Speaker 1: Really, what courage is is the idea that I can
Speaker 1: change things, whether it's this tiny situation or it's some
Speaker 1: globally complex situation.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 2: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 2: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 2: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 2: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 2: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 2: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 2: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 2: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 2: how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 3: Every day we stand at a crossroads. One path is comfort,
Speaker 3: the other is courage. But courage isn't just for heroes
Speaker 3: on battlefields. It's in boardrooms, classrooms and kitchen tables. It's
Speaker 3: the decision to speak up, to start over, to keep hoping.
Speaker 3: My guest today is Ryan Holiday, author of Courage is Calling,
Speaker 3: and one of the most influential voices in modern Stoicism.
Speaker 3: We talk about fear, how to confront it, and how
Speaker 3: to act bravely, not just once, but over and over,
Speaker 3: from the Stoics to Steinbeck, from whistleblowers to warriors. Ryan
Speaker 3: brings stories and insights that remind us you don't have
Speaker 3: to be fearless, You just have to begin. I'm Eric
Speaker 3: Zimmer and this is the one you feed. Hi, Ryan,
Speaker 3: welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: It is a pleasure to have you on. We are
Speaker 3: going to be discussing your latest book in a moment,
Speaker 3: but let's start like we always do with the parable.
Speaker 3: There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says,
Speaker 3: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 3: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 3: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 3: other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 3: hatred and fear. And the grandson stops thinks about it
Speaker 3: for a second. He looks up at his grandfather and
Speaker 3: he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says,
Speaker 3: the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
Speaker 3: by asking you what that parable means to you in
Speaker 3: your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting. I talk about this in a couple
Speaker 1: different of my books. There's a wonderful quote from Martin
Speaker 1: Luther King where he says that there's a North and
Speaker 1: a South in all of us, meaning, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of a good and an evil, and that these sort
Speaker 1: of forces are always at a kind of civil war
Speaker 1: with each other. And I think this idea that we
Speaker 1: have a higher self and a lower self. There's the
Speaker 1: part of us that knows what's right and the part
Speaker 1: of us that doesn't do what's right, you know, the
Speaker 1: sort of part of us that is good habits and
Speaker 1: the part of us that's bad habits. And the idea
Speaker 1: that you're ever going to sort of perfectly be one
Speaker 1: or the other is probably unlikely. But I do think
Speaker 1: you give one more power than the other, which to
Speaker 1: me is sort of what that parable is about, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of day to day, which one has more control,
Speaker 1: who's winning sort of more often than not. Is kind
Speaker 1: of how I think about that. Pertains you know, to
Speaker 1: the idea in the new book two of Courage. I
Speaker 1: don't think courage is this thing that you sort of
Speaker 1: magically perpetually are It's something that sort of day in
Speaker 1: and day out, situation by situation, you either choose or
Speaker 1: don't choose, And the fact that you've chosen it before
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that you'll keep it forever. And the fact
Speaker 1: that you've screwed up and fallen short in the past
Speaker 1: also doesn't mean that you can't make a better choice now. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Books in general, I see a lot of you looking
Speaker 3: at historical figures as ways of really seeing how other
Speaker 3: people have to stay with the analogy fed their good
Speaker 3: wolf to sort of remind us, because I think, you know,
Speaker 3: it seems like there's two parts to this. One is
Speaker 3: even orienting to what does that mean? What does it
Speaker 3: mean to feed my good wolf? Or what does it
Speaker 3: mean to live a good life or a life of virtue?
Speaker 3: Then there's the actually doing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, although I would also point out that I do
Speaker 1: try to look also at examples of where the bad
Speaker 1: wolf has won out again to further the analogy. I
Speaker 1: try to do both inspiring stories and cautionary tales. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the idea being we can sort of learn from the
Speaker 1: experiences of others the costs and the benefits of those decisions.
Speaker 1: And that they might stick with us when we are
Speaker 1: faced with choices or temptations or difficult situations. I think
Speaker 1: we tend to learn by story. We certainly remember stories,
Speaker 1: and they sort of help us explain what we're going
Speaker 1: through in the present moment. So I tend to look,
Speaker 1: as you said, for stories that sort of remind us
Speaker 1: either of what we're capable of, positive or negative, and
Speaker 1: what the potential consequences of that could be either way. Yep.
Speaker 3: So we're going to get into your book in more detail.
Speaker 3: It's called Courage is calling Fortune favors the brave. But
Speaker 3: before we go deep into Courage, I'm going to ask
Speaker 3: you to sort of set it up because this is
Speaker 3: the first in a four part series of different virtues.
Speaker 3: So say a little bit about what the different virtues
Speaker 3: are and why did you choose them.
Speaker 1: So, in both ancient philosophy as well as in Christianity,
Speaker 1: and we see some similar renderings of it in Eastern
Speaker 1: philosophy as well, there's this idea of the four cardinal virtues.
Speaker 1: Cardinal doesn't actually have a religious connotation. It comes from
Speaker 1: the Latin word cardos, which means hinge. But the idea
Speaker 1: that there's sort of four pivotal virtues that the good
Speaker 1: life depends on, and those four virtues in Stoicism in
Speaker 1: Christianity are courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom. So this book
Speaker 1: is the first book in a series on those four virtues,
Speaker 1: courage being I think, if not the most important virtue,
Speaker 1: certainly the virtue that all the other virtues require almost
Speaker 1: from the outset. Okay, I can give you a quick
Speaker 1: definition of courage, or a quick definition of justice, or
Speaker 1: a quick definition of wisdom or temperance, But what does
Speaker 1: that actually look like in the real world, How does
Speaker 1: one apply it, how have people applied it? And how
Speaker 1: might we learn from them. That's sort of what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do in this book, as I do with
Speaker 1: all the other books. They usually pick a theme, as
Speaker 1: you said, and then survey illustrate it with stories that
Speaker 1: are memorable and inspiring and sort of allow us to
Speaker 1: get into the particulars of Okay, when you mean courage,
Speaker 1: you mean not show fear. No, it's more complicated than that.
Speaker 1: So we're trying to explore what courage looks like in reality.
Speaker 3: And I'm going to ask you to define courage in
Speaker 3: a minute. But I want to start with you end
Speaker 3: the book to a certain degree, which is with basically
Speaker 3: the end of one of my favorite books of all time,
Speaker 3: which is East of Eden by John Steinbeck, which I've
Speaker 3: read every couple of years for I don't know, thirty
Speaker 3: years now, and so I was wondering if you could just,
Speaker 3: you know, share with us kind of how you end
Speaker 3: the book around sort of the pivotal idea that ends
Speaker 3: East of Eden.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so at the end of East of Eden. And
Speaker 1: actually Steinbeck talks about this at length. He has this
Speaker 1: wonderful book called a Journal of a Novel where he's
Speaker 1: sort of writing to himself as he's working on the novel,
Speaker 1: and you see him sort of struggling with these themes.
