Philosopher's Notes Right Thing Right Now

Right Thing Right Now

Good Values. Good Character. Good Deeds.

About the Book

Brian's take

This is the third book in Ryan Holiday’s four-part “Stoic Virtue Series.” We’ve already covered the first two, Courage Is Calling and Discipline Is Destiny, and we’ll cover the fourth soon, Wisdom Takes Work. As you know if you’ve been following along, I absolutely love Ryan Holiday. He’s an incredible writer whose work consistently challenges us to live with more virtue, courage, and love. This is the seventh book I’ve featured so far, and Right Thing Right Now may be his most urgent and practical yet. In it, Ryan reminds us that the Stoics weren’t interested in philosophy as theory, they were interested in philosophy as a way of being, doing, and serving. Virtue, or arete, is excellence in action, and justice, the highest virtue, is ultimately love lived through good character and good deeds. If you want a powerful, no-excuses call to realize your potential, master your craft, activate your Soul Force, and pay forward the goodness you’ve received, I highly recommend this book. Big Ideas we explore include The Ultimate Virtue, Realize Your Potential, Competence Is the Highest Form of Compassion, Satyagraha, and Pay It Forward Today.

“Justice, that brightest adornment of virtue by which a good person gains the title of good.”

Cicero

“The virtue of a person is measured not by his outstanding efforts but by his everyday behavior.”

Blaise Pascal

“All philosophical traditions—from Confucius to Christianty, Plato to Hobbes and Kant—revolve around some version of the golden rule.”

In the first century BC, Hillel, the Jewish elder, was asked by a skeptic if he could summarize the Torah while standing on one foot. In fact, he could do it in ten words. ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ Hillel told the man. ‘All the rest is commentary.’

Ryan Holiday

“When we don’t do our best, when we hold something back, we are cheating ourselves.”

We are cheating our gifts. We are cheating the potential beneficiaries of us reaching our full potential.

Ryan Holiday

“There can be only one way to fight the general evil of life: It is in the moral, religious, and spiritual perfection of your own life.”

Leo Tolstoy

“Pragmatism without virtue is dangerous and hollow.”

Virtue without pragmatism is ineffectual and impotent.

Ryan Holiday

“Sometimes doing your job require extraordinary measures.”

Other times it’s very ordinary—but it’s always Heroic.

Ryan Holiday

“Mentor.”

Patron. Sponsor. Ally. Teacher. Master. Guru. Inspiration. There are so many names for it… because it’s a role defined by so many different roles. But what matters is that we are the candle that lights another, which lights another, which lights another. Because through this whole worlds are illuminated, delivered from darkness.

Ryan Holiday

“Besides, if we can achieve our goals easily, if the changes come without resistance, are we really fighting the right battle?”

Defeats, setbacks, enemies? These are signs that we’ve aimed our sights high enough, that we’re after something important, something that matters.

Ryan Holiday

“Despair is a choice Cynicism is an excuse.”

Neither creates a better world.

Ryan Holiday

“We should strive, as Seneca once said, ‘to treat others as you wish the gods would treat you.’ Which is to say: With compassion.”

With endless patience. With infinite understanding. With love and generosity. God knows we need it…. so at the very least we can try to give it.

Ryan Holiday

The Ultimate Virtue

26:04

Introduction

From the book

“For Hercules the choice was between vice and virtue, the easy way and the hard way, the well-trod path and the road less traveled.

The same goes for us. Hesitating only for a second, Hercules chose the one that made all the difference. He chose virtue. ‘Virtue’ can seem old-fashioned. In fact, virtue— arete —translates to something simple and very timeless: excellence. Moral. Physical. Mental. In the ancient world, virtue was comprised of four key components. Courage. Temperance. Justice. Wisdom. The ‘touchstones of goodness,’ the philosopher king Marcus Aurelius called them. To millions, they’re known as the ‘cardinal virtues,’ four near-universal ideals adopted by Christianity and most of Western philosophy, but equally valued in Buddhism, Hinduism, and just about every other philosophy you can imagine. They’re called ‘cardinal,’ C.S. Lewis pointed out, not because they come down from church authorities, but because they originate from the Latin cardo, or hinge. It’s pivotal stuff. It’s the stuff that the door to the good life hinge on. They are also our topics for this book, and for this series. Four books. Four virtues. One aim: to help you choose… Courage, bravery, endurance, fortitude, honor, sacrifice… Temperance, self-control, moderation, composure, balance… Justice, fairness, service, fellowship, goodness, kindness… Wisdom, knowledge, education, truth, self-reflection, peace… These are the key to the good life, a life of honor, of glory, of excellence in every sense.

Brian's Notes

This is the third book in Ryan Holiday’s four-part “Stoic Virtue Series.”

We’ve already covered the first two: Courage Is Calling and Discipline Is Destiny. We’ll cover the fourth soon: Wisdom Takes Work.

