PDF Summary:Courage Is Calling, by Ryan Holiday

Ryan Holiday’s Courage Is Calling teaches us the meaning of courage using principles from the ancient Greek philosophy of Stoicism. Holiday argues that every person has the innate ability to be courageous. When you overcome fear and choose to do the right thing every day, you can effect positive change in the world. One of the most well-known modern-day philosophers, Holiday has written and co-written several bestselling books on Stoic philosophy, including The Obstacle Is The Way, Ego Is the Enemy, and The Daily Stoic.

In this guide, we’ll discuss how Holiday defines courage and his advice for being courageous in both everyday and extraordinary situations. You’ll learn how to break free from fear, take control of your actions, and make bold decisions. In our commentary, we’ll discuss some of the philosophical principles behind Holiday’s ideas, alternative perspectives on courage, and actions you can take to incorporate more courage into your everyday life.

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Shortform Example: Fear of Public Speaking

To illustrate how to logically deconstruct something you’re afraid of, let’s look at a common fear: public speaking. For many people, the thought of speaking in any group setting creates feelings of intense anxiety. You may be afraid that you’ll forget the words you’re supposed to say or embarrass yourself in front of people whose opinions you value.

Instead of dwelling on that fear, play out the scenario logically. In all likelihood, you’ll get through your public speaking moment with minimal issues. Your anxiety might cause you to stumble a little, or you might have a tough crowd, but even if the worst-case scenario happened—you trip on the stage, you forget the words, and so on—you’ll still be okay. You’ll move on with your life, the other people in the audience will forget, and you’ll have a funny story to tell. Giving into fear won’t prevent those things from happening, and it causes unnecessary suffering before the event occurs.

You could prepare for potential public speaking challenges by writing your points on note cards so you have something to refer to if you forget what you’re supposed to say. Or, before you go on stage, you could do a breathing exercise that calms your heart rate and helps you think more clearly.

The Origins of Tim Ferriss’s Fear-Setting Exercise

Like Holiday, Tim Ferriss also based his strategies for overcoming fear on Seneca’s ideas. When Ferriss created his fear-setting exercise, he expanded Seneca’s process for defining fear by creating a written version of it. As someone who experiences anxiety and depression, he found that just visualizing the worst-case scenarios of his fears wasn’t enough to take their power away. By putting his fears and potential solutions for them on paper, he was able to get them out of his head and work through them more concretely.

Ferriss includes fear-setting in his entrepreneurial book The 4-Hour Workweek, which teaches you how to live the lifestyle of a wealthy retiree by building a successful business that requires little maintenance. Ferriss argues that the fear of failure is the main obstacle that stops people from living this kind of lifestyle. He applies fear-setting as a method you can use to overcome your hesitation and create the kind of life you want to live.

Fight External Pressures

In the last section, you learned how to conquer fear by defining it and preparing for it. In this section, we’ll learn why it’s important not to let external pressures prevent you from doing what’s right for yourself and others.

Break Free From Convention

Holiday argues that one of the main forces preventing us from being courageous is fear of the possible negative consequences of breaking societal expectations. We often make choices based on our fear of what others will think of us: for example, not wearing a certain outfit because we’re afraid people will stare.

It can be difficult to resist the power of convention, but courageous people continue to follow their purpose even when every external force tells them to stop. Don’t let anything stop you from following your own path—you might miss your chance for greatness.

How to Stop Caring What Other People Think

Though Holiday emphasizes the importance of being your authentic self even if doing so leads to shock or backlash from others, he doesn’t give much concrete advice about how to do this. In You Are A Badass, Jen Sincero offers some tips for how to stop caring what other people think.

• Assess your motivations before speaking or taking action. Are you doing something to gain the approval of others, or are you coming from a place of truth and strength? Try to act from a place of honesty and integrity at all times.

• Try your best. It’s easier to be swayed by the opinions of others in moments of insecurity, which often come when you haven’t put your all into something. If you try your best, you have no reason to worry about what others think.

• Allow your intuition to guide you. You—not other people—have a built-in sense of what’s best for you. Learn to listen to your gut, and make your decisions based on your instincts.

Speak Against Injustice

Holiday asserts that true individuals won’t let anyone prevent them from speaking the truth. There are injustices in every society and in every time period, and a courageous person will seek to expose them and rectify them. They’ll speak up against tyranny. They’re willing to be loud, difficult, and unreasonable according to society’s standards, and they keep fighting even when their reputation, their safety, or their well-being is threatened.