Speaker 1: But he ends up talking to his editor about this.
Speaker 1: But he has this sort of breakthrough that the commandments
Speaker 1: are not thou shalt not, which sounds like you're not
Speaker 1: allowed to do these things, and he says, actually the
Speaker 1: rendering is closer to thou may not or thou should not, right,
Speaker 1: meaning that we have a choice, and that the choice
Speaker 1: is everything in the choice is as you said, if
Speaker 1: you only had one wolf inside you and it was
Speaker 1: the good wolf or the bad wolf, well, then you
Speaker 1: wouldn't really have any responsibility or accountability for who you
Speaker 1: were day to day. If you were a good person,
Speaker 1: that would be great, but it wouldn't be really much
Speaker 1: of a credit to you because you were simply born
Speaker 1: that way. If you were a bad person, you really
Speaker 1: couldn't be held accountable for that either, because it's not
Speaker 1: your fault. It'd be like being short or tall. It's
Speaker 1: not on you. It's not a reflection of you. And
Speaker 1: so this idea that we have the individual choice, the
Speaker 1: basis of free will, to choose to follow, the ideas,
Speaker 1: to choose virtue, to choose which wolf we feed, is
Speaker 1: in fact everything. I close the book with that story,
Speaker 1: but I opened the book with a similar story as
Speaker 1: no religious connotation, which is the so called choice of Hercules.
Speaker 1: Hercules is said to come to a crossroads. At either
Speaker 1: side of the crossroads, there are two goddesses. One goddess
Speaker 1: is the goddess of virtue. One is the goddess of vice.
Speaker 1: Advice says, look, you're gonna have everything you want. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be fun, it's gonna be easy, it's gonna be wonderful.
Speaker 1: You'll never have to care about anything again. And then
Speaker 1: the Virtue, the goddess of virtue, says, I can't make
Speaker 1: that promise. She says, it's gonna be hard, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be sacrificed, there's gonna be difficulty, it's gonna challenge you.
Speaker 1: But she says it will make you great. Won't be easy,
Speaker 1: but the challenge will be everything. And so this choice
Speaker 1: that Hercules makes is obviously said to be the sort
Speaker 1: of founding of his mythological greatness. And so the idea
Speaker 1: that we have this choice, that it's up to us,
Speaker 1: to me is the essence of what we're talking about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. So let's go into courage
Speaker 3: talk a little bit about to start, how do you
Speaker 3: define courage?
Speaker 1: Well, I struggled with this at the beginning because there's
Speaker 1: said to be two types of courage, moral courage and
Speaker 1: there's physical courage. And that it's like, do I want
Speaker 1: to focus on physical courage or moral courage? What's more interesting?
Speaker 1: And how do they pertain to each other? How are
Speaker 1: they different? And then I really, as I thought about
Speaker 1: it more and more, I realized that what do they
Speaker 1: have in common? What are their similarities, what's their connection?
Speaker 1: And I realized that at the core, all forms of
Speaker 1: courage are about risk. It's basically, did you put your
Speaker 1: ass on the line? Like, did you physically step up
Speaker 1: and run into a burning building? Did you, you know,
Speaker 1: follow orders under fire? That would be physical courage, of course,
Speaker 1: But what is a whistleblower? What is a truth teller?
Speaker 1: You know? What is an artist who pushes the boundaries
Speaker 1: of what we accept? Well? Why do we admire that?
Speaker 1: Why does that count as courage? They're not risking their lives,
Speaker 1: of course, but they're risking their livelihood, they're risking their reputation,
Speaker 1: they're risking being looked at straightly or criticize. So you know,
Speaker 1: they're still putting their ass on the line. They might
Speaker 1: not die, but they could die of some form of
Speaker 1: social death. And so the idea at the core of
Speaker 1: courage to me is the willingness to risk and to
Speaker 1: put yourself out there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you say that courage is the management of and
Speaker 3: the triumph over fear. It's the decision, in a moment
Speaker 3: of peril or day in and day out, to take
Speaker 3: ownership to a certain agency over a situation, over yourself,
Speaker 3: over the faith that someone else has resigned themselves to.
Speaker 3: I just love that idea. And the other thing you say,
Speaker 3: I think is so important around this is that inherent
Speaker 3: in this is the belief that an individual can make
Speaker 3: a difference.
Speaker 1: Yes, you know, we talk about this idea. It's sort
Speaker 1: of now fallen out of fashion, the Great Man of
Speaker 1: History theory. And I don't think it's fallen out of
Speaker 1: fashion because it's sexist. It's the idea that, like an
Speaker 1: individual can change the course of human history. There's first off,
Speaker 1: a certain amount of courage just in that belief. But
Speaker 1: it's easier to sort of look at the idea that
Speaker 1: it's all hopeless, that it's all complicated, that it's all
Speaker 1: too big for an individual to possibly affect. And so
Speaker 1: I think, really what courage is is the idea that
Speaker 1: I can change things, whether it's this tiny situation or
Speaker 1: it's some globally complex situation. There's a great expression one. Again,
Speaker 1: these are all little sexists, so I'm not the coiner
Speaker 1: of the phrases. But there's another one that's like one
Speaker 1: man with courage makes a majority, meaning that almost all
Speaker 1: things start as a person who is alone, but it's
Speaker 1: through their courages, through their commitments to the actions that
Speaker 1: they take because of that courage that they are able
Speaker 1: to make that thing a reality. They bring people to them,
Speaker 1: where they bring people along with them. That's what courage
Speaker 1: is about.
Speaker 3: The way you've structured the book is you start off
Speaker 3: by really talking about what gets in the way of
Speaker 3: courage for most of us, which is fear. So let's
Speaker 3: take a step or two back, at least as far
Speaker 3: as the order of the book, and talk about what
Speaker 3: are some of the things that get in our way
Speaker 3: as far as fear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so fear gets in the way. But what is fear.
Speaker 1: Fear is a bunch of specific fears, right, fear of
Speaker 1: what other people will think, fear of the consequences, fear
Speaker 1: of standing out, fear of looking stupid, right, fear of
Speaker 1: any number of things. But I think the irony is
Speaker 1: often it's not even those things we're afraid. We just
Speaker 1: have this vague fear, right, this sort of undescribed, unspecified,
Speaker 1: vague sense that it's not worth it, or it'll be hard,
Speaker 1: or it'll be difficult. And so when we think of fear,
Speaker 1: I think one of the first things we want to
Speaker 1: do is just like, well, what am I actually afraid
Speaker 1: of here? Right? You know, you're jumping off a high dive.
