The Courage to Be
Sweet Bites for June 14, 2024
Hi all,
Welcome to another edition of Sweet Bites, Mind Candy’s bite-sized newsletter with thought-provoking finds to send you into the weekend with.
This week we explored the Stoic virtue of courage (links below).
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Choose Your Dessert for the Week
🍰 Mini Bite # 1
Persistence Pays
Looking back, it seems obvious that author Chuck Palahniuk would make it as a writer given his output and the success he’s had but it wasn’t always so clear cut. As a struggling writer, Palahniuk couldn’t seem to break in.
He heard that a local writer’s conference was featuring the legendary editor Gerald Howard who had worked with such star authors as David Foster Wallace and Bret Ellis. Palahniuk wanted to pitch him, but couldn’t afford a ticket to the conference so he found the hotel he was staying at. But by the time he found Howard in the bar, he had aspiring writers surrounding him and there was no way Palahniuk could get his chance.
So Palahniuk traded the cashier $10 cash for $10 worth of quarters, walked over to the jukebox, and turned on Young Americans by David Bowie and continued to drop quarters and repeat the song.
“I could listen to that forever on a desert island,” he would later say reflecting on the day.
With each repetition of the song, more aspiring writers left, annoyed with the song. One quarter after the other, Young Americans kept blasting from the jukebox until finally, all who remained were Palahniuk and Howard.
“Eventually I sold him Fight Club and 15 more books. To this day, he doesn’t remember that song, playing over and over and the haters hating me as they abandoned the bar,” he said.
When we think of courage, usually the first thing that comes to mind is standing tall against our fears, but courage also means being persistent, trying and trying and trying until you find a way to success.
Blind persistence, however, is the same as hitting one’s head against a wall and expecting the wall to crumble before you. Instead, one needs to be strategic in their persistence, finding a way to stand out and try new things, paths others haven’t yet taken.
As the entrepreneur Peter Thiel said, “you always want to aim for monopoly and you want to always avoid competition. And so hence competition is for losers.”
📚 This Week’s Monday Meditation
🛠️ Tactic
In this video, Navy SEAL Jocko Willink breaks down how to approach and overcome fear. Using the example of jumping out of planes in the SEALS, he explains that the best way to conquer fear is to attack it head on, if not, it just grows bigger and bigger.
“The first thing you've got to realize is the fear that you have isn’t reality, it’s just built up in your head.”
Two recommended books of Jocko’s to read: Extreme Ownership and The Dichotomy of Leadership.
🍰 Mini Bite # 2
The Struggles of Today Can Carry You to Tomorrow
Before Bradley Cooper was the A-List actor/director he is today, he had found moderate success in film and television. The director Michael Mann was preparing to shoot the film Public Enemies and Cooper auditioned for a role.
Mann wrote Cooper a letter thanking him for the audition but advising he had not gotten the part. Cooper kept the letter on his bookshelf for years to come because while he did not get the role he so wanted, within the letter was a note of encouragement in which Mann said he saw something special within the performance Cooper had made.
Now when Cooper auditions actors for films he’s directing he too writes them thank you letters.
It takes resilience and courage to be in the film industry. It has been said by everyone who has succeeded, they just kept working at it, finding within themselves the courage to do one more audition, to write one more screenplay, to take one more pitch meeting.
Even when we don’t succeed, the lessons we can take from the failures into future endeavors can be the encouragement we need to dig deep and find what is needed for success.
✏️ This Week’s Wednesday Wisdom
📖 Recommended Read
IF by Rudyard Kipling
I love this poem and think about it often. It speaks to our core need to persist and have courage in life, fighting battle after battle only to keep fighting and striving. I have posted the poem in its entirety below.
(‘Brother Square-Toes’—Rewards and Fairies)
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Ah crap, another paywall. Yes, but, it doesn’t have to be.
For less than a triple chocolatey unicorn drink you can upgrade your mind. Just click below. Go on, don’t be afraid, we’ve been preaching courage all week after all.
Behind the paywall this week:
Mini Bite # 3 on how stand-ups find courage
A must listen to podcast episode
A cannot miss speech by a former president
An exercise on building courage