We can draw from the past for examples of courageous individuals. Throughout history, many artists, writers, journalists, politicians, and other everyday citizens stood up against injustice and spoke the truth, frequently at great expense to themselves. These people were often alone in their convictions at the start. They had to stand firm in their beliefs until the opinions of their society caught up with them.

(Shortform note: As Holiday states, we have much to learn from courageous people of the past. You can connect with brave figures throughout history by studying their words, their lives, and their actions. Read their writings and their biographies, watch documentaries about them—learn as much as you can about who they were. This kind of study can offer inspiration for your future courageous actions.)

How to Fight Injustices as an Everyday Citizen

As Holiday says, courageous people work to fight injustices in society. However, with all the stories of suffering and inequality we see in the news and on social media, it can feel overwhelming trying to figure out the best way to help. Here are some ideas for easy ways you can support causes you care about:

• Educate yourself about the issues and the background behind the cause (how others have fought this injustice in the past).

• Share and reshare content about the cause on social media. This is especially helpful for sharing valuable educational resources (as long as the information is accurate).

• Donate money to organizations fighting for your cause, and put your money toward work that makes your community better (when you can).

• Donate your time as a volunteer to your favorite organizations.

• Attend peaceful protests speaking out against injustices in your community.

• Exercise your civil rights—sign petitions, vote for propositions, and vote for candidates that align with the interests of your cause.

Keep Going Even in the Face of Opposition

When you try to do the right thing and you’re met with opposition and danger, Holiday encourages you to keep going. Hard as it may be, being courageous means making the right choice anyway, regardless of the consequences. You may feel alone for a while, and people may think you’re strange. Still, in the end, you’ll have succeeded because you stayed true to what you know to be morally right.

For example, maybe your company is ignoring safety concerns about one of your products, and they say they’ll fire you if you tell anyone about the situation. The courageous action would be to take your concerns to a higher authority or expose the issue to the media to prevent your company’s product from causing further harm. This might affect your career and your livelihood in the short term, but you’d prevent untold levels of future suffering.

How Courage Leads to a Happier Life

According to Stoic philosophy, the only way to achieve happiness is by pursuing a virtuous life. Therefore, even if doing the right thing causes you social rejection and suffering in the short term (as Holiday suggests here), you’ll be happier for it in the long run.

Additionally, in his foundational Stoic text Meditations, Marcus Aurelius teaches that no external forces—including the negative consequences that come from making a courageous choice—can hurt you unless you allow them to. It’s the resulting emotions, like anger and grief, that cause you to suffer, and you can decide to reject these emotions. The only thing that can truly hurt you is something that hurts your character. Therefore, if you compromise your integrity by choosing not to do the courageous thing, you’d really be hurting yourself.

Make Courageous Action Your Responsibility

As we discussed in the last section, part of being courageous is following your own path and speaking up for what you believe in, even in the face of extreme opposition. In keeping with that idea, Holiday argues that we must all recognize our agency and make courageous action our responsibility.

In this section, we’ll explore how the first step to making a difference is believing that you’re able to do it. Once you do, your courage can inspire others to do the same. Furthermore, we’ll explain why you must be prepared to take responsibility for your actions, even when your decisions lead to negative outcomes.

Believe That You Can Make Change

According to Holiday, the first step toward making a positive difference is believing that you can do so. This belief in your own agency allows you to make brave choices that lead to bigger changes. This kind of bravery doesn’t just happen in situations where your life and livelihood are at risk—it’s also in the small choices you make every day.

(Shortform note: You can make brave choices every day by doing things that take you out of your comfort zone. As we’ve noted, when you establish a pattern of brave actions, you prepare yourself for moments when a higher form of courage is needed. One way to exercise everyday courage in your life is learning the power of the word “no.” Too often, we’re taught that saying “no” is selfish or inconsiderate. We end up doing things we don’t want to do because we’re afraid to lose social acceptance. Saying “no” to things you don’t agree with, like going to a work meeting after hours when you’re supposed to be spending time with family, helps you set healthy boundaries and increases your self-esteem and confidence.)

Once you start making courageous decisions, Holiday argues that you’ll inspire others to be brave as well. Only one person has to be courageous to change the minds of others. Instead of condemning others for being cowardly, be the example that shows them how things could be better. Inspiring others creates a snowball effect, leading to change on a wider scale.