Speaker 1: What are you afraid of? Well, you're probably afraid of dying, right, Well, like,
Speaker 1: let's actually think about whether that's physical possible here. That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it's magically going to be easy, but you
Speaker 1: can sort of logically get to a place where you know, Okay,
Speaker 1: the fear I have is irrational, So if I push
Speaker 1: past it, I'll be fine. Now, it's really just a
Speaker 1: matter of do I have the willpower to push past it.
Speaker 1: I think about this when I dropped out of college.
Speaker 1: You know, I was really scared. It was like I
Speaker 1: was nineteen years old. I had no life experience. I
Speaker 1: had no sense of how the world actually worked. So
Speaker 1: I was afraid, basically that if this didn't work out,
Speaker 1: I would end up under a bridge somewhere, right, Like,
Speaker 1: I was afraid that by leaving college, I was cutting
Speaker 1: the only safety net that possibly existed between me and homelessness, right,
Speaker 1: which was of course fundamentally irrational. And so it was
Speaker 1: really helpful to have someone in my life. I had
Speaker 1: a mentor who was like Ryan, I got sick for
Speaker 1: a year in college. I remember he told me this.
Speaker 1: He's like, I got sick for a year in college.
Speaker 1: I had to take a year off and I was
Speaker 1: in the hospital the entire time, and he was like,
Speaker 1: do you know how often this has ever come up
Speaker 1: in my life? Since that I was gone for a
Speaker 1: year of college. It took five years instead of four years.
Speaker 1: He's like, it's literally not once come up. He's like,
Speaker 1: this happens all the time. People leave and they have
Speaker 1: to come back. People leave and they never come back.
Speaker 1: But he's like, it's not what you think it is.
Speaker 1: It's not as irrevocable as your fears are telling you
Speaker 1: that it is. And it was like, oh, okay, that
Speaker 1: makes sense. So then I decided to do it, and
Speaker 1: that was the other part. So I went and did it.
Speaker 1: I remember I walked into the registrar's office and I
Speaker 1: said something like, you know, I'm here to drop out
Speaker 1: of college. And they were like, that's not even one
Speaker 1: of the options. They're like, you can take a semester off,
Speaker 1: but your credits are good for ten years. And so
Speaker 1: this thing that I've been so afraid of, actually I
Speaker 1: had a ten year like undo button that I could
Speaker 1: press at anytime. And so it's really important that one
Speaker 1: that we break things down and then the benefit of
Speaker 1: breaking them down and proceeding, whether it's jumping off a
Speaker 1: high diverge, dropping out of college is now the next
Speaker 1: time there was one of those decisions in my life,
Speaker 1: I was much more savvy and aware that it wasn't
Speaker 1: as scary as I thought it would be, and that
Speaker 1: there's almost always a way out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's so good. I was just working on recording
Speaker 3: a shortcast thing for Blinkis this morning, and we were
Speaker 3: talking about that exact point of like a get specific
Speaker 3: about your fears, like really move out of the vagueness.
Speaker 3: You know, like everybody will think I'm an idiot, and
Speaker 3: is more like, well there'll be three people there, So
Speaker 3: three people will think I'm an idiot, right, Like you know,
Speaker 3: get specific.
Speaker 1: And how many of them are even paying attention and
Speaker 1: give a shit? Right, And so you're you realize like
Speaker 1: often you're like imposter syndrome. Right, that's a real fear
Speaker 1: a lot of people have. Well what if they really
Speaker 1: investigate and they find out that I'm not as good
Speaker 1: as I think or whatever, and it's like they're not
Speaker 1: thinking about you at all. They don't care, you know,
Speaker 1: like they are consumed with their own problems, your obsession
Speaker 1: with yourself is making you think this is a bigger
Speaker 1: deal than it actually is.
Speaker 3: Totally, totally, yeah. And then the second part of that
Speaker 3: that you said really is like, Okay, well if my
Speaker 3: fear comes true, how will I respond. I love the
Speaker 3: word it's not irrevocable, and I think that's so important
Speaker 3: is to recognize, like, I mean, some decisions are irrevocable,
Speaker 3: but the vast majority of them are not, and you
Speaker 3: can change. I mean, when I left my full time
Speaker 3: job to start doing this podcast and the coaching and
Speaker 3: stuff full time, you know, I just had to spend
Speaker 3: a little bit of time and think, well, if this
Speaker 3: doesn't work, here's the thirteen different fallback plans I could have. Right,
Speaker 3: the risk? Am I taking a risk?
Speaker 1: Sure?
Speaker 3: But like to your point, it's not like this either
Speaker 3: works or I'm homeless. It's like, well, this either works
Speaker 3: or I get another job. Like it's not the end
Speaker 3: of the world.
Speaker 1: Yes, there's consequences, right, We're not saying like, don't be afraid,
Speaker 1: there's zero consequences. There's consequences, but it's the vague, the
Speaker 1: indescribableness of those consequences that makes them loom much larger
Speaker 1: than they actually are. There's a story I tell in
Speaker 1: the book about Ulysses as Grant this because your point about,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of how many people are watching. He's
Speaker 1: crossing the plains of Texas as a young soldier and
Speaker 1: he hears these wolves and he thinks it's like hundreds
Speaker 1: of wolves. He things they're about to be devoured by
Speaker 1: this rabid pack of wolves to go to the idea
Speaker 1: of this show. And the guy he's with is a
Speaker 1: tad more experience and he says something like, you know, Grant,
Speaker 1: how many wolves do you think there are? And Grant
Speaker 1: doesn't want to sound like a like a woos and
Speaker 1: so he says, I don't know twenty And he was like,
Speaker 1: that was like half what I actually thought there were.
Speaker 1: You know, he thought there were so many wolves. The
Speaker 1: guy hears is he just sort of smiles. They finally
Speaker 1: come upon the wolves and there's two of them. There's
Speaker 1: two wolves. And what he realizes is and he says,
Speaker 1: I never forgot this for the rest of my political
Speaker 1: and military life. He said, there's always fewer of them
Speaker 1: when they are counted, right, So you take your fears,
Speaker 1: you take your risk, you think about the worst case scenario.
Speaker 1: Then you actually go like, Okay, I'm going to inspect this.
Speaker 1: I'm going to like really look at it. You know,
Speaker 1: You're like, well, I don't want to say this, I
Speaker 1: might piss people off. And your idea of people is
Speaker 1: like a stadium, right or like yes, but there's actually
Speaker 1: like fifteen of them, right. I think about this every
Speaker 1: time I say something that's maybe a little political or
Speaker 1: a little controversial, You're like, oh, people aren't gonna like this.
Speaker 1: But like people, it turns out to be like seven
Speaker 1: weirdos who sends you poorly you know, poorly written emails
Speaker 1: that make you go like, how is this person reading
Speaker 1: my stuff? Anyway? I'm not sure they're literate? Right, Like,
Speaker 1: you realize that like the people that you were worried
Speaker 1: about you actually don't care about and are far fewer
Speaker 1: in number than you would have if you had had
Speaker 1: to guess they're actually were totally.
