. I might piss people off. And your idea of people is like a stadium, right? Or like, but there's actually like 15 of them, right? I think about this every time I say something that's maybe a little political or a little controversial, you're like, oh, people aren't going to like this. But like people turns out to be like seven weirdos who sends you poorly, you know, poorly

written emails that make you go like, how is this person reading my stuff anyway? I'm not sure they're literate, right? Like you realize that like the people that you were worried about, you actually don't care about and are far fewer in number than you would have if you had had to guess there actually were. Totally. I mean, I work with a lot of people who are trying to build their business and step out online a little bit. And they're just like, I'm just worried that I'm going to get all these people hating on me. I said, no, no, no. Your biggest worry in the beginning is that nobody is going to pay any attention to what you're doing.

You don't have to worry about the haters for a while. Right. And then to your point in seven and a half years of doing this, the number of people who've said anything to me, that's really awful. I mean, it's just so few. Yeah. And so what we often do is we make these things bigger than they actually are. So then we don't have to do them, right? If you're like, well, I don't want to piss people off,

so I'm not going to do it. Or I don't want to be laughed at. Then we don't have to do it, right? It's like the excuse to not put yourself out there. You're looking for someone to give you permission to not do it. Yeah. There's something you said near the end of the section on fear that I loved. And I'm just going to read it because I think it speaks to a different kind of fear. That's really important, though. But it's you said, we're afraid to open up. We're scared to share. We don't want anyone to know how we're feeling inside.

And so all of us feel more alone. You know, what pain is caused by the inability or the unwillingness to sort of share our difficulties, our fear, the things that are going on inside us. And I just loved that idea of, when we don't do that, more of us feel alone. Yeah, because I'm specifically talking about stoicism, which is a philosophy that a lot of people associate

with having no emotions. That's sort of the big stereotype of stoicism. In fact, that's like what the word stoic means in English, like the sort of lower case stoic means like emotionless, invulnerable robot. And so I wanted to talk specifically about that, that like, hey, courage is not just, you know, charging into the fray under fire. Courage is also saying, like, you think about the soldier who does do that, right?

But then the soldier who comes home and has trouble adjusting, or maybe they're addicted to something, or maybe they're depressed, or maybe they're even contemplating suicide. I wanted to talk about the courage to say, Hey, I'm struggling. I'm having a hard time. I need help because this is almost a scarier thing for brave people to do right to put yourself out there in that way. And so the idea of being vulnerable, as Brene Brown talks about this much better than I do, but the idea of being vulnerable is often the scariest thing in the world for people. Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes here.

Diddy's former protege, television personality, platinum selling artist, Danity King alum Aubrey O'Day joins us to provide a unique perspective on the trial that has captivated the attention of the nation. Aubrey O'Day is sitting next to us here. You are, as we sit here, right up the street from where the trial is taking place. Some people saw that you were going to be in New York, and they immediately started jumping to conclusions.

So can you clear that up? First of all, are you here to testify in the ditty trial? Aubrey will offer her opinions and expertise based on her firsthand knowledge. From her days on Making the Band as she emerged as the breakout star, the truth of the situation would be opposite of the glitz and glamor. It wasn't all bad.

But I don't know that any of the good was real. I went through things there. Listen to Amy and TJ presents Aubrey O'Day covering the Diddy Trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Giving yourself that agency to not just be one thing, right? I don't have to be the perception that is crafted or the version of me that everyone is kind of projecting

onto me. Like I am having my human experience and it is faceted. It's so faceted and it's fascinating. May is Mental Health Awareness Month and Deeply Well is a sanctuary for your healing. I'm Debbie Brown, healer, wellbeing expert, teacher, and fellow seeker. And each week we explore what it means to become whole through soul expanding conversations and practices. Why focus on tiny joys? Well because they remind us of what it means to be human. They anchor us in the present moment and they create ripples of gratitude that nourish our spirit. Tiny joys are acts of self-love. To hear this and more ways to prioritize your piece, listen to Deeply Well from the Black Effect Podcast Network

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything. The American West with Dan Flores is the latest show from the Meat Eater Podcast Network. Hosted by me, writer and historian Dan Flores is the latest show from the MeatEater Podcast Network, hosted by me, writer and historian Dan Flores, and brought to you by Velvet Buck. This podcast looks at a West available nowhere else. Each episode, I'll be diving into some of the lesser known histories of the West.

