The One You Feed - Ryan Holiday on Everyday Courage

Episode Date: October 12, 2021

Ryan Holiday is one of the world’s foremost thinkers and writers on ancient philosophy and its place in everyday life. He’s a sought-after speaker, strategist, and the author of many best-selling books.In this episode, Eric and Ryan discuss his book, Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the BraveBut wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!Enrollment for the Spiritual Habits Group Program is now open through October 12. Click here to learn more and signup!In This Interview, Eric and Ryan Holiday Discuss Everyday Courage and …His book, Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the BraveThe 4 cardinal virtues that a good life depends onCourage, both physical and moral, is the willingness to put yourself at riskHow fear gets in the way of courageLearning to get specific with our fearsCourage is also about sharing our vulnerabilities with othersThe importance of just getting startedHow courage requires making decisionsDetermining and gaining clarity on our personal valuesStoicism and how it encompasses the core virtuesSimilarities and differences between Buddhism and StoicismHeroism goes beyond courage, doing something for the greater good or greater than oneselfHow it requires courage to have belief and hope that things can change for the betterHis courage to open a bookstore in the midst of the pandemicRyan Holiday Links:Ryan’s WebsiteTwitterInstagramFacebookFeals: Premium CBD delivered to your doorstep to help you manage stress, anxiety, pain, and sleeplessness. Feals CBD is food-grade and every batch is tested so you know you are getting a truly premium grade product. Get 50% off your first order with free shipping by becoming a member at www.feals.com/wolf If you enjoyed this conversation with Ryan Holiday, you might also enjoy these other episodes:How to be Fearless with Jessica HagyConscious Leadership with Eric KaufmannSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you think you're enlightened, go spend a week with your family. That's what the spiritual teacher Ram Dass said, and it strikes a chord with so many of us. Combine that with the inherently stressful holiday season, and it's no wonder that the last few months of the year are some of the most difficult for so many people. That's why we're opening the doors to the Spiritual Habits Group program once again, and I'm inviting you to join me. Whether you're looking to develop a consistent daily meditation practice, or implement mindfulness practices into your life,

or connect more deeply to what really matters, the Spiritual Habits Group program will give you the tools you need to turn this wisdom into daily, sustainable, transformational practice. And you'll do so in a community where you belong and feel connected. Finish 2021 strong with the satisfaction of knowing you showed up as your best self with less stress, able to actually enjoy this time of year. Just go to oneyoufeed.net slash spiritual habits to join the program. Enrollment is open now through October 12th. That's oneufeed.net slash spiritualhabits. 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.

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. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor,

what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition sign Jason bobblehead the really no really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Ryan Holiday, one of the world's most foremost thinkers and writers on ancient philosophy and its place in

everyday life. He's the sought-after speaker, strategist, and the author of many best-selling books, including the one him and Eric discuss here, Courage is Calling, Fortune Favors the Brave. 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 he 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 has bad habits. And the idea that you're ever going to 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, you know, 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, 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 then 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. 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 what you, 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. 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 close the book with that story, but I open 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're going to have everything you want. It's going to be fun. It's going to be easy. It's going to 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 going to be hard. It's going to be sacrifice. There's going to be hard. It's going to be sacrifice. There's going to be difficulty. It's going to 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, 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 want to 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, well, 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, you know, follow orders under fire? That would be physical courage, of course. But what is a whistleblower? What is a truth teller? You know, what is an artist who pushes the boundaries of what we accept? 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 fallen 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 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 a little sexist, so 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, 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 worked.

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 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, get specific 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 and give a shit, right? And so 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 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 indescribableness of those consequences that makes them loom much larger than they actually are. There's a story I tell in the book about Ulysses S. Grant. This goes to your point about sort of how many people are watching. He's crossing the plains of Texas as a young soldier. And he hears these wolves.

And he thinks it's like hundreds of wolves. He thinks they're about to be devoured by this rabid pack of wolves 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 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 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 going to inspect this. I'm going to like really look at it. You know, you're like, well, I don't want to say this. I might piss people off. And your idea of people is like a stadium. Right. Or like, yes, 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, it turns out to be like seven weirdos who send 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 they're actually work. 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 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. 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, you know, the things that are going on inside us. And I just loved that idea of, you know, when we don't do that, more of us feel alone. Yeah, because I'm specifically talking about stoicism, which, you know, 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 lowercase 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. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

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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 you know, 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. Yeah, they recognize like, oh, okay, other people feel 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. You know, 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 doubts about something, right? So the person who says, hey, I'm having trouble with this. Like 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 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. 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. 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. Anyways, trying to remember that it doesn't have to be perfect, particularly the first draft. I have to be willing for parts of it not to be good. And 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 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, you know, 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 going to 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 on to courage. A 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 going to hit. We kind of talked a little bit about preparation makes you brave. So let's move on to be the decider. 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 going to 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 what that chapter is about. Yeah. You quote an expression in there that I think is great, which is whatever you're. Yeah, you quote an expression in there that I think is great, which is whatever you're not changing, you're choosing. It's 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, you're 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 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. That's right. When you know exactly what you're doing when, then you can take all that energy and just sort of channel it, like do it. Totally. 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. What are the values that we have? Do you have any particular ways that you like of determining personal values and getting clearer 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 curious as somebody who's pretty firmly ensconced in thinking about values, if you have any thoughts 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,

you 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? 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 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. A question that I've seen posed a couple 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, is 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... I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

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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 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 heroicism. And talk about the difference between, say, heroicism 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. Would have been scary. There was real cost to it. Lots of people told him it was a bad idea, but 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. You know, 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 was 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 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 heroicism? I've

got a few here, but I'm going to 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'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 going to 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 are 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, you know, magnificent story of human greatness, I feel. 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 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, etc. 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. He's 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 of 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's 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, you know, be willing to hear what you're saying and, you know, be willing to hear what you're saying and, you know, 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 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 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 want to do this? Did 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, you know, thrown in the towel in March? What if I'd cut my losses? Might have 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 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. through it 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 going to say, did you throw yourself a book launch party at your own bookstore? No, no, no parties because of the pandemic. But instead of saying, hey, go buy this book from Amazon, which of course I also want people to do, I said, buy this book from my bookstore. Or just like, hey, we can put my book in the window as a new release. How cool is that? So there's just been a whole other element to it that's been really fun. Yeah. 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 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. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't

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