Speaker 3: I mean, I work with a lot of people who
Speaker 3: are trying to build their business step out online a
Speaker 3: little bit, and they're just like, I'm just worried that
Speaker 3: I'm going to get all these people hating on me.
Speaker 3: I said, no, no, no, Your biggest worry in the
Speaker 3: beginning is that nobody is going to pay any attention
Speaker 3: to what you're doing. You don't have to worry about
Speaker 3: the haters for a while, right. And then to your point,
Speaker 3: in seven and a half years of doing this, the
Speaker 3: number of people who've said anything to me that's really awful.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's just so few.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so what we often do is we make
Speaker 1: these things bigger than they actually are, so then we
Speaker 1: don't have to do them right. If you're like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't want to piss people off, so I'm not
Speaker 1: going to do it, or I don't want to be
Speaker 1: laughed at, then we don't have to do it right.
Speaker 1: It's like the excuse to not put yourself out there.
Speaker 1: You're looking for someone to give you permission to not
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's something you said near the end of the
Speaker 3: section on fear that I loved it. I'm just going
Speaker 3: to read it because I think it speaks to a
Speaker 3: different kind of fear. That's really important.
Speaker 1: Though.
Speaker 3: But you said, we're afraid to open up, we're scared
Speaker 3: to share. We don't want anyone to know how we're
Speaker 3: feeling inside, and so all of us feel more alone.
Speaker 3: You know what pain is caused by the inability or
Speaker 3: the unwillingness to sort of share our difficulties, our fear,
Speaker 3: you know, the things that are going on inside us.
Speaker 3: And I just loved that idea of you know, when
Speaker 3: we don't do that, more of us feel alone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I'm specifically talking about stoicism, which you know,
Speaker 1: is a philosophy that a lot of people associate with
Speaker 1: having no emotions. That's sort of the big stereotype of stoicism.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's like what the word stoic means in English,
Speaker 1: like the sort of lowercase stoic means like emotionless, invulnerable robot.
Speaker 1: And so I wanted to talk specifically about that that, like, hey,
Speaker 1: courage is not just you know, charging into the fray
Speaker 1: under fire. Courage is also saying, like you think about
Speaker 1: the soldier who does do that, right, but then the
Speaker 1: soldier who comes home and has trouble adjusting, or maybe
Speaker 1: they're addicted to something, or maybe they're depressed, or maybe
Speaker 1: they're even contemplating suicide. I wanted to talk about the
Speaker 1: courage to say, hey, I'm struggling, I'm having a hard time.
Speaker 1: I need help, because this is almost a scarier thing
Speaker 1: for brave people to do right to put yourself out
Speaker 1: there in that way. And so the idea of being vulnerable,
Speaker 1: as Brene Brown talks about this much better than I do,
Speaker 1: but the idea of being vulnerable is often the scariest
Speaker 1: thing in the world for people.
Speaker 3: It's interesting this before, back when I had years and
Speaker 3: years and years in sort of a corporate world, although
Speaker 3: a lot of them were startups, but you know, it
Speaker 3: was still sort of a business world.
Speaker 1: But the more that.
Speaker 3: I sort of shared who I was, I shared my
Speaker 3: addiction history, I shared my depression issues, you know, the
Speaker 3: things that happened in my life, not in a like
Speaker 3: I'm talking about me all the time way, but just
Speaker 3: was a little bit more open about that. It was
Speaker 3: amazing over the years the number of people that would
Speaker 3: come back to me and then say, oh, you know
Speaker 3: this is going on because all of a sudden it
Speaker 3: was safe or to use your word, they're not alone.
Speaker 3: They recognize like, oh, okay, other people feel this way,
Speaker 3: and it's okay to talk about it.
Speaker 1: Here we talked about this, right. So it's like, let's
Speaker 1: say everyone's scared of doing something. Maybe it's a political stand,
Speaker 1: it's standing up to a bully, you know, it's responding
Speaker 1: to an emergency, one man with courage makes a majority. Right,
Speaker 1: one person says no, we have to do something, and
Speaker 1: then they go do it, and the other one says, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're right, let's go do something. But this is also
Speaker 1: true for mental health issues. This is all so true
Speaker 1: for emotions. This is also true for doubts about something. Right,
Speaker 1: So the person who says, hey, I'm having trouble with this,
Speaker 1: like you think about what the Me Too movement actually was, right.
Speaker 1: It starts as women on Facebook saying hey, something like
Speaker 1: this happened to me too. Right, So put aside some
Speaker 1: of the political implications of the movement, Put aside excesses
Speaker 1: or problems or cases that you agree with or disagree
Speaker 1: with the idea of women saying hey, I was afraid
Speaker 1: to talk about this, but now that other people are
Speaker 1: open to talking about it, I'm going to say me too.
Speaker 1: That's what the power of courage is really about. And again,
Speaker 1: this is such important moral courage. First of uf, there's
Speaker 1: an element of physical courage that we probably shouldn't under
Speaker 1: state as well. But this is the decision to talk
Speaker 1: about a thing. That's why weren't they talking about it
Speaker 1: before it was uncomfortable. They thought they would be judged
Speaker 1: for it, they thought there might be professional consequences for it,
Speaker 1: they thought they might get a reputation because of it. Right,
Speaker 1: So the decision to put your ass on the line
Speaker 1: and say screw all of that, it's important for me
Speaker 1: to say this. It makes a difference for me to
Speaker 1: say this. I've been inspired by the other people who
Speaker 1: said it, and I am going to say something that
Speaker 1: is courage and it helps not just yourself but other people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a beautiful example of it. So let's now
Speaker 3: move into the courage section of the book. And the
Speaker 3: book is set up in that fear section the courage section,
Speaker 3: and there's little essays under them. Yeah, you know, lots
Speaker 3: of different ones that tell stories from history and make points.
Speaker 3: So I thought I'd just grab a couple of them
Speaker 3: out of there and let you talk about them, and
Speaker 3: then maybe you could pick one or two that you
Speaker 3: most want to talk about. But one of them that
Speaker 3: I liked was just start somewhere, do something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I'm actually going through this right now.
Speaker 1: I'm working on this other bookuggling a little bit. It
Speaker 1: was going well and then got distracted and anyways, trying
Speaker 1: to remember that doesn't have to be perfect, particularly the
Speaker 1: first draft. I have to be willing for parts of
Speaker 1: it not to be good. I just have to start.