I'll then be joined in conversation by guests such as Western historian Dr. Randall Williams and best-selling author and meat-eater founder Stephen Rinella. I'll correct my kids now and then where they'll say when cave people were here and I'll say it seems like the Ice Age people that were here didn't have a real affinity for caves. So join me starting Tuesday May 6th where we'll delve into stories of the West and come to understand how it helps inform the ways in which we experience the region today. Listen to the American West with Dan Flores on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

It's interesting, I've shared this before, back when I had years and years and years in sort of a corporate world, although a lot of them were startups, but it was still sort of a business world. But the more that I sort of shared who I was, I shared my addiction history, I shared my depression issues. You know, the things that happened in my life, not in a like I'm talking about me all the time way, but just was a little bit more open about that. It was amazing over the years the number of people that would come back to me and then say, oh, you know, this is going on, because all of a sudden it was safe or to use your word, they're not alone. They recognize like,

oh, okay, other people feel this way and it's okay to talk about it here. We talked about this, right? So it's like, let's say everyone's scared of doing something. Maybe it's a political stand, it's standing up to a bully, it's responding to an emergency. One man with courage makes a majority, right? One person says, no, we have to do something. And then they go do it. And the other one says, yeah, they're right. Let's go do something.

But this is also true for mental health issues. This is also true for emotions. This is also true for emotions. This is also true for doubts about something, right? So the person who says, hey, I'm having trouble with this. But you think about what the Me Too movement actually was, right? It starts as women on Facebook saying, hey, something like this happens to me too, right? So put aside some of the political implications of the movement, put aside excesses or problems or cases that you agree with or disagree with. The idea of women saying, hey, I was afraid to talk about this, but now that other people

are open to talking about it, I'm going to say me too. That's what the power of courage is really about. And again, this is such important moral courage. First off, there's an element of physical courage that we probably shouldn't understate as well. But this is the decision to talk about a thing that's, why weren't they talking about it before? It was uncomfortable.

They thought they would be judged for it. They thought there might be professional consequences for it. They thought they might get a reputation because of it. Right? So the decision to put your ass on the line and say, screw all of that. It's important for me to say this. It makes a difference for me to say this. I've been inspired by the other people who said it, and I am going to say something that

is courage. And it helps not just yourself, but other people. Yeah, that's a beautiful example of it. So let's now move into the courage section of the book. And the book is set up in that fear section, the courage section, and there's little essays under them. Yeah. You know, lots of different ones that tell stories

from history and make points. So I thought I'd just grab a couple of them out of there and let you talk about them. Yeah. You know, lots of different ones that tell stories from history and make points. So I thought I'd just grab a couple of them out of there and let you let you talk about them and then maybe you could pick one or two that you most want to talk about. But one of them that I liked was just start somewhere do something. Yeah, you know, I'm actually going through this right now. I'm working on this other book and I'm struggling a little bit. It was going well and then I got distracted and it is anyways, trying to remember that doesn't have to be perfect, particularly the first draft. I have to be willing for parts of it not to be good. I just have to start.

If I sit around and I wait for it to be easy, it'll never happen. If I wait for the perfect opening or opportunity, it's never going to happen. If I wait for the perfect opening or opportunity, it's never going to happen. If I want what I'm doing now to be as good as what I've done before, what I did even earlier on this project, again, I'm going to be sort of stymied or stuck. So I just have to start. And so today, I was like, you know what, what's the littlest thing that I could work on? I was like, you know what, I've got all this sort of loose research that I haven't found a place for. I'm just going to start organizing that and hopefully

that will sort of knock something loose, which it did. Yesterday was sort of a mediocre day. Today was kind of a mediocre day. But tomorrow, I now suddenly, because I did this work, have pretty clear marching orders for what I need to work on tomorrow. So just start somewhere. You don't have to magically do some huge heroic, impressive thing. You just have to make a little bit of progress. I don't want to divert the conversation too far from the topic of your book, but I've got to ask a question about how do you organize all your research? Because you are really good at pulling lots

of different pieces together. And I am always fascinated by the authors that do that really well, how they organize it. So for me, I'm always reading, these are books behind me, and as I'm reading, I'm like, okay, for instance, I'm writing a chapter on Churchill and his somewhat reckless financial habits.