As you know if you’ve been following along, I *absolutely* love Ryan Holiday. He’s an incredible (and incredibly prolific!) writer who inspires me deeply.

This is the SEVENTH book I’ve featured so far. In addition to the previous Virtue Series titles I just mentioned, I’ve also created Notes on The Obstacle Is the Way, Ego Is the Enemy, Stillness Is the Key, and The Daily Stoic.

The book is packed with practical wisdom (get a copy here) and I’m excited to share some of my favorites we can apply to our lives TODAY, so let’s get straight to work.

BIG IDEA

The Ultimate Virtue

From the book

“The clearest evidence that justice is the most important of all the virtues comes from what happens when you remove it.

It’s remarkably stark: The presence of injustice instantly renders any act of virtue—courage, discipline, wisdom—any skill, any achievement, worthless… or worse. Courage in the pursuit of evil? A brilliant person with no morals? Self-discipline to the point of perfect selfishness? There’s an argument that if everyone acted with justice all the time, we wouldn’t have so much need for courage. While discretion moderates bravery and pleasure provides us relief from excessive self-control, the ancients would point out that there is no virtue to counterbalance justice. It just is. It just is the whole point. Of every virtue. Of every action. Of our very lives. Nothing is right if we’re not doing what is right. It probably says something about our world today, however, that when people hear the word ‘justice,’ their first thought is not of decency or duty but of the legal system. They think attorneys. They think politics. We are concerned with what’s lawful, we fight for ‘our rights’ a lot more than what is right. It might be too on the nose to call this an ‘indictment’ of modern values, but it’s hard to see it as anything else.”

Brian's Notes

Those are the very first words of the introduction.

Justice.

It’s the ultimate virtue.

Now…

When I think of the cardinal virtues of ancient wisdom, I approach it the same way Ryan does with one modification. We have Wisdom, Discipline, and Courage.

Then…

Rather than call it “Justice,” I like to think of that virtue as “LOVE.”

If you read the ancient Stoics, their sense of “Justice” is so much deeper than our modern take on it. For example, here’s Marcus Aurelius in Meditations: “Let your one delight and refreshment be to pass from one service to the community to another, with God ever in mind.”

Wisdom. Discipline. Courage. Love.

Love.

THAT is the ultimate virtue.

It’s also helpful to remember that the word Hero literally means “protector.” The Hero has strength for TWO. The Hero’s secret weapon is LOVE.

It’s LOVE that gives us the Courage to act in the presence of fear. It’s LOVE that gives us the Discipline to do what needs to be done whether we feel like it or not. It’s LOVE that fuels us to close the gap, and be our best selves in service to something bigger than ourselves.

Fun fact: As I was typing this, my stopwatch timer beeped—signaling another 1,000 seconds had lapsed (16 min and 40 sec) and that it was time for me to get up and bang out another set of 11 burpees.

As I was hammering out those burpees, the dog tag I wear on a necklace came out of my t-shirt and started jangling a bit with each rep.

I smiled.

On that dog tag, I have imprinted a reminder of why I do what I do.

The dog tag says:

I love you, Alexandra. I love you, Emerson. I love you, Eleanor.

LOVE.

Let’s never forget that it’s the Hero’s secret weapon.

The ultimate virtue and why we do all we do.

P.S. I think I might need to add another line to that dog tag for YOU:I love you, Hero.

BIG IDEA

Realize Your Potential

From the book

“And in fact, one of the most basic principles of economics is the law of comparative advantage.

If one of us is better at growing corn and the other at growing grass and a third at the art of politics, then we best serve the world by seeing to that specialty. By doing what other people want us to do, or think we should do—or by lacking the discipline to keep the main thing the main thing—we are costing the world something… Will you become what you’re meant to be? Will you go where you are most needed? That is the question. To fail to answer it because you’re afraid is a betrayal of your gifts. It’s shortchanging the world. Especially when we consider that it’s possible to have an even more ambitious goal than just realizing our potential. Because that word implies that each person has only a finite amount of it. What if it’s possible to do even more? We should try to realize the things that nobody thought were possible, that nobody would have expected of us. More than doing our best, we should strive to become our best, to vie with the best. A man’s reach should exceed his grasp… Certainly that reaching, that stretching is what gets us closer to heaven. But down here, still on earth, what you don’t want, what people should never find themselves needing to say about you, is the most damnable indictment there is: They could have been more. They could have done more. They wasted their gifts.”

Brian's Notes

That’s from a chapter called “Realize Your Potential.”

Nearly every one of Ryan’s chapters (in this and ALL of his books!) ends with a kick in the butt and a jolt that tells us to, in effect: “WAKE UP!!! This isn’t a dress rehearsal!!”

It’s time for you to give us your gifts. It’s time to realize your potential.