Speaker 1: If I sit around and I wait for it to
Speaker 1: be easy, it'll never happen. If I wait for the
Speaker 1: perfect opening or opportunity, it's never going to happen. If
Speaker 1: I want what I'm doing now to be as good
Speaker 1: as what I've done before, what I did even earlier
Speaker 1: on this project, again, I'm going to be sort of
Speaker 1: stimied or stuck. So I just have to start. And
Speaker 1: so today I was like, you know what, what's the
Speaker 1: littlest thing that I could work on. I was like,
Speaker 1: you know what, I've got all this sort of loose
Speaker 1: research that I haven't found a place for. I'm just
Speaker 1: going to start organizing that and hopefully that will sort
Speaker 1: of knock something loose, which it did. Yesterday was sort
Speaker 1: of a mediocre day. Today was kind of a mediocre day.
Speaker 1: But tomorrow, I now suddenly, because I did this work,
Speaker 1: have pretty clear marching orders for what I need to
Speaker 1: work on tomorrow. So just start somewhere. You don't have
Speaker 1: to magically do some huge, heroic, impressive thing. You just
Speaker 1: have to make a little bit of progress.
Speaker 3: I don't want to divert the conversation too far from
Speaker 3: the topic of your book, but I've got to ask
Speaker 3: a question about how do you organize all your research,
Speaker 3: because you are really good at pulling lots of different
Speaker 3: pieces together, and I am always fascinated by the authors
Speaker 3: that do that really well how they organize it.
Speaker 1: So for me, I'm always reading these are books behind me,
Speaker 1: and as I'm reading, I'm like, Okay, for instance, I'm
Speaker 1: writing a chapter on Churchill and is somewhat reckless financial habits.
Speaker 1: That's what I was thinking about. So this is a
Speaker 1: book I read called No More Champagne about Churchill and
Speaker 1: his finances. And then these are all the pages that
Speaker 1: i've market yep, that I thought were interesting, and then
Speaker 1: I usually record them on note cards. And then the
Speaker 1: note cards are usually the build blocks of the book,
Speaker 1: so I have a big box all the difference. As
Speaker 1: you said, the book's three parts, then there's chapters in
Speaker 1: each part. Those note cards get slotted in in their
Speaker 1: respective parts, and those are the building blocks for each
Speaker 1: specific chapter in each book.
Speaker 3: Makes total sense. So you're doing it sort of paper based,
Speaker 3: old fashioned way.
Speaker 1: Yes, definitely. And it's not a perfect system. There's like
Speaker 1: a thing I know I wrote down and it has
Speaker 1: a guy's name on it, a baseball player that I
Speaker 1: want to write about, and I can't find it, and
Speaker 1: I don't know how I'm possibly going to find it.
Speaker 1: So it's not a perfect system. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: it gives me everything that I.
Speaker 3: Need makes sense. Okay, thank you for that. I just
Speaker 3: was fascinated to know. So back on to courage. A
Speaker 3: couple of these we've already hit. We've talked about how
Speaker 3: courage is contagious, you know, how one person being courageous
Speaker 3: spread So that was one I was going to hit.
Speaker 3: We kind of talked a little bit about preparation makes
Speaker 3: you brave. So let's move on to be the decider.
Speaker 1: Okay. The thing that's garious is making a decision. Right,
Speaker 1: as long as you don't decide, it can be anything,
Speaker 1: it can be everything. You won't be held accountable. Right.
Speaker 1: The decision is when we pull the trigger, and that
Speaker 1: that holds us back. So I was just, you know,
Speaker 1: just really talking about the power and the courage required
Speaker 1: to make decisions, because if you don't decide, sure, things
Speaker 1: will stay sort of in one spot. But by definition,
Speaker 1: you're also not going to be making progress. It's easy
Speaker 1: to endlessly debate things, it's easy to endlessly research and
Speaker 1: consider them. It's easy to ask for unlimited amounts of advice.
Speaker 1: But at some point you got to pull the trigger.
Speaker 1: You got to go. And that's that chapter's about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you quote an expression in there that I think
Speaker 3: is great, which is whatever you're not changing, you're choosing.
Speaker 3: It's corollarya is, you know, not making a decision is
Speaker 3: a of a decision unto itself. But I actually like
Speaker 3: this phrase better what you're not changing your choosing, which
Speaker 3: is really good. And then I can't remember what was
Speaker 3: in the book or something else you wrote. I think
Speaker 3: you led me to it, but it was a William
Speaker 3: James quote. There is no more miserable human being than
Speaker 3: the one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.
Speaker 2: So true.
Speaker 3: Having been there, I know how miserable that is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And to me, that's the importance and the power
Speaker 1: of routine. That's the importance and power of sort of
Speaker 1: setting your ground rules. And for those who don't do that,
Speaker 1: they face every day as an endless stream of unlimited decisions.
Speaker 3: Totally I mean with coaching clients. One of the first
Speaker 3: things we'll work on is we have got to decide
Speaker 3: ahead of time, yes, what we're doing, because if you don't,
Speaker 3: as you just said, you will spend a lot of
Speaker 3: your precious energy trying to figure out, well, when am
Speaker 3: I going to do it? What should I do? When
Speaker 3: am I going to do it, so that when it
Speaker 3: comes to time to do it, you already have sucked
Speaker 3: out half your resources are more and thus it's really
Speaker 3: hard to do when you know exactly what you're doing.
Speaker 3: When then you could take all that energy and sort
Speaker 3: of channel it, like do it totally.
Speaker 1: Yes, if you've set the rules for yourself. And this
Speaker 1: is kind of where the virtues come in to play. Also,
Speaker 1: if you're like, hey, I'm a person who defaults towards courage,
Speaker 1: then when a scary situation comes up, you're like, this
Speaker 1: is what I do, This is who I am. If
Speaker 1: you're like, I don't really know what I believe, I
Speaker 1: don't really know what I stand for, I don't really
Speaker 1: know what's important to me, then you're also winging it.
Speaker 1: And that's when you go, ah, but this will cost
Speaker 1: me money, Ah, but this could be hard, right, ah,
Speaker 1: but this seems fun, right, and so setting those sort
Speaker 1: of rules for yourself help you in those stressful, difficult situations.
Speaker 3: A lot of your work is about values, you know,
Speaker 3: what are the values that we have? Do you have
Speaker 3: any particular ways that you like of sort of determining
Speaker 3: personal values and getting clearer on what they are. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of different systems out there, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of ways to do it. But I'm just kind of curious,
Speaker 3: as somebody who's pretty firmly ensconced in thinking about values,
Speaker 3: if you have any thoughts on you know, for people
Speaker 3: who are like, well, I'm not really sure what my
Speaker 3: values are.