That's what I was thinking about. So this is a book I read called No More Champagne about Churchill and his finances. And then these are all the pages that I've marked that I thought were interesting. And then I usually record them on note cards. And then the note cards are usually the building blocks of the book.

So I have a big box, all the different, as you said, the book's three parts, then there's chapters in each part. Those note cards get slotted in in their respective parts and those are the building blocks for each specific chapter in each book. Makes total sense. So you're doing it sort of paper-based, old-fashioned way. Yes, definitely. And it's not a perfect system. There's like a thing I know I wrote down and it has a guy's name on it, a baseball player that I want to write about and I can't find it and I don't know how I'm possibly gonna find it. So it's not a perfect system but for the most part it gives me everything that I need. Makes sense. Okay, thank you for that. I just was

fascinated to know. So back onto courage. Couple of these we've already hit. We've talked about how courage is contagious. You know, how one person being courageous spreads. So that was one I was gonna hit. We kind of talked a little bit about preparation makes you brave. So let's move on to be the decider.

Okay, the thing that's scariest is making a decision, right? As long as you don't decide, it can be anything. It can be everything. You won't be held accountable, right? The decision is when we pull the trigger and that holds us back. So I was just, you know, just really talking about the power and the courage required to make decisions. Because if you don't decide, sure things will stay sort of in one spot, but by definition you're also not gonna be making progress. It's easy to endlessly debate things.

It's easy to endlessly research and consider them. It's easy to ask for unlimited amounts of advice. But at some point, you got to pull the trigger, you got to go. And that's that chapter is about. Yeah, you quote an expression in there that I think is great, which is whatever you're not changing your choosing, its corollary is, you know, not making a decision is a kind of a decision unto itself. But I actually like this phrase better. What you're not changing your choosing, which is really good. And then I can't remember what was in the book or something else you wrote. I think you led me to it, but it was a William James quote. There is no more miserable human being than the one in whom nothing is

habitual but indecision. So true. Having been there, I know how miserable that is. Yeah, and to me, that's the importance and the power of routine. That's the importance and power of sort of setting your ground rules. And for those who don't do that, they face every day as an endless stream of unlimited decisions. Totally. I mean, with coaching clients, one of the first things we'll work on is we have got to decide ahead of time.

Yes. What we're doing. Because if you don't, as you just said, you will spend a lot of your precious energy trying to figure out, well, when am I going to do it? What should I do? When am I going to do it? So that when it comes time to do it, you already have sucked out half your resources or more. And thus, it's really hard to do when you know exactly what you're doing when then you could take all that energy and just sort of channel it like do it. Totally. Yes. If you set the rules for yourself, and this is kind of where the virtues come in to play. Also, if you're like, hey, I'm a person who defaults towards courage, then when a scary situation comes up, you're like, this is what I do. This is who I am. If you're like, I don't really know what I believe.

I don't really know what I stand for. I don't really know what's important to me. Then you're also winging it. And that's when you go, ah, but this will cost me money. Ah, but this could be hard. Right? Ah, but this seems fun. Right?

And so setting those sort of rules for yourself help you in those stressful, difficult situations. A lot of your work is about values, you know, what are the values that we have? Do you have any particular ways that you like of sort of determining personal values and getting clear on what they are? There's a lot of different systems out there. There's a lot of ways to do it, but I'm just kind of curious as somebody who's pretty firmly ensconced in thinking about values, if you have any thoughts on, you know, for people

who are like, well, I'm not really sure what my values are. I mean, what I love about stoicism in particular, and I brought up earlier that sort of stoicism and Christianity are aligned on these four virtues. What I like about the Stoic case for those virtues is there's no sort of metaphysical supernatural explanation for them. I'm not faulting anyone who chooses it, but if you don't believe that the idea is divine, it's like, well, sort of why should I do it, right? So Christianity always has this sort of benefit of like, well, this is what God says, right? And stoicism I think is making the argument not, hey, if you live in opposition to the four

virtues, you will go to hell. I think the stoics are arguing your life will be hell, right? Your life will suck. You might be rich, you might be powerful, might be famous, but that will bring you very little joy, very little happiness, very little meaning, and in fact, probably bring you the opposite of those things. Right? And so that's really what I love about stoicism is making sort of a logical self-interested case for virtue and value. Now are these four virtues that you talked about, courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom, are those considered sort of the four core ones?

