Stop Living In Fear & Have Courage In Your Life | Ryan Holiday EP 743

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:12Today's episode is all about unlocking the power of your mind. Having a growth mindset is one of the most crucial decisions you can make in your life. Mental toughness can allow you to respond instead of react, to be in control instead of out of control, and give you the endurance you need to follow your dreams.

0:38if like all you had to do was like have an idea for business and then it was guaranteed that you'd be successful right everyone there'd be a lot more businesses right like everyone would do it so the fact that it's scary is partly what makes it valuable right because most people are not going to get over the fear when you think about things that are scary or challenging it's like you could think about like a heavy weight if the weight is easy to lift you're not going to build any muscle so like that you have that sensation of fear or hesitation or doubt one one way to think about it is that it's a positive sign like steven pressfield talks about that the resistance you feel is uh commensurate with like the value so like you're you're not afraid to do things that don't matter you're only afraid to do like big things that matter It's not that fear has no place, but it could be a sign that you're on the cusp of something.

1:36And so when I think about it, if I'm not pushing myself, if I'm not scared, that's probably a sign that I'm just doing something that I'm already really comfortable with and therefore not growing. So I think it's good. It's a good sign. Oftentimes, the reason we're scared about it is because we haven't really thought about it. So we have these kind of like vague fears. you know like well I don't want to do it because and then you're like because why like tell me what you're really thinking about the worst thing will happen because I got made fun of because I'll lose my money it's actually not that big a deal so I think some of the times we're scared because we haven't really thought about what it is and so it's kind of this enormous boogeyman that if we actually took a minute and we broke it down and we thought about it it wouldn't be as scary as it was So I agree that you want to go head on, but part of head on is just like, what am I actually afraid of here?

2:31Like, what is this? And oh, it's not nearly as big as you think it is. It's funny because when we think about courage, we tend to think of physical courage as being like the end all be all. There's war heroes that run for political office that then are afraid to vote against their party because people will be mad at them or they could lose their job. So different types of courage, right? Yeah, so we often think of physical courage as the end all be all, but I would actually argue that moral courage is hardest and more rare. And the tricky thing is that people will have one and not the other, and it could go in either direction, but that's really the tricky thing.

3:13So, I mean, I've gone through scary things in my life, whether it was dropping out of college, the decision to leave the corporate world to become a writer. These are all scary things. And even the decision to like go from the marketing track I was on to writing books about an obscure school of ancient philosophy. Like that was, you know, I took a major hit in the advances. You know, it didn't work right away. You know, I was worried whether people were going to like it or not. I think one of the scariest things that people face is like, if I do this, I can lose my job. Right. Even though this might be a job, they're thinking about quitting.

3:47Like at that very moment, there's some we had this huge mental block between quitting and being fired. I was thinking about leaving American Apparel to become a writer. And then I get asked to do this sort of unethical thing at work. And I say I'm not going to do it. I don't do it. But that was as far as I took it. I didn't want to stop like I I didn't want to go toe to toe to stop it from happening. But I could have said, that's not right. Don't do that. Right. And I didn't have to watch as it happened. And I think back, I go, why? And it was like, well, you didn't want to lose your job. A job that I left shortly thereafter anyway.

4:29And I think what I think about in retrospect is like, why did I want to keep a job that you could get fired from for doing the right thing? The excuse, I was worried about X or I was afraid of Y does not age well. Like when you look back, you're never glad that you chickened out. Like you never are. That's the truth. It's funny, if you should be afraid of anything, it should be afraid of, like, you should be afraid of betraying your principles, of falling short, of not doing what you know is the right but hard thing at the time. The self-preservation that you were following, it's not a guarantee anyway.

5:13You're like, oh, I don't want to mess this up. You're assuming that it's yours anyway, that you have control of it, and you don't. I think you develop your compass. one of the ways I think you do it is like who are your heroes? Who do you look up to? The models, yeah. What would they do in this situation? What is the code that they lived by? That could be your grandparents, it could be your spouse, it could be Jesus, it could be Marcus Surreale, it could be anyone from history, it could be a character from your favorite book. What would they do? Courage, self-discipline, justice, wisdom. So to me, that's kind of what I, those are the principles that I try to live by.

5:54And I think every situation that we face calls for one or all of those things. No one is like fully brave or fully a coward, right? Like it's more like day in and day out. What do you do? Right? But I think one of the places we struggle with the most is if courage is rare, courage in pursuit of the right thing is rare still. So the virtues are interrelated. Think about Michael Jordan. The decision for Michael Jordan to walk away from basketball. And play baseball. Immense courage, right? Think of the amount of people who told him it's a bad idea, told him he couldn't make it, wasn't going to work.

6:36I think of the money he left to set, right? Real courage. But contrast that with Maya Moore leaving equally dominant in the WNBA. She leaves at the height of her career, not to go play a different sport, not to go on some spiritual pursuit, not to spend time with their family, but to free a man wrongly convicted who is spending his life in jail. So courage is important, right? The courage to like, oh, I'm going to quit my job and start a company. Great. Very courageous. And I, so I think it's, it's courage, but courage in pursuit of what, right? We all know people who are savvy investors. They're great at taking risk, managing risk.

7:18They're bold. They're making cool. But is it in service of their bank account or is it in service of doing something that matters?

7:36I am so excited for you to finish the rest of your day strong. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description and it'll take you to the full episode of my other show, The School of Greatness. Make sure to come back tomorrow for another episode of The Daily Motivation Show.