Ryan Holiday

He wins the French Croix de Guerre, the invincible battle.

devastating, unstoppable German panzers become not just impotent, but it's a suicidal overreach, a textbook example of why you can't leave your flanks exposed.

I think of this moment, this choice that Eisenhower makes to see the opportunity instead of disaster in a moment to be kind of the definition of stoicism in action.

Here he is the commander of this enormous army, more manpower and firepower than you can really wrap your head around.

And yet what he's thinking about is not that he is invincible and indestructible, but he's thinking about the unpredictable nature of war.

He's thinking about all the things that could go wrong.

He's thinking about how narrow run the whole thing is.

I talk about him in Discipline is Destiny as the model of this kind of emotional and physical discipline that we need.

I say, in 1944, when he was appointed Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Forces in World War II, he suddenly controlled an army of some 3 million men, the tip of a war effort that ultimately involved more than 50 million people.

And there, at the head of an alliance of nations totaling an upward of 700 million citizens, he discovered that far from being exempt from the rules, he had to be stricter with himself than ever.

And he came to find that the best way to lead was not by force or fiat, but through persuasion, through compromise, through patience, by controlling his temper, and most of all, by example.

and he recalls in this moment and moments throughout his life something that his mother used to quote from the book of proverbs in the bible that he that is slow to anger is better than the mighty and he that rules his spirit is better than he that taketh a city and this is something the stoics talk about that that to be in power you have to first be under your own power

and so we have to understand that eisenhower conquers the world he is victorious at d-day you know over eight decades ago because he is first victorious over himself victorious over you know delusions of grandeur wishful thinking and then later victorious over

pessimistic thinking, over panic, over doubt, over fear.

But when we control our emotions, when we can see things objectively, when we can stand steadily despite everything that's happening around us, it becomes possible to do that mental flip, to not just see what's bad about a situation, what's hard about a situation, what's going wrong, but the opportunity within it.

I mean, imagine being in Eisenhower's shoes.

This enormous army is racing on you.

You've pushed all your chips into the center.

Everyone around you is discouraged and disillusioned and doubtful.

And he was able to see not just a way to muddle through it,