You know, is that sort of throughout Stoicism or certain Stoics? Or I'm just kind of curious how ensconced those four are and then how many branches off of those four perhaps there are. Those are the core fundamental values of Stoicism. And I think you would argue that every other thing that the Stoics talk about or believe could be ascribed to one of those virtues. So someone goes, well, what about love? Is that a virtue? And it's like, yes, it is. But love I think fits under justice, how you treat people, your connections to other people,

so on and so forth. So I think those four virtues are all encompassing as far as values go. And it's also important to remember that the four virtues don't work in isolation from each other. So courage in pursuit of injustice to the Stoics is not impressive. In fact, it's, you know, a vice, not a virtue. And wisdom is the virtue that helps us discover when and where the other virtues apply, right? So these virtues can be configured

in an unlimited amount of combinations that can give you clarity or guidance in each and every situation. Amy Robach and TJ Holmes here. Diddy's former protege, television personality, platinum-selling artist, Danity King alum Aubrey O'Day joins us to provide a unique perspective on the trial that has captivated the attention of the nation. Aubrey O'Day is sitting next to us here.

You are, as we sit here, right up the street from where the trial is taking place. Some people saw that you were going to be in New York and they immediately started jumping to conclusions. So can you clear that up? First of all, are you here to testify in the Diddy Trial? Aubrey will offer her opinions and expertise based on her firsthand knowledge.

From her days on Making the Band as she emerged as the breakout star, the truth of the situation would be opposite of the glitz and glamour. It wasn't all bad, but I don't know that any of the good was real. I went through things there. Listen to Amy and TJ presents Aubrey O'Day, covering the Diddy Trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Giving yourself that agency to not just be one thing, right?

I don't have to be the perception that is crafted or the version of me that everyone is kind of projecting onto me, like I am having my human experience and it is faceted. It's so faceted and it's fascinating. May is Mental Health Awareness Month and Deeply Well is a sanctuary for your healing. I'm Devi Brown, healer, wellbeing expert,

teacher and fellow seeker. And each week we explore what it means to become whole through soul expanding conversations and practices. Why focus on tiny joys? Well, because they remind us of what it means to be human. They anchor us in the present moment and they create ripples of gratitude that nourish our spirit.

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This podcast looks at a West available nowhere else. Each episode, I'll be diving into some of the lesser-known histories of the West. I'll then be joined in conversation by guests such as Western historian Dr. Randall Williams and best-selling author and meat-eater founder Stephen Rinella. I'll correct my kids now and then where they'll say when cave people were here and I'll say it seems like the Ice Age people that were here didn't have a real affinity for caves. So join me starting Tuesday, May 6th, where we'll delve into stories of the West and come

to understand how it helps inform the ways in which we experience the region today. Listen to The American West with Dan Flores on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Before we dive back into the conversation, let me ask you something. What's one thing that has been holding you back lately? You know that it's there. You've tried to push past it, but somehow it keeps getting in the way. You're not alone in this.

And I've identified six major saboteurs of self-control, things like autopilot behavior, self-doubt, emotional escapism, that quietly derail our best intentions. But here's the good news, you can outsmart them. And I've put together a free guide to help you spot these hidden obstacles and give you simple, actionable strategies that you can use to regain control. Download the free guide now at whenufeed.net slash ebook and take the first step

towards getting back on track. A question that I've seen posed a couple of times that I thought was an interesting question and I've got kind of my thoughts on it, but I'm curious what yours were is that from a surface level, Buddhism and Stoicism seem to have a lot in common. There's a lot of overlap there. I'm curious if you have a sense of where you think there might be differences. Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I think what I particularly love about Stoicism is its engagement in the world, where I tend to find with Buddhism and both in the Buddhist

texts, there is kind of a disengagement from the world. To me, the image of the Buddhist is the monk, and the image to me of the stoic is like the emperor or the general or the person in the midst of the busy world. Like stoicism is founded in the Athenian Agora, the busiest marketplace in Athens. That's not where I associate, I mean, there were Buddhist samurais and Confucius, for instance, as a political advisor. So in the Eastern tradition, there's certainly some level of engagement. But I do think I see stoicism much more a philosophy of the world of the self, as opposed to so much of the detachment that we sometimes see in the Eastern texts. Yeah, that makes sense. I would agree. And I think a lot of what's happening in Western