Take American teachers, for example. Along with teaching and caring for their students, many of them face funding cuts, low salaries, student poverty, unsupportive administrations, and restrictive legislation, all of which make it more difficult for them to do their jobs. Despite this, many teachers stay in their jobs because they believe that they can make a difference in their students’ lives. They do make a difference, even if it’s on the individual level—good teachers give their students a chance to flourish and grow into more discerning, more confident, more courageous people.

(Shortform note: Anyone can inspire courage in others, but it’s especially important that leaders create a culture of courage for the people under them. Allow your people to make mistakes so they have chances to grow, learn, and innovate. When they display courage and take risks, offer them rewards. When things don’t go well, offer them support and emphasize the importance of effort. Additionally, give them a motivating reason to act courageously by helping them connect with your mission on a personal level. This reason might be different for everybody, and it’s a leader’s job to figure out what motivates each member of their team. Finally, lead by example by taking risks and showing them that you’re not perfect either.)

Be Accountable for Your Actions

Part of being courageous means accepting responsibility for the decisions you make, especially when something goes wrong or your actions have unintended consequences. We all have moments where even our best intentions get us into trouble. What matters most is how we respond. Holiday states that courageous people don’t try to make excuses, pass blame, or quit when they’re under scrutiny.

Let’s return to the scenario from a previous section where you defend a coworker from a supervisor’s inappropriate comments. After you speak out against the supervisor, your coworker comes to you upset, saying you had no right to speak for them and that you should have talked to them first about what the supervisor said. Instead, you embarrassed them, and it negatively affected their work life.

Your first instinct may be to get annoyed that your coworker’s being ungrateful or make excuses that shift the responsibility for their problems away from you. However, even if it’s not your fault, and you still feel you did the right thing in the moment, your actions had unintended consequences. According to Holiday, the brave thing to do would be to acknowledge your part in your coworker’s hurt while standing firm in your decision.

(Shortform note: In The 10X Rule, Cardone also discusses the importance of taking full responsibility for your actions. He argues that to be successful, you have to recognize that things don’t happen to you—things happen because of you and the actions you take. If you’re willing to take credit for successes, you should be equally willing to take credit for failures. Believing you’re merely a victim of circumstances created by other people gives those other people control over you, reinforcing the false belief that you’re helpless. Like Holiday, Cardone states that while you can’t control everything that happens to you, you can always control how you respond. Taking responsibility in moments when you make mistakes allows you to actively improve your life going forward.)

Don’t Be Afraid to Make Difficult Choices

In the last section, we discussed the importance of taking responsibility for your actions and recognizing your ability to make positive changes. Now, we’ll examine Holiday’s advice on accepting uncertainty and being bold in decision-making.

Embrace Uncertainty

Holiday argues that courage requires you to be decisive. You can’t predict the future, so deliberating about a decision for a long time won’t help. To move forward, you’ll eventually have to accept uncertainty and have faith that your choice will work out.

Maybe you’ve always wanted to quit your desk job to run your own business, or you’ve always wanted to live in another country. You may or may not succeed, but Holiday says to do it anyway. Simple, everyday existence brings many risks, so it’s pointless to always prioritize safety. Sometimes you need to sacrifice your security so you can evolve and grow.

(Shortform note: Changing your life sometimes requires a leap of faith. Maybe parts of your life are no longer fulfilling, or your current circumstances are no longer meeting your needs. To start down a different path, you have to believe in yourself and trust your vision of who, what, and where you want to be in the future. However, you shouldn’t rely on blind faith that everything will work out. Use the strengths, knowledge, and skills you already have to build your new life and draw on support from loved ones to help you in your efforts.)

Make a Choice, So It Isn’t Made for You

Don’t spend all your time afraid to make the wrong decision. Instead, have the courage to be bold and decisive. When you spend too long analyzing possible outcomes, Holiday asserts that your inaction chooses for you.

One example of this would be choosing not to vote in your country’s elections even though you’re eligible. When you don’t vote, you’re essentially choosing the candidates who win and the laws that get passed, regardless of whether you’d have supported them with your vote or not.

Create a Pattern of Bold Action

It’s easy to fall into a pattern of inaction. As we’ve discussed, the alternative—being bold and decisive like Holiday suggests—often means we have to leave our comfort zones. If you never leave your comfort zone, you never move forward.