Speaker 1: I mean, what I love about Stoicism in particular, and
Speaker 1: I brought up earlier that sort of Stoicism and Christianity
Speaker 1: are aligned on these four virtues. What I like about
Speaker 1: the Stoic case for those virtues is there's no sort
Speaker 1: of metaphysical, supernatural explanation for them. I'm not faulting anyone
Speaker 1: who chooses it, but if you don't believe that the
Speaker 1: idea is divine, it's like, well, sort of why should
Speaker 1: I do it? Right? So Christianity always has this sort
Speaker 1: of benefit of like, well, this is what God says, right,
Speaker 1: and Stoicism, I think is making the argument not, hey,
Speaker 1: if you live in opposition to the four virtues, you
Speaker 1: will go to hell. I think the Stoics are arguing,
Speaker 1: your life will be hell. Right, your life will suck.
Speaker 1: You might be rich, you might be powerful, might be
Speaker 1: but that will bring you very little joy, very little happiness,
Speaker 1: very little meaning, and in fact probably bring you the
Speaker 1: opposite of those things. Right. And so that's really what
Speaker 1: I love about Stoicism. It's making sort of a logical,
Speaker 1: self interested case for virtue and value.
Speaker 3: Now, are these four virtues that you talked about, Courage, temperance, justice,
Speaker 3: and wisdom? Are those considered sort of the four core ones?
Speaker 3: You know? Is that sort of throughout Stoicism or certain
Speaker 3: Stoics or I'm just kind of curious how ensconced those
Speaker 3: four are, and then how many branches off of those
Speaker 3: four perhaps there are?
Speaker 1: Those are the core fundamental values of Stoicism, And I
Speaker 1: think you would argue that every other thing that the
Speaker 1: Stokes talk about or believe could be ascribed to one
Speaker 1: of those virtues. So someone goes, well, what about love?
Speaker 1: Is that a virtue? And It's like, yes, it is,
Speaker 1: but love I think fits under justice, how you treat people,
Speaker 1: your connections to other people, so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: So I think those four virtue who are all encompassing
Speaker 1: as far as values go. And it's also important to
Speaker 1: remember that the four virtues don't work in isolation from
Speaker 1: each other. So courage in pursuit of injustice. To the stoics,
Speaker 1: it is not impressive. In fact, it's a vice, not
Speaker 1: a virtue. And wisdom is the virtue that helps us
Speaker 1: discover when and where the other virtues apply. Right, So
Speaker 1: these virtues can be configured in an unlimited amount of
Speaker 1: combinations that can give you clarity or guidance in each
Speaker 1: and every situation.
Speaker 3: Before we dive back into the conversation, let me ask
Speaker 3: you something. What's one thing that has been holding you
Speaker 3: back lately? You know that it's there, You've tried to
Speaker 3: push past it, but somehow it keeps getting in the way.
Speaker 3: You're not alone in this, and I've identified six major
Speaker 3: saboteurs of self control, things like autopilot behavior, self doubt,
Speaker 3: emotional escapism that quietly derail our best intentions. But here's
Speaker 3: the good news. You can outsmart them. And I've put
Speaker 3: together a free guide to help you spot these hidden
Speaker 3: obstacles and give you simple, actionable strategies that you can
Speaker 3: use to regain control. Download the free guide now at
Speaker 3: oneufeed dot net slash ebook and take the first step
Speaker 3: towards getting back on track. A question that I've seen
Speaker 3: posed a couple times that I thought was an interesting question,
Speaker 3: and I've got kind of my thoughts on it, but
Speaker 3: I'm curious what yours were, is that from a surface level,
Speaker 3: Buddhism and Stoicism seem to have a lot in common.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of overlap there. I'm curious if you
Speaker 3: have a sense of where you think there might be differences.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I think what
Speaker 1: I particularly love about Stoicism is its engagement in the world,
Speaker 1: where I tend to find with Buddhism, and both in
Speaker 1: the Buddhist texts, there is kind of a disengagement from
Speaker 1: the world. To me, the image of the Buddhist is
Speaker 1: the monk, and the image to me of the Stoic
Speaker 1: is like the emperor or the general, or the person
Speaker 1: in the midst of the busy world. Like Stoicism is
Speaker 1: founded in the Athenian Agora, the busiest marketplace in Athens.
Speaker 1: That's not where I associate. I mean, there are Buddhist
Speaker 1: Samurais and Confucius, for instance, as a political advisor. So
Speaker 1: in the Eastern tradition there's certainly some level of engagement.
Speaker 1: But I do think I see stoicis a much more
Speaker 1: a philosophy of the world of the self as opposed
Speaker 1: to so much of the attachment that we sometimes see
Speaker 1: in the Eastern texts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes sense, I would agree, And I think
Speaker 3: a lot of what's happening in Western Buddhism is I
Speaker 3: think there's a lot of correction oriented around that idea,
Speaker 3: where actually I think that's not what is necessarily in
Speaker 3: a lot of the Buddhist core teachings. But you're right,
Speaker 3: there is an idea of withdrawing from the world. But
Speaker 3: there certainly is also a lot of talk about compassion
Speaker 3: and action. And I think that's one of the things
Speaker 3: that Western Buddhism is doing right, I think, is correcting
Speaker 3: for some of that and saying, look, yeah, these things
Speaker 3: are great to develop this wisdom in this capacity for
Speaker 3: reflection and all that, but to what end, you know,
Speaker 3: not a metaphysical idea that like oh, well, if I
Speaker 3: awaken all being simultaneously awakened like no like, is the
Speaker 3: wisdom that I'm developing, the compassion I'm developing, is it
Speaker 3: showing up in the world in a useful way?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Seneca was talking about the Epicureans the Buddhist, but
Speaker 1: I think it's a similar point. You know. He says,
Speaker 1: the difference between the Stoics and the Epicureans is that
Speaker 1: the Epicurean says, I will not be involved in public
Speaker 1: life unless it's unavoidable, and then the Stoics says, I
Speaker 1: will be involved in public life unless it is impossible. Right,
Speaker 1: And I think that's in distinction. The still defaults too,
Speaker 1: I'm a philosopher, plus I am a insert profession, important
Speaker 1: public role, et cetera. And I sort of tend to
Speaker 1: see the Buddhist as the well, I'm I'm a philosopher,
Speaker 1: and yes, occasionally I have to do X y and
Speaker 1: Z yep.
Speaker 3: So let's move back to the book, and I want
Speaker 3: to hit on the idea. The last part of the
Speaker 3: book is around heroicism and talk about the difference between, say,
Speaker 3: heroicism and courage.
Speaker 1: So obviously fear holds us back, courage is therefore rare,
Speaker 1: but there is something beyond courage. One of the examples
Speaker 1: I've come to explain this is like Michael Jordan walking
Speaker 1: away from professional basketball at the height of his greatness
Speaker 1: took immense courage. Would have been scary, it was real
Speaker 1: cost to it. Lots of people told him this a
Speaker 1: bad idea. He had to go be bad at baseball
Speaker 1: in front of millions of people. He had to go
Speaker 1: from being the greatest to like a minor league baseball player. Right,
Speaker 1: that took incredible courage. Now is that heroic? Well probably not.
Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't really help anyone. It doesn't like
Speaker 1: make the world a better place. Same with Michael Jordan
Speaker 1: on that sort of flu game comes back from the flu.
Speaker 1: It's courageous, takes the immense amount of endurance. You know,
Speaker 1: It's not like solving world hunger or something, right. I
Speaker 1: contrast that with Maya Moore, who I think two almost
Speaker 1: three seasons ago now walks away from, you know, an
Speaker 1: equally dominant career in the WNBA to work full time
Speaker 1: at freeing a man wrongly convicted who is sentenced to
Speaker 1: life in prison. So the courage to walk away for
Speaker 1: oneself takes courage, the decision to walk away for something
Speaker 1: greater than oneself is heroic. And so what we decide
Speaker 1: to commit to, what our courage is in service of,
Speaker 1: is the sort of next and ultimate sort of level
Speaker 1: to think about and consider.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you say courage is not an independent good heroes
Speaker 3: have a reason, and you also say the difference between
Speaker 3: raw courage and heroic lies and the who who is
Speaker 3: it for? It's a beautiful idea. So what are some
Speaker 3: of your favorite things you'd like to share around heroicism.
Speaker 3: I've got a few here, but I'm going to let
Speaker 3: you lead for a second.
Speaker 1: Well, I open that part of the book with the
Speaker 1: story of the three hundred Spartans at Thermopyla, and you know,
Speaker 1: obviously it's made for some great movies, but it's all
Speaker 1: so I just think one of the most indelible examples
Speaker 1: of selflessness and sacrifice in the history of Western civilization,
Speaker 1: these three hundred Spartans. There was more because they were
Speaker 1: supported by some auxiliary troops, but basically, like a few
Speaker 1: thousand Greek soldiers went out and fought a Persian army
Speaker 1: that may have numbered as many as one million, and
Speaker 1: they did it obviously knowing they would lose. I mean,
Speaker 1: nobody marches out against those kind of odds convinced like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're really going to win this thing, right, So why
Speaker 1: did they go? Because they knew that this sort of
Speaker 1: shaky Greek alliance needed time to come together. There were
Speaker 1: people who thought the Persian threat was overstated, they thought
Speaker 1: it didn't matter. They thought, like, you know, we were
Speaker 1: better off handling this individually. And these three hundred Spartans
Speaker 1: go out and make the ultimate sacrifice to bind these
Speaker 1: nations together, to make a statement, to show that it's
Speaker 1: possible for the Greeks to fight and do real damage,
Speaker 1: but that a unified Greece is the only viable option.
Speaker 1: And you know, you just read about these three hundred guys.
Speaker 1: Every single one of them had children. In fact, that
Speaker 1: was the point. The three hundred Spartans were chosen specifically
Speaker 1: because they had children, because they believed that they wouldn't
Speaker 1: let those children down, and that they were also protecting
Speaker 1: the younger soldiers who hadn't had time to start families yet.
Speaker 1: So it's just this, you know, magnificent story of human greatness.
Speaker 1: I feel of in this brief moment, they become more
Speaker 1: than just three hundred people. They become legends, you know,
Speaker 1: they become transcendent. Yeah.
Speaker 3: In one of the sections called Going Beyond the Call,
Speaker 3: you talk about the Spartans again and you say, the
Speaker 3: opposite of fear, the true virtue contrasted with that vice
Speaker 3: was not fearlessness. The opposite of fear is love. Love
Speaker 3: for one another, love for ideas, love for your country,
Speaker 3: love for the vulnerable in the weak, love for the
Speaker 3: next generation, love for all. And you're saying, like, that's
Speaker 3: what was really underlying what they did was love.
Speaker 1: It obviously wasn't for their benefit that they were going
Speaker 1: out to fight this battle, because they weren't coming home,
Speaker 1: and they knew that it was a selfless gift for
Speaker 1: other people. I think about as America withdrew from Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: You think of these twelve servicemen and women who walked
Speaker 1: out for days on end into these crowds to load
Speaker 1: people up onto airplanes, knowing that, you know, something could
Speaker 1: go wrong at any moment, and tragically it did, and
Speaker 1: twelve of them lost their lives. But they also in
Speaker 1: the process where integral participants in one of the greatest
Speaker 1: humanitarian rescue efforts in human history, and they are not
Speaker 1: the recipients of the benefits of that risk. So you know,
Speaker 1: if I just I to write a book that's transgressive,
Speaker 1: there's a danger to that. But if I succeed, I
Speaker 1: reap the rewards of that right financially, reputationally, etc. When
Speaker 1: you look at sort of truly heroic people, what makes
Speaker 1: it so impressive is that there was no real hope
Speaker 1: for them, at least of the benefits of that sacrifice.
Speaker 3: You tell a story in the section about the audacity
Speaker 3: of hope about John Lewis. Do you want to share
Speaker 3: that one?
Speaker 1: That's another one. I mean, you think about what John
Speaker 1: Lewis goes through in his life. I think he's arrested
Speaker 1: fifty times, he's beaten more than fifty times. It's nearly
Speaker 1: killed several occasions. If there was ever a person who
Speaker 1: had reasonable justification for giving up on human beings, giving
Speaker 1: up on white people, just giving up on people in general,
Speaker 1: it was John Lewis and yet who sort of continually
Speaker 1: was there with hope and forgiveness and optimism and commitment
Speaker 1: to change, belief that change was possible. You think about,
Speaker 1: in a weird way, the courage that it takes to
Speaker 1: remain hopeful when people are showing you time and time
Speaker 1: again that they're probably not worthy of that kind of belief.
Speaker 1: To be a black American in nineteen fifty or nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty and to believe that America was decent and good
Speaker 1: and would eventually inevitably make progress in these areas, I mean,
Speaker 1: there was not a lot of evidence for that, right,
Speaker 1: I mean there's that expression when people show you who
Speaker 1: they are, believe them, like we were showing over and
Speaker 1: over and over again, like sort of who we were.
Speaker 1: And so to have a belief, to have hope, to
Speaker 1: have the belief in yourself that you could actually affect
Speaker 1: change and make that real, I mean, that's just one
Speaker 1: of the most magnificent things I could possibly imagine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you say, just about one of the craziest, bravest
Speaker 3: things you can do in this damned world of ours
Speaker 3: is to keep hoping because there are so many reasons
Speaker 3: not to. That is so true. It seems like such
Speaker 3: a on one hand, crazy thing to do, but so
Speaker 3: critically important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, we're not talking about sort of vague hope, Oh,
Speaker 1: this will take care of itself, right, This isn't like, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't need to do anything it'll work out. That's
Speaker 1: not how it goes. But it's the courage to believe
Speaker 1: that one has the ability to make a difference, to
Speaker 1: push the ball forward in some way. And I think
Speaker 1: also that on a long enough timeline, progress can be made.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think it's that holding those two ideas at
Speaker 3: the same time, right, Like, Yeah, things are really messed up,
Speaker 3: there's all kinds of problems, and it can get better.