Buddhism is I think there's a lot of correction oriented around that idea, where actually I think that's not what is necessarily in a lot of the Buddhist core teachings, but you're right, there is an idea of withdrawing from the world, but there certainly is also a lot of talk about compassion and action. And I think that's one of the things that Western Buddhism is doing right, I think, is correcting for some of that and saying, look, yeah, these things are great to develop this wisdom and this capacity for reflection and all that, but to what end? You know, not a metaphysical idea that like, oh, well, if I awaken all beings simultaneously awaken, like, no, like, is the wisdom that I'm

developing, the compassion I'm developing, is it showing up in the world in a useful way? Yeah, Seneca was talking about the Epicureans, not the Buddhists, but I think it's a similar point. You know, he says the difference between the Stoics and the Epicureans is that the Epicurean says, I will not be involved in public life unless it's unavoidable. And then the Stoic says, I will be involved in public life

unless it is impossible, right? And I think thatoic says, I will be involved in public life unless it is impossible. Right. And I think that's in distinction, the Stoic defaults to, I'm a philosopher, plus I am a insert profession, important public role, et cetera. And I sort of tend to see the Buddhist as the, well, I'm a philosopher and yes, occasionally I have to do X, Y, and Z. Yep. So let's move back to the book and I want to hit on the idea. The last part of the book is around heroism and talk about the difference between, say, heroism and courage. and talk about the difference between, say, heroism and courage.

So, obviously, fear holds us back, courage is therefore rare, but there is something beyond courage. One of the examples I've come to explain this with is like, Michael Jordan walking away from professional basketball at the height of his greatness took immense courage. It would have been scary, it was real cost to it. Lots of people told him it was a bad idea. He had to go be bad at baseball in front of millions of people.

He had to go from being the greatest to like a minor league baseball player, right? That took incredible courage. Now, is that heroic? Well, probably not. I mean, it doesn't really help anyone. It doesn't like make the world a better place. Same with Michael Jordan on that sort of flu game, comes back from the flu. It's courageous, takes immense amount of endurance. It's not like solving world hunger or something, right? I contrast that with Maya Moore, who I think two, almost three seasons ago now, walks away from, you know, an equally dominant career in the WNBA to work full-time at freeing a man wrongly convicted who is sentenced to life in prison.

So the courage to walk away for oneself takes courage. The decision to walk away for something greater than oneself is decision to walk away for something greater than oneself is heroic. And so what we decide to commit to, what our courage is in service of, is the sort of next and ultimate sort of level to think about and consider. Yeah, you say courage is not an independent good, heroes have a reason. And you also say the difference between raw courage and heroic lies in the who. Who is it for? It's a beautiful idea. So what are some of your favorite things you'd like to share around heroism? I've got a few here but I'm gonna let you lead for a second. Well I opened that part of the

book with the story of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae and you know obviously it's made for some great movies but it it's also, I just think, one of the most indelible examples of selflessness and sacrifice in the history of Western civilization. These 300 Spartans, there was more because they were supported by some auxiliary troops, but basically like a few thousand Greek soldiers went out and fought a Persian army that may have numbered as many as 1 million and they did it obviously knowing they would lose. I mean nobody marches out against those kind of odds convinced like oh we're really gonna win this thing right. So why did they go? Because they knew that this sort of shaky Greek alliance needed time to come together. There were people who thought the Persian threat was overstated.

They thought it didn't matter. They thought like, you know, we were better off handling this individually. And these 300 Spartans go out and make the ultimate sacrifice to bind these nations together, to make a statement, to show first off that it's possible for the Greeks to fight and do real damage, but that a unified Greece is the only viable option. And you know, you just read about these 300 guys, every single one of them had children. In fact, that was the point. The 300 Spartans were chosen specifically

because they had children, because they believed that they wouldn't let those children down, and that they were also protecting the younger soldiers who hadn't had time to start families yet. So it's just this magnificent story of human greatness, I feel, of in this brief moment, they become more than just 300 people. They become legends. You know, they become transcendent.