Know that YOU actualizing YOUR potential is THE MOST sacred gift you could ever give to your family, your community, your world.

Are you?

P.S. As I read that, I thought of Emerson and Drucker.

First, the line about YOU needing to decide what YOU will do with your life, reminds me of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s brilliant wisdom in Self-Reliance in which he tells us: “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what your duty is better than you know it.”

What is YOUR duty? Are you doing it?

Then there’s Peter Drucker’s wisdom. In his classic, The Effective Executive, he tells us to avoid trying to be a “well-rounded” person and to go ALL IN on doing what you, and only you can do: “Whoever tries to place a man or staff an organization to avoid weakness will end up at best with mediocrity. The idea that there are ‘well rounded’ people, people who have only strengths and no weaknesses (whether the term used is the ‘whole man,’ the ‘mature personality,’ the ‘well-adjusted personality,’ or the ‘generalist’) is a prescription for mediocrity if not for incompetence. Strong people always have strong weaknesses too. Where there are peaks, there are valleys. And no one is strong in many areas. Measured against the universe of human knowledge, experience, and abilities, even the greatest genius would have to be rated a total failure. There is no such thing as a ‘good man.’ Good for what? is the question.”

BIG IDEA

The Highest Form of Compassion =…

From the book

“Longfellow’s poem would portray [Florence] Nightingale as a kind of angel, gliding through the halls of her hospital comforting the sick and the dying.

It was a beautiful image. It is not correct. A more accurate picture of Nightingale would show her as a stern teacher of other nurses—a trainer who developed a generation of talent so they could treat and comfort the wounded. We should picture her late at night, leaning over her desk reading reports, writing letters to politicians and generals, ordering supplies, fighting for resources. We should imagine her tinkering with how the hospital ran, solving problems, making things more sanitary and efficient. ‘The public generally imagine her by the soldier’s bedside,’ Nightingale’s aunt and colleague would write back to their family in 1855. ‘How easy, satisfactory if it were all. The quantity of the writing, the quantity of the talking is the weary work, the dealing with the mean, the selfish, the incompetent.’ More than devotion, she understood that patients needed clean beds. More than self-sacrifice, they needed nutritious meals and working heaters. Instead of asking for nurses to be angels, Nightingale studied the traffic flow of the hospital and designed a better communication system—using a series of bells so patients could ring for help—that meant less time running up and down stairs and thus more time providing care. She fought for better ventilation. She brought in donations from the public by the thousand.”

Brian's Notes

That’s from a chapter called “Develop Competence.”

Ryan continues by saying: “Of course, to do good one has to care—caring really matters.”

AND…

He says: “What justice needs is time, money, leadership. What they need is someone who knows what they’re doing.

Can you be that person? Someone competent, someone who approaches justice not as an idea but as a craft. As an occupation to always be getting better at….

Compassion is necessary but not sufficient in the pursuit of justice. Courage, discipline too—necessary but pointless without aptitude.”

As I read that, I IMMEDIATELY thought of another Florence Nightingale-like Heroic angel, Marsha Linehan.

Marsha is one of the world’s leading authorities on how to help someone navigate suicidal despair. She became an expert on the subject by navigating HER OWN suicidal despair. (Note: So did I.)

She created something called “Dialectical Behavior Therapy.” She wrote a memoir called Building a Life Worth Living in which she shares her own journey through hell and her therapeutic approach to helping others navigate their trips through hell.

In that book, she tells us, in short, that THE highest form of compassion is TO BE SKILLED at helping someone reduce their suffering.

In other words, caring about someone is important. But, it’s “pointless without aptitude.”

If we’re going to make the difference we aspire to make in the world, we MUST (!) do the hard work to not only craft our own lives, but to be skilled at helping others craft *their* ideal lives.

We’ve recently gone through a reboot with Heroic. As I align our team with our first principles and the fact that a Hero’s secret weapon is LOVE, I have also been realigning the team with the fact that THE highest form of love is to be EXCELLENT at helping others reduce their suffering and actualize their potential.

We can have all the Mission-oriented, pom pom-waving parties about helping create a world in which 51% of humanity is flourishing by 2051 we want, but if we are not COMPETENT at the execution of the nuts and bolts of the business, NONE OF THAT warm and fuzzy stuff matters.

Spotlight back where it belongs… on YOU.

Are YOU excellent at what you do? How can you master your craft a little more today?

P.S. Ryan tells us: “Florence Nightingale got off to a slow start. Her pioneering, world-changing career in nursing was long underground, taking nearly twenty years to go from ‘The Call,’ as she famously spoke of it, to her service on the front lines in the troop hospitals in Crimea.”

As it turns out, the very last Note I created was on Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey. The first Big Ideas we discussed? “Answer the Call to Adventure.”

Check out those Notes for more.