Speaker 3: It's really seen both those. If you only see one
Speaker 3: of those, you either end up hopeless or you end
Speaker 3: up naively optimistic. But when you hold both of them,
Speaker 3: that's a constructive and practical realism.
Speaker 1: Yeah. There's a James Baldwin quote that I love. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure it's in the book. He says, not everything
Speaker 1: that's faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed
Speaker 1: unless it is faced. Right, So sticking your head in
Speaker 1: the sand, pretending everything's fine, being afraid to look at
Speaker 1: it or deal with it, obviously, that keeps things the
Speaker 1: way that they are. That's not to say that just
Speaker 1: because you're brave enough to say I'm going to try
Speaker 1: to do this, that the bill will pass, that the
Speaker 1: company will succeed, that the person will you be willing
Speaker 1: to hear what you're saying, and you know, go to
Speaker 1: rehab or whatever. But if you're not willing to try,
Speaker 1: it's definitely not going to happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's very spot on. Let's end with
Speaker 3: you just sharing a little bit about your bookstore. You
Speaker 3: opened a bookstore right as the pandemic opened, and I'd
Speaker 3: be curious to hear a little bit about that story.
Speaker 3: But i'd be also cure is to hear how has
Speaker 3: it been going, say, since you've sort of talked about
Speaker 3: that in a couple different places, I'm kind of curious
Speaker 3: the latest update. But for people who don't have the
Speaker 3: first update, why don't you give us that part?
Speaker 1: Well, it's actually worse than you said, because I was
Speaker 1: I had just started the process, I had just paid
Speaker 1: for the location for which I was hoping to open
Speaker 1: a bookstore at the beginning of the pandemic. So then,
Speaker 1: you know, looking at things in the cold light of
Speaker 1: March twenty twenty and April twenty twenty and May twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: as it literally looked like the world was falling apart,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't even possible to be open as a bookstore. Right,
Speaker 1: my wife and I had to sort of sit there
Speaker 1: and go, are we sure we want to do this?
Speaker 1: Do we just light our life savings on fire? You know?
Speaker 1: But we stuck with it. We took our time, we
Speaker 1: really thought about what we wanted to do, why we
Speaker 1: wanted to do it, why we thought it was important,
Speaker 1: and we pushed through. It opened in earlier this year,
Speaker 1: and actually, so far it's doing great. I mean, you
Speaker 1: never know with these things, but I I think now, like,
Speaker 1: what if I had, you know, thrown in the towel
Speaker 1: in March, what if I'd cut my losses might have
Speaker 1: been cheaper in some ways. But when I watch people
Speaker 1: walk through the bookstore, as I did before I came
Speaker 1: up here to record this, it's like, Oh, this is
Speaker 1: what's on the other side of those decision points when
Speaker 1: you go do I want to do the easy thing?
Speaker 1: Do I want to do the hard thing? Do I
Speaker 1: want to push through? Do I want to quit? I
Speaker 1: don't think that I could have thought that what it
Speaker 1: is now and how it's doing was possible, And I
Speaker 1: only found out that it was possible by pushing through,
Speaker 1: by trying. As they say, all growth is a leap
Speaker 1: in the dark. You have to take that leap, no
Speaker 1: guarantee you to work. It might blow up in your face,
Speaker 1: or it could surprise you and be even better than
Speaker 1: you thought.
Speaker 3: Yep, so right now it's going well?
Speaker 1: Then yes, fingers crossed, but yeah it's going great. And
Speaker 1: it was cool to like launch, you know, my new
Speaker 1: books through my own bookstore.
Speaker 3: I was going to say, did you do you throw
Speaker 3: yourself a book launch party at your own bookstore?
Speaker 1: No, no parties because of the pandemic. But you know,
Speaker 1: instead of saying, hey, go buy this book from Amazon,
Speaker 1: which of course I also want people to do, I said,
Speaker 1: you know, buy this book from my bookstore, or just like, hey,
Speaker 1: we can put my book in the window as a
Speaker 1: new release. You know, Like how cool is that? So
Speaker 1: there's just been a whole other element to it that's
Speaker 1: been really fun.
Speaker 3: Before we wrap up, I want you to think about this.
Speaker 3: Have you ever ended the day feeling like your choices
Speaker 3: didn't quite match the person you wanted to be. Maybe
Speaker 3: it was autopilot mode or self doubt that made it
Speaker 3: harder to stick to your goals. And that's exactly why
Speaker 3: I created The Six Saboteurs of Self Control. It's a
Speaker 3: free guide to help you recognize the hidden patterns that
Speaker 3: hold you back, and give you simple, effective strategies to
Speaker 3: break through them. If you're ready to take back control
Speaker 3: and start making lasting changes, download your copy now at
Speaker 3: oneufeed dot net slash ebook. Let's make those shifts happen
Speaker 3: starting today. One you feed dot nets e book. As
Speaker 3: someone who has paid attention to the work you've done
Speaker 3: over a few years, I know how deeply you love books.
Speaker 3: You're reading lists. I always love to get and see,
Speaker 3: and so I'm happy you've got a bookstore that's really wonderful.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah, it's called the Painted Porch. It's in
Speaker 1: this little town called Bastrup, Texas, right outside Austin. And
Speaker 1: the other thing I think about it just for other people.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying you should start a bookstore. But if
Speaker 1: you become successful, if you have achieved whatever you've set
Speaker 1: out to achieve, if that's not allowing you to then
Speaker 1: go do things you've always wanted to do, sort of,
Speaker 1: what's the point, you know? And so I think the
Speaker 1: cool part about the bookstores. I love books. I love bookstores.
Speaker 1: And if I can't do this now, what sort of
Speaker 1: is the point of the other things? Right? And so
Speaker 1: that's sort of something that's kind of empowered me along
Speaker 1: the way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, Ryan, thank you so much for coming on
Speaker 3: the show. I hope the book does great. I hope
Speaker 3: the bookstore does well, and I hope to someday visit it.
Speaker 3: I need to get down to Austin to visit my
Speaker 3: brother who lives there, so I'll come by.
Speaker 1: Please do that would be awesome. Thanks so much, appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for listening to the show. If
Speaker 3: you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I'd
Speaker 3: love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing
Speaker 3: from one person to another is the lifeblood of what
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Speaker 3: podcast app or send a quick text with the episode
Speaker 3: link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means
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Speaker 3: one You Feed community.