Here are some steps for developing a pattern of making bold choices:

• Think about what the consequences of inaction will be. Ask yourself whether the benefits of taking action will outweigh your reasons not to act.

• Take accountability for the things you do and the things you don’t do. We’re equally responsible for both.

• Think about what you’d say to a friend in the same situation, and follow your own advice. Examining the situation from the outside might give you some needed objectivity.

• Listen to your intuition. If you have strong feelings about something, they’ll probably guide you in the right direction.

Not making choices can have dangerous consequences when the stakes of your decisions are high. For example, if you witness injustices in your community and you don’t speak out or act against them, then you’re playing a part in their continued existence. Silence means you choose to accept the current reality.

When Small Decisions Have Big Consequences

In high-stakes situations involving people’s lives and livelihoods, the price of inaction is clear: There’ll be immediate suffering if you make a cowardly choice. However, inaction can also be dangerous when the stakes seem low.

Every day, we face choices that call on us to be brave. You may think choosing the easy route instead of the courageous route once in a while won’t make a difference, but according to the authors of How Will You Measure Your Life?, your integrity is made up of small decisions accumulated over time, not just the high-stakes moments.

If you focus only on the short-term cost or benefits of your actions, you’ll fail to grasp their full consequences. Making a cowardly choice one time can easily lead to a pattern of cowardice, so do the right thing all the time, no matter the circumstances. For example, if you lie to a friend, you may escape an uncomfortable situation in the short term, but you’re setting up a bigger issue down the road.

Choose Love

Now that we’ve touched on the value of courageous decisiveness, in this final section, we’ll discuss Holiday’s assertion that love is the driving force behind heroic acts of courage. Additionally, we’ll conclude with his warning that courageous acts done for the wrong reasons aren’t virtuous at all.

Love as the Opposite of Fear

According to Holiday, courage isn’t the opposite of fear. Rather, love is fear’s natural opposite. Love—for other people, for one’s country, for one’s religion, and so on—is what leads people to sacrifice their comfort, their safety, their well-being, and even their lives for a higher purpose. For example, love drives parents to place themselves in physical jeopardy to protect their children. It drives soldiers to sacrifice their lives in a conflict to keep their people safe back home.

Love is strong enough to break through our sense of self-preservation and help us transcend from everyday acts of courage to selfless acts of heroism. When faced with a situation where the right thing to do requires you to overcome your fear for your own safety and act against your self-interest, Holiday encourages you to draw strength from your love for the people, places, and causes that matter to you. Think about what’ll happen to them if you don’t do the courageous or heroic thing—are you willing to accept the suffering they’ll endure if you choose not to act?

Courage and Our Drive to Protect the Things We Value

Psychological research supports Holiday’s argument that love drives heroic action. According to experts, the need to create and protect value in our lives supersedes the survival instinct. We don’t live just to survive—we live for the things we value, like the people we love, the work we care about, and the places we call home. The search for value leads people to do things unnecessary for survival, like building families, creating beautiful works of art, and trying to discover the secrets of the universe.

Just as we live for the things we value most—or, in Holiday’s terms, the things we love—we also die for them. To return to our earlier examples, parents put themselves in harm’s way for their children because their children are more valuable to them than anything in the world. Likewise, soldiers give up their lives to protect the valued principles and people their country represents. The more we value something, the more we’re willing to sacrifice to keep it safe.

Know Where to Place Your Courage

In his discussions of courage and heroism, Holiday gives an important caveat: To truly represent the virtue of courage, brave actions have to be done for the right reasons. Courageous acts done in the service of evil regimes and causes that aim to harm and oppress others shouldn’t be celebrated.

In today’s world, courage for the wrong reasons might look like people using social media platforms to espouse discriminatory and hateful ideologies. The people posting hateful content are willing to speak their truth despite the backlash, but they’re also contributing to suffering and injustice.

Virtuous courage contributes to the greater good, not a greater evil. When you decide where to place your courage, make sure it’s for a just cause.

(Shortform note: The Stoics believed that courage was the virtue that championed righteous causes. However, applied without the other cardinal virtues—especially justice and wisdom—courage isn’t truly virtuous. Justice includes the sub-virtues of fairness and kindness, so a virtuous courageous person must fight for causes that support the common welfare of mankind. Additionally, to be courageous in Stoic terms, you must be a devotee to truth and a foe to deception. In other words, you can’t be the champion of causes that seek to deceive people.)