363 - Step Into Greatness: How to Be Your Own Hero

Are you living the life you want? Are you waiting for something to happen to push you into becoming the hero of your own story? In this episode I want to talk about why we fear stepping into greatness, and how you can be your own hero.

“Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own submerged inner resources. The trials we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths...Dig deeply. You possess strengths you might not realize you have. Find the right one. Use it.” 

— Epictetus

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Transcript

Erick Cloward 0:00

Are you living the life you want, or are you waiting for something to happen to push you into becoming the hero of your own story? In this episode, I want to talk about why we fear stepping into greatness and how you can become your own hero. Hello, friends. My name Erick Cloward and welcome to the Stop Coffee Break. The Step of Coffee Break is a weekly podcast where I take aspects of stoicism and do my best to break them down to their most important points. I share my thoughts on ancient wisdom and pull from the ancients as well as modern wisdom and pull from areas like psychology and neuroscience. Basically anything I can find that can help you think better, because I believe if you think better, you can live better. This week's episode is Stepping into Greatness: How to Be Your Own Hero. Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own submerged inner resources. The trials we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths. Dig deeply. You possess strengths you might not realize you have. Find the right one, use it. Epictetus. So, in countless hero stories, the protagonist is dissatisfied but paralyzed. Luke Skywalker stares out at twin sunsets, dreaming of adventure, but staying on the farm. Frodo knows that the Shire feels small, but needs Gandalf to literally force the ring into his hands. They see the life they want, but they wait for their world to burn before actually stepping into it. We do the same thing. We know we're capable of more, but we wait. We wait for the layoff, the divorce, the health scare, the crisis that makes the decision for us. The Stoics would ask: why do we need permission from catastrophe to live courageously? So why do we hesitate to step into greatness? So the first idea is that we suffer from loss aversion. So behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman demonstrated that we experience losses roughly twice as intensely as equivalent gains. Your mediocre job that pays the bills feels like safety. The entrepreneurial dream feels like risk. But here's the stoic twist: you're already losing something every day if you don't pursue what matters. You're losing time, potential, and what Marcus Aurelius called your duty to the divine within. So Marcus Aurelio said people who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time, even when hard at work. We think we're preserving something by staying put, but we're actually experiencing a slow-motion catastrophe, the catastrophe of an unlived life. And Seneca is brutal about this. He said, it is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. So we convince ourselves that we have control over our current circumstances. You think, I know this job, I know how to navigate this relationship, I know what to expect. But Epictetus would remind us that external circumstances are never truly in our control. You could be laid off tomorrow. The company could restructure, the relationship could end regardless of your maintenance efforts. The only thing you truly control is your choice, what the Stoics call your proharesis. And by refusing to choose courageously, you've already made a choice. I mean, think about someone staying in a job they've outgrown because it's stable. They know they want to develop new skills, maybe start something new, take a risk, but they calculate. Next, let's talk about the comfort of victimhood, why we wait to be forced. So there's a psychological escape hatch in waiting for catastrophe. If you're forced into action, such as being laid off, divorced, or diagnosed, then you're responding to circumstances. You're not choosing boldly, you're adapting to necessity. The ego stays protected, and you get to say, I had no choice. But Epictetus teaches us: no man is free who is not master of himself. Waiting to be forced isn't freedom, it's a different kind of prison. So Bernays Brown research on vulnerability shows that we often prefer the familiar discomfort of victimhood to the uncertain discomfort of agency. Being a victim of circumstances means you don't have to face the fear of failure. You don't have to risk discovering your true limits. You get sympathy instead of accountability. You get to blame external forces rather than confront internal resistance. But there's a cost to staying a victim. According to Brene, squandering our gifts brings distress to our lives. As it turns out, it's not merely benign or too bad if we don't use the gifts that we've been given. We pay for it with our emotional and physical well-being. When we don't use our talents to cultivate meaningful work, we struggle. We feel disconnected and weighted down by feelings of emptiness, frustration, resentment, shame, disappointment, fear, and even grief. When we don't step up and try to live to our potential, then we trade comfort of what we know for the greatness of what we could be. When we wait for life to shape us, and life will shape us, we miss out on choosing the life that we want. As Marcus Aurelius reminds us, you have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength. And the Stoics weren't dismissing that bad things happen. They were pointing out that your response is where your power lives. Waiting for a catastrophe to decide for you is giving away the only power you actually have. For example, someone in their unhappy relationship who waits for it to become so unbearable that leaving feels justified. They're waiting for their partner to do something bad enough to make the decision for them. Meanwhile, both people are trapped in a dying connection, neither stepping up to having the courageous conversation or make the hard choice. But as Seneca reminds us, most powerful is he who has himself in his own power. The power to name the truth, to act with integrity, and to choose consciously. Next, we have identity attachment. Who you'll have to stop being. So your current life, even the parts that you don't like, forms your identity. I'm the person who has this job. I'm the one who handles everything. I'm the stable one. To step into greatness often means killing off that identity, and identity death feels like actual death to the ego. Now, Victor Frankel observed in the concentration camps that those who survived had learned to detach their sense of self from their circumstances. He wrote, Everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of the human freedoms, to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances. So you've invested years into building this version of yourself, the friends who know you this way, the family who expects this from you, the self-image that you've constructed. Now the Stoics would say you're confusing your circumstances with your essential self. It's as simple as what Epicteta said. If you wish to be a writer, write. Not wait until you have permission, wait until you feel ready, wait until it's self. Just be the thing. Another thing we do is that we mistake our roles for our identity. Parent, employee, provider, caretaker. These are things you do, not who you are. But we grip them tightly because they're