Yeah. In one of the sections called going beyond the call, you talk about the Spartans again and you say the opposite of fear, the true virtue contrasted with that vice was 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. And you're saying like, that's what was really underlying what they did was love. It obviously wasn't for their benefit that they were going out to fight this battle because they weren't coming home and they knew that it was a selfless gift for other people.

I think about as America withdrew from Afghanistan, you think of these 12 servicemen and women who walked out for days on end into these crowds to load people up onto airplanes, knowing that, you know that something could go wrong at any moment, and tragically it did, and 12 of them lost their lives. But they also, in the process, were integral participants in one of the greatest humanitarian rescue efforts in human history, and they are not the recipients of the benefits of that risk.

So, you know, if I decide to write a book that's transgressive, there's a danger to that. But if it succeeds, you know, I reap the rewards of that, right, financially, reputationally, et cetera. When you look at sort of truly heroic people, what makes it so impressive is that there was no real hope, for them at least, of the benefits of that sacrifice. You tell a story in the section about the audacity of hope about John Lewis. Do you

want to share that one? That's another one. I mean, you think about what John Lewis goes through in his life. I think he's arrested 50 times, he's beaten more than 50 times, nearly killed several occasions. If there was ever a person who had reasonable justification for giving up on human beings, giving up on white people, just giving up on people in general. It was John Lewis. And yet, who sort of continually was there with hope and forgiveness and optimism and commitment to change, belief that change was possible. You think about, in a weird way, the courage that it takes to remain hopeful when people are showing you time and time again that they're probably not

worthy of that kind of belief. To be a black American in 1950 or 1960 and to believe that America was decent and good and would eventually inevitably make progress in these areas. I mean there was not a lot of evidence for that right? I mean there's that expression when people show you who they are believe them. Like we were showing over and over and over again like sort of who we were and so to have a belief, to have hope, to have the belief in yourself that you could actually affect change and make that real, I mean, that's just one of the most magnificent things I could possibly imagine. Yeah, you say just about one of the craziest, bravest things you can do in this

damned world of ours is to keep hoping because there are so many reasons not to. That is so true. It seems like such a on one hand crazy thing to do, but so critically important. Yeah, I mean, we're not talking about sort of vague hope, oh, this will take care of itself, right? This isn't like, oh, I don't need to do anything, it'll work out. That's not how it goes. But it's the courage to believe that one has the ability to make a difference to push the ball forward in some way. And I think

also that on a long enough timeline, progress can be made. Yeah, I think it's that holding those two ideas at the same time, right? Like, yeah, things are really messed up. There's all kinds of problems. And it can get better. It's really seeing both those. If you only see one of those, you either end up hopeless or you end up naively optimistic. But when you hold both of them, that's a constructive and practical realism. Yeah, there's a James Baldwin quote that I love, I'm pretty sure it's in the book. He says, not everything that's faced can

be changed. But nothing can be changed unless it is faced. Right? So sticking your head in the sand, pretending everything is fine, being afraid to look at it or deal with it, obviously that keeps things the way that they are. That's not to say that just because you're brave enough to say, I'm going to try to do this, that the bill will pass, that the company will succeed, that the person will be willing to hear what you're saying and go to rehab or whatever. But if you're not willing to try, it's definitely not going to happen.

Yeah, I think that's very spot on. Let's end with you just sharing a little bit about your bookstore. You opened a bookstore right as the pandemic opened. And I'd be curious to hear a little bit about that story, but I'd be also curious to hear how has it been going, say, since you've sort of talked about that in a couple of different places. I'm kind of curious, the latest update,

but for people who don't have the first update, why don't you give us that part? Well, it's actually worse than you said, because I had just started the process. I had just paid for the location for which I was hoping to open a bookstore at the beginning of the pandemic. So then, you know, looking at things in the cold light of March 2020 and April 2020 and May 2020,

as it literally looked like the world was falling apart and it wasn't even possible to be open as a bookstore. My wife and I had to sort of sit there and go, are we sure we wanna do this? Do we just light our life savings on fire? But we stuck with it, we took our time, we really thought about what we wanted to do, why we wanted to do it, why we thought it was important.

