Courage, one of the four cardinal virtues of Stoicism, is what I consider the fuel for virtue, and really for living a good life. But what does courage actually look like? Are we born courageous or it it something we can develop? In today’s episode we’re going to dive into what Stoics taught about courage and how it’s backed up by modern science. What Does It Actually Take to Be Courageous? "Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." —C.S. Lewis The Problem When I started this podcast, I was scared. Not just nervous. Scared. I was convinced that at any moment, someone was going to figure out that I didn't belong — that I wasn't qualified enough, smart enough, or interesting enough to be talking about Stoic philosophy to strangers on the internet. Imposter syndrome was ever present. Every episode I recorded in those early days, I'd finish it and think, "That’s probably the one where people are going quit listening." But here's what I've come to understand after years of doing this work — that feeling wasn't a warning. It was an invitation. An invitation to do something that takes real courage: to show up honestly, even when you don't feel ready. Today I want to talk about courage. Not the Hollywood version — the battlefield moment, the heroic leap. Real courage. The everyday, grinding, unsexy kind that determines the actual quality of your life. Researcher Brené Brown has spent twenty years studying this. The other day I was listening to a podcast where she was a guest, and they were talking about what it takes to be courageous. What she found in her research cuts against everything we think we know. Courage, she says, isn't a personality trait. It's not something you have or don't have. It's a collection of four learnable skills. And when I dug into her framework for the first time, I kept stopping because the Stoics had already mapped the same territory two thousand years earlier. So that's what we're doing today. Brown's four skill sets of courage, paired with the Stoic philosophy that's been teaching the same lessons since before Rome fell. And I'll tell you where each one showed up in my own life, because if it's worth talking about, it's worth being honest about. Let's get into it. PHILOSOPHY & PRACTICE SKILL SET ONE: Rumbling with Vulnerability Brown's first skill set is what she calls "rumbling with vulnerability." She defines vulnerability as uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. And the rumble part matters — it means staying in the discomfort instead of tapping out. Not performing openness. Actually sitting with the hard thing. Most of us don't do this. We armor up. We get busy, get sarcastic, get certain — anything to avoid the exposed feeling of not knowing, of being seen, of possibly being wrong or hurt or rejected. Brown's research shows that without this foundational skill, the other three are impossible. You cannot be courageous while armored. The armor has to come off first, because vulnerability is a prerequisite for courage. You can’t be courageous if something doesn’t scare you. The Stoics called this prosoche — self-examination. The practice of looking honestly at yourself, not to punish yourself, but to see clearly. Socrates felt this was so important that he said, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” He would often practice self-questioning, cross-examining his own thinking about something. Once, while on campaign with the Athenian army, he stood still on a beach for 24 hours, lost in deep thought. The other soldiers, curious about what was going on, gathered around keeping vigil. Then as the sun rose, be woke from his trance-like state, said a prayer to the day, then went on as if nothing had happened. Epictetus pushed his students toward self-examination constantly. And Seneca in his treatise On Anger describes his own nightly practice in first person. He wrote: “When the light has been removed and my wife has fallen silent, aware of this habit that’s now mine, I examine my entire day and go back over what I’ve done and said, hiding nothing from myself, passing nothing by.” And then, crucially, he doesn't spiral into self-condemnation. He says: “For why should I be afraid of any of my mistakes, when I can say: ‘Beware of doing that again, and this time I pardon you.’” That's the practice. See it clearly. Don't hide from it. Just let it go and do better. When I started this podcast, the vulnerability wasn't optional. I was putting my voice, my face, my actual beliefs out into the world with no idea if anyone would care. That exposure, was scary. But the harder vulnerability, the one that took more courage, was admitting to myself that I was afraid. That I felt like a fraud. Because as long as I kept that hidden, even from myself, I couldn't do anything about it. The Stoic practice of self-examination gave me a framework for that. Not "beat yourself up at the end of the day." Look honestly. What did you avoid? What did you do from fear instead of from your values? See it. Correct it. Move on. Doing so allowed me to see myself not as some sage that knew everything, but a fellow traveler along the road, sharing what I’ve learned. That my experiences, both my successes and my failures, could be of use to others. Practice: Tonight, before you sleep, spend five minutes doing this. Not a gratitude list. An honest review. Where did you avoid something you knew you should face? Not to shame yourself — to see clearly. That's the beginning of courage. SKILL SET TWO: Living into Our Values Brené’s second skill set is living into our values, and to be precise about what those values are. She says most people have vague, aspirational values. Integrity. Honesty. Courage. But vague values don't guide behavior under pressure. She pushes people to get specific: what does integrity actually look like in a hard conversation? What does honesty cost you when it's inconvenient? That gap between stated values and actual behavior is where courage lives or dies. The Stoics made this the center of their entire philosophy. Virtue, excellence of character, wasn't an abstract idea or an aspiration. It was how you acted, specifically, when it was hard. Marcus writes in Meditations: "No random actions, none not based on underlying principles." Every action either expresses your values or betrays them. There's no neutral ground. And Marcus knew how easy it is to betray them. He was the most powerful man on Earth. He had every excuse to let himself off the hook. He wrote the Meditations as a daily practice of bringing himself back to his values because he knew that without that discipline, the gap widens without you noticing. One of the things I committed to early on with this podcast was honesty. Not just talking about Stoic philosophy in the abstract, but being real about where I struggle with it. That meant talking about my failures on air. Not as a performance of humility — that's its own kind of armor. But because the show is built on the premise that this work is hard and real, and pretending otherwise would be a lie. It would go against the actual virtue I’m trying to teach. That was harder than it sounds. There's a version of a podcast host that looks like they have everything figured out. I knew my audience might be more comfortable if I projected that image. But it would have been a betrayal of what I actually believe, which is that the messy, uncertain, still-figuring-it-out life is the only honest one. Living into your values means it costs you something. If it doesn't cost you anything, you're not really being tested. Practice: Name two values that are genuinely yours. Not what sounds good, but what actually guides you at your best. Then find one moment from the past week where you acted against them. That's not dwelling on failure. That's useful information. That's where the work is. SKILL SET THREE: Braving Trust Brown's third skill set is braving trust. She breaks trust down into specific, observable behaviors — she has an acronym, BRAVING, that maps it out. B — Boundaries: Say no when you need to; respect others' no R — Reliability: Do what you say, consistently, without overpromising A — Accountability: Own your mistakes, apologize, make amends V — Vault: Keep confidences — don't share what isn't yours to share I — Integrity: Choose courage over comfort; what's right over what's easy N — Non-judgment: Ask for what you need without judgment; others can do the same G — Generosity: Extend the most generous interpretation of others' intentions But the core insight is this: trust is not a feeling. It's not something that just happens between people. It's built through consistent, specific actions over time. And it requires courage because trusting someone means accepting that you can be hurt. Most of us either over-trust, where we hand ourselves over and get burned, or we under-trust, we armor up, and we end up isolated. Neither is courage. Courage is the willingness to be in genuine relationship, with your eyes open, knowing the risk. The Stoics were deeply committed to this idea, even though we don't always talk about it. They believed that humans are fundamentally social, that we are made for community, for relationship, for mutual care. Marcus returns to this again and again. We are not isolated units managing our own inner states. We are connected to each other, and our obligations to that connection are part of what it means to live well. Justice (dikaiosyne) one of the four cardinal virtues, is entirely about relationships with others. You cannot be fully virtuous alone. I took two breaks from this podcast. Both times, it was because I needed to deal with personal challenges in my life. And both times, the hardest part wasn't the break itself. It was trusting my audience to still be there when I came back. That'