For now, know this: Although it’s fine if it takes you a minute or two or a year or two or even, as in Nightingale’s case, a DECADE or two (!), as we discuss in our Notes on A Joseph Campbell Companion: “To refuse the call means stagnation. What you don’t experience positively you will experience negatively.”

Pro tip: ANSWER THE CALL.

BIG IDEA

Satyagraha = SOUL FORCE!

From the book

“‘Gandhi,’ one of his closest political allies would explain, ‘has in him the marvelous spiritual power to turn ordinary men around him into heroes and martyrs. ‘When I first launched Satyagraha,’ Gandhi explained, ‘I had no companion.

We were 13,000 men, women, and children against a whole nation capable of crushing this existence out of us. I did not know who would listen to me. It all came as in a flash. All the 13,000 did not fight back. Many fell back. But the honor of the nation was saved. New history was written by the South African satyagraha. That word— satyagraha —is the most important word in that new history, perhaps one of the most important words in the history of the human race. ‘Passive resistance’ was a term of some popularity at the time, pioneered by the suffragettes, but Gandhi felt it was woefully insufficient. Because what he was doing wasn’t passive, it was active.”

Brian's Notes

Satyagraha.

We translate that word as “passive resistance” or “nonviolent resistance” but it, like many of the powerful words we explore, has a MUCH deeper meaning.

Now… I have a handful of people tied for my “all-time favorite teacher” award. One of them is the Indian spiritual teacher Eknath Easwaran. I like to think that he’s the Indian brother Joseph Campbell never had. I’ve done Notes on NINE (!) of his books. (Check them out.)

Easwaran walked with Gandhi. He wrote a book about that experience and his reverence for him. It’s called Gandhi the Man.

In that book, he tells us: “‘It was only when I had learned to reduce myself to zero,’ Gandhi says, ‘that I was able to evolve the power of satyagraha in South Africa.’ Satyagraha—literally ‘holding on to truth’—is the name he coined for this method of fighting without violence or retaliation. Gandhi had a genius for making abstruse ideas practical, and one of the best examples comes when he explains the basis of satyagraha. In Sanskrit the word satya, ‘truth,’ is derived from sat, ‘that which is.’”

Easwaran tells us that the word satyagraha can be best translated as “truth force” or “love force” or… “ SOUL FORCE.”

I ABSOLUTELY (!) love that concept. So much so that I end my book talking about it AND I end EVERY (!) one of my keynotes with a slide that has Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. on it. As we admire their Heroic portraits, I talk about the power of Soul Force. I talk about the fact that Gandhi named it and MLK referenced it in his “I Have a Dream” speech.

Then I tell them what I will tell YOU now…

Every one of the heroes we most admire has SOUL FORCE. It’s that ineffable power—the MORAL CHARISMA —that the people we admire most emanate so powerfully.

And, you need to know that YOU have the SAME latent Soul Force waiting to be activated.

I wrap up my talk with this quick exercise. Please do it now if you feel so inspired.

Who is your all-time most beloved Hero? The person that MOST inspires you to be your best? Bring them to mind. Name the qualities they possess that you most admire.

Got it? Good.

Now, do that for your second most beloved Hero. Bring them to mind. Name the qualities they possess that you most admire.

Got it? Good.

Now..

Know this: YOU at YOUR Heroic best are the embodiment of the qualities you most admire in those heroes of yours.

It’s time to activate YOUR SOUL FORCE and give us all you’ve got. TODAY.

BIG IDEA

Pay It Forward

From the book

“All of us bear a great debt to those who sacrificed their yesterdays so that we could have better todays, so that the future would be better.

They crossed oceans. They rotted in prisons. They stepped willingly, shaking with fear, onto great battlefields. They waited. They accepted. They hoped. They endured. Somebody comforted you when you were brokenhearted. Somebody took care of you when you were small. Somebody worked long hours to support you. Somebody built those roads. Somebody paid their taxes, somebody invested that money, somebody served in these offices, volunteered after disasters, stood up against wrongdoing. Somebody invented this. Somebody passed these laws, designed these institutions. Somebody did that for us. What do we do with this free gift? We must give freely. Just because no one asked us to do this, just because our ancestors gave without expecting the third thing… there is still a debt. A splendid, spiritual debt attached to existence…. Having been coated with the stardust of so much goodness, it’s our duty—and our joy—to sprinkle others with it too. The future depends on it.”

Brian's Notes

Those are the very last words from the very last chapter: “Pay It Forward.”

I’m reminded of Einstein’s wonderful wisdom: “A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.”

Our lives are a precious gift made possible by the contributions of countless people we will never meet. May we give back in equal measure as we embody the most powerful virtue of them all… LOVE.

Sending love to you and your family. I appreciate all YOU do to make my life possible and I am fiercely committed to showing that love by serving you profoundly.