And we pushed through it, opened in earlier this year. And actually so far it's doing great. I mean, you never know with these things, but I think now like what if I had thrown in the towel in March, what if I'd cut my losses? Might've been cheaper in some ways, but when I watch people walk through the bookstore as I did before I came up here to record this,

it's like, oh, this is what's on the other side of those decision points. When you go, do I wanna do the easy thing, do want to do the easy thing? Do I want to do the hard thing? Do I want to push through? Do I want to quit? I don't think that I could have thought that what it is now and how it's doing was possible. And I only found out that it was possible by pushing through, by trying. As they say, all growth is a leap in the dark. You have to take that leap. No guarantee it'll work. It might blow up in your face, or it could surprise you and be even better than you thought.

Yep. So right now it's going well then. Yes, fingers crossed. But yeah, it's going great. And it was cool to like launch, you know, my new book through my own bookstore. I was gonna say, did you throw yourself a book launch party at your own bookstore? No, no, no parties because of the pandemic. But you know, instead of saying, hey, go buy this book from Amazon, which of

course I also want people to do. I said, you know, buy this book from my bookstore or just like, Hey, we can put my book in the window as a new release. You know, like how cool is that? So there's just been a whole other element to it. That's been really fun. Before we wrap up, I want you to think about this. Have you ever ended the day feeling like your choices didn't quite match the person you

wanted to be? Maybe it was autopilot mode or self-doubt that made it harder to stick to your goals. And that's exactly why I created the Six Saboteurs of Self-Control. It's a free guide to help you recognize the hidden patterns that hold you back and give you simple effective strategies to break through them. If you're ready to take back control and start making lasting changes, download your copy now at oneufeed.net slash ebook. Let's make those shifts happen starting today. OneUFeed.net slash ebook.

As someone who has paid attention to the work you've done over a few years, I know how deeply you love books. Your reading lists, I always love to get and see. And so I'm happy you've got a bookstore. That's really wonderful. Thank you. Yeah. It's called The Painted Porch.

It's in this little town called Bastrop, Texas, right outside Austin. And the other thing I think about it, just for other people, I'm not saying you should start a bookstore, but if you become successful, if you, you know, have achieved whatever you've set out to achieve, if that's not allowing you to then go do things you've always wanted to do, sort of what's the point, you know? And so I think the cool part about the bookstore is I love books, I love bookstores, and if I can't do this now, what sort of is the point of the other things, right? And so that's sort of something that's kind of empowered me along the way. Yeah. Well, Ryan, thank you so much for coming on the show. I hope the book does great. I

hope the bookstore does well, and I hope to someday visit it. I need to get down to Austin to visit my brother who lives there. So I'll come by. Please do. That would be awesome. Thanks so much. Appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring or thought provoking, I'd love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do.

We don't have a big budget and I'm certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better and that's you. Just hit the share button on your podcast app or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the One You Feed community. Why is a soap opera western like Yellowstone so wildly successful? The American West with Dan Flores is the latest show from the Meat Eater podcast network. So join me starting Tuesday, May 6th,

where we'll delve into stories of the West and come to understand how it helps inform the ways in which we experience the region today. Listen to The American West with Dan Flores on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shankar. I host a podcast called A Slight Change of Plans that combines behavioral science and storytelling to help us navigate the big changes in our lives. podcast called A Slight Change of Plans that combines behavioral science and storytelling

to help us navigate the big changes in our lives. I get so choked up because I feel like your show and the conversations are what the world needs, encouraging, empowering, counter-programming that acts like a lighthouse when the world feels dark. Listen to A slight change of plans on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Being able to say, I feel like crying, so I will cry. Today, I'm a little depressed.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and Deeply Well is a sanctuary for your healing. I'm Debbie Brown, healer, wellbeing expert, teacher, and fellow seeker. And each week, we explore what it means to become whole through sole expanding conversations and practices. Today, wow, I feel really powerful and ready to serve and use my skills. And it's like, that's the heart of what it is to be an authentic woman. To hear this and more ways to prioritize your piece, listen to Deeply Well from the Black

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