how we and others define us. Hero of your own story isn't an identity that you have until you do it. It's undefined. And that ambiguity can be terrifying. For example, a parent who has organized their entire identity around their sacrifice for their children. When their kids grow up, rather than rediscover themselves, they find new things to sacrifice for, new ways to maintain the identity of the one who gives everything for others. Stepping into their own heroic life would require admitting that they have needs, desires, dreams separate from caregiving. It would require becoming someone new. Your true self isn't your role, it's deeper than that. So let's talk about the stoic path to becoming your own hero. The first idea is the present hero principle. And this means that you don't wait for permission from catastrophe. Ask, what would the hero of my story do now? Not after the crisis, not when I'm ready, not when it's safe, not when I have enough money or time or courage, but today, in the next hour, right now. So Marcus Aurelius gives us this great idea. He says, think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what's left and live it properly. Because the Stoics understood that someday is a fantasy. There is only this moment and what you choose to do with it. Practical application would be to when you wake up each morning, ask yourself, if I were living heroically today, what would be different? Then identify one small action aligned with that vision. Not the whole transformation, just one choice. Maybe it's one conversation. Maybe it's just one hour spent differently. For example, if you dream of writing a book but wait for enough time, well, you're never gonna get it done. The hero version of you would write for 20 minutes before work today. That's it. Not quit your job and write full time, just 20 minutes. The catastrophe waiting version of you plans to write when you retire or when things settle down, the present hero writes today. Practice number two, premeditatio malorum. So instead of vaguely fearing loss, examine it directly. The Stoics practiced premeditatio malorum, which means the premeditation of evils, which is visualizing the worst case scenarios. And this is not to be pessimistic, but to remove the power of fear. So you can do this by asking three questions. Number one, what specifically would I lose in pursuing greatness? Write it down. Be honest. Would you lose money, status, certain relationships, comfort? Number two, what am I already losing by not pursuing it? Time, energy, self-respect, the feeling of being alive, your one wild and precious life, as Mary Oliver called it. Question number three: if I died today, would this choice matter? Marcus Aurelius reminds us you could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think. And Seneca reminds us we suffer more in imagination than in reality. Most of what we fear about change actually never happens. And what does happen, we're usually capable of handling. And Epictita says, make the best use of what is in your power. Take the rest as it happens. Because you don't control outcomes. You control whether you act with courage and integrity. An example of this would be somebody who is afraid to leave their corporate work for freelancing. What would they lose? Well, steady paycheck, health insurance, office, friendships, clear identity. But what are they already losing? Autonomy, creative fulfillment, time with family, mental health from stress, their most energetic years doing work that they don't believe in. If they died next year, which loss would matter more? Practice number three, the dichotomy of courage. And what this means is that we need to have outcome independence. Because heroism isn't about guaranteed success, it's about living according to your values, regardless of external outcomes. And this is pure stoicism. This is the dichotomy of control applied to courage. You don't control whether you succeed, whether others approve of you, whether the market cooperates, whether or not you actually win. But what you do control is whether you act courageously or and live with integrity, whether you show up fully and whether you try. So Marcus Aurelius admonished himself: do external things distract you? Then make time for yourself to learn something worthwhile. Stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions. But make sure that you guard against the other kind of confusion. People who labor all their lives and have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse towards are wasting their time. The purpose isn't the outcome. The purpose is to live as a certain kind of person, courageous, intentional, and free. An example of this would be an artist who creates not for gallery success, but because creating is part of their essential nature. They're freed from the catastrophe waiting pattern because they're not waiting for external validation to give them permission to make art. They're already living heroically every time they sit down to work. So practice number four, the monthly failure quota. Most heroes' journeys skip over the part where the hero fails repeatedly. They montage it. But real heroism involves failing forward. Set a monthly quota. I will fail at least three times this month. That's something that actually matters. And why does this work? Because it reframes failure as evidence of courage rather than evidence of inadequacy. It forces you to take risks rather than waiting for catastrophe. It builds resilience through practice, not through trauma. Now, Epictetus taught us that obstacles are training. Difficulties are things that show men what they are. You don't become the hero by waiting for one big forced moment. You become the hero through accumulated small choices to act despite fear. Some examples of this would be: say that you wanted to pitch three articles that might get rejected. Maybe have three difficult conversations. Try three new approaches in your work. The goal isn't success, it's action. As Seneca wrote, it is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. So here's what the Stoics understood. The catastrophe you're waiting for is already happening. Every day you don't step up into your heroic life, a day is lost. Every morning you wake up and choose safety over significance is a small death. So as Marcus Aurelius wrote, remember how long you've been putting this off, how many extensions the gods gave you, and you didn't use them. At some point you have to recognize what world it is that you belong to, what power rules it, and from what source you spring, that there is a limit to the time assigned to you. And if you don't use it to free yourself, it will be gone and will never return. You don't need your life to be destroyed to start living courageously. You need to recognize that waiting is the destruction. The question isn't, what would I do if I had to? The question is, what will I do because I choose to? Be your own hero. Not someday, but today. And that's the end of this week's Stoic Coffee Break. As always, be kind to yourself, be kind to others, and thanks for listening. Also, if you haven't purchased my book Stoicism 101, I would appreciate if you would. You can find out more about that on my website at stoic.coffee. Also, if you aren't found me on social media, it'd be great if you would. I know that I complain about social media because there's plenty of not so great things on there. But if you're gonna follow it, you may as well subscribe to something good. And you can find me on Instagram and threads at stoic.coffee and on YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn at stoiccoffee all one word. Thanks again for listening.