Saying the masses are cowards sounds like an insult.
It’s not meant to be. Over the last 11 years, I’ve interacted with millions of people online through email, social media, paid/free webinars, and through selling online.
I’ve never been more certain that the masses are cowards. I’ve seen it firsthand.
Do you know what the most common response is now in 2025? Ghosting. When people get a message on their phone or via email their default is to ghost.
That’s not just sales messages either. That’s texts from their family, friends, co-workers, and even their boss. People just freeze and don’t respond. It’s sad.
Even worse, they don’t see ghosting people as a problem.
Lerato on X says:
“Ghosting someone because you don’t like tough conversations isn’t protecting your peace, it’s cowardice.”
I learned how to be a coward by being a coward
I shouldn’t admit that.
I know what it’s like to be a coward because I used to be one of the biggest cowards you’d ever met. I would get diarrhoea at the thought of having to attend any form of meeting. I was scared of the dentist. I couldn’t ask for a refund when my item from Amazon appeared at my doorstep broken.
I said yes to going out drinking with friends even though I hated it. When someone challenged me, I took it as an insult and would hide in my bedroom for days.
Instead of pursue my entrepreneurial interests, I wasted 10 years working in banking doing some of the most tedious work in history.
Several of those years were spent working in a call center taking sh*t from smart asses on the phone who loved to treat service workers like their slaves.
Every job I’ve ever had has tossed me around like a rag doll – and I willingly took the abuse without questioning it.
I’ve been a coward most of my life… until I escaped.
Cowardliness is part of a bigger trend
When the bat virus hit in 2020, it started a trend.
People got comfortable with isolation and loneliness caused by lockdowns. In fact, they began to crave it. Data shows that loneliness in young people is at record highs. We’ve never spent so much time at home or in front of screens as right now.
Cowardice used to be shameful. Now it’s rebranded as ‘self-care.’
Just walk into your local gym. Everyone is looking at their phones, not exercising or training together.
When we spend too much time alone or in front of screens we lose touch with reality. Engaging with other humans feels like friction. And doing hard things like socializing or making decisions starts to feel foreign.
I met a guy today named Bob. He weirdly told me he can’t stand salespeople. He will do everything he can to avoid them. If he has to buy a car or a TV he refuses to buy it in a store. He can’t even go to a clothing store to try on a shirt because he’s afraid the person at the front desk will ask “how’s the size?”
That’s too salesy for him.
What he forgets is if you do meet a salesperson in real life, or just a normal person who makes you an offer, you can politely say “just browsing” or “no thanks, I’m not interested.”
There’s no death penalty for saying no.
Even more bizarre is he wants to run an actual business. Yet he thinks all selling is scammy and to be avoided at all costs. He forgets that asking someone to have s*x is selling. So is marriage. So is getting your kids to clean their rooms.
The greatest sales pitch of all is doing a job interview. You must sell yourself harder than the President of the USA during an election. And you must be sold a dream by a 9-5 employer who is likely lying to you about their culture and the potential of a bonus.
Everything in life is sales. Sell or be sold.
This phobia of sales is cowardliness to the extreme, and it’s never been more common. Imagine not being able to go into a shop ever again?
9-5 jobs bizarrely breed cowards
Trashing 9-5 jobs is popular.
But what is missed is this: the real problem with jobs isn’t the pay, the bosses, or the layoffs. Nope. It’s what a 9-5 job does to your courage.
The 9-5 is an easy path that breeds cowardliness.
Get lost in email forwarding, meetings about meetings, middle office and back office meaninglessness, and a big corporation that would happily fire its best people if a virus or recession swept the world tomorrow.
In a job you can escape responsibility. You can ignore the question “What is the meaning of life?” You can hide from most scary things in life and no one will even notice. There are no consequences for being a coward.
People take jobs because they’d prefer to build someone else’s dreams than face the brutal reality of building their own. Then they just block out any regrets they might have by screaming “I can’t hear you” to themselves every day.
What’s even weirder is cowardliness is the default in jobs. It’s called following orders and being a good ‘company man.’ You parrot everything management says and never question what the corporation does out of fear you’ll be fired.
Jobs = Compliance
Compliance = Cowardliness
You don’t need to be fearless. Just slightly less scared than the next person.
The cause of mass cowardliness that’s ruining people’s lives
Boxing coach Cus D’Amato said this:
“The hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent, while the coward runs. It’s the same thing, fear, but it’s what you do with it that matters.”
You can’t escape fear.
Everyone is scared to death of the same fears you have. And the people you think who have life figured out are also just winging it.
The difference between the coward and the hero is one feels fear and thinks “This means I need to stop.” The hero feels fear and thinks “This is just what I need and I must be about to do something great.”
We all feel fear. But some use fear to their advantage, and others let fear use and abuse them until they’re so beaten up and scarred that they can’t think for themselves anymore and outsource their thinking to an algorithm or corporation.
When I quit my banking job at 34, I felt physically sick.
It felt like telling the doctor to give my daughter a lethal injection. It wasn’t easy. I didn’t have balls of steel or a Lamborghini to flex.
Nope.
I just knew that if I didn’t feel the fear and try to work for myself, I’d always have regrets and feel terrible as a result. I also knew the downside was minimal.
I can always get another job. Someone will always need a person with my skills to help their business. Once I realized the worst-case scenario was laughable, I stopped living in fear.
The greatest display of cowardliness (that we all do)
It’s indecision.
It’s being asked to make a decision then not making one. Cowards don’t make decisions. They put off decisions which they don’t realize is still a decision.
They wait for the right time when they know deep down that there’s never a right time to do anything. Writer Sahil Bloom says 99% of decisions are reversible. This should help you make decisions faster.
What’s worse is cowards lie to themselves. They hold onto fantasies.
Zuby on X explains it perfectly:
“People love to think they’d suddenly become brave and speak their minds if they had a lot of money.But they wouldn’t. They’d just become rich cowards.Money doesn’t make people more courageous. It gives them more to lose.Either you have the character or you don’t.”
Being rich is such a laughable solution to cowardliness.
If you’re an a**hole with $500 to your name, you’ll be an a**hole with $5B to your name. If you were kind to strangers with a minimum wage job, you’ll be kind to strangers with a $1M/year CEO job.
More money just amplifies more of who you already are.
It’s better to practice NOT being a coward now, than it is to think you’ll suddenly lose all your fear and cowardly behavior when you’re rich and famous.
“There’s no one more bitter than a smart ambitious person who knows they settled for less than what they could’ve achieved if they were less of a coward.
Do you really have “high standards” or is it just an excuse to never get started? The only way to never fail is to never try” – @SchrodingrsBrat
Another secret sign of becoming a coward
The last couple of years have transcended into an all-out culture war.
We’ve all been asked to pick a side – in politics, in wars, in genders. It’s been painful to be a part of.
Social media has robbed us of nuance, and opinions have become black & white. If you dare debate or challenge someone’s view, you’re given some ridiculous label to put you back in your box.
When you see hate online, it’s because of this:
Pessimism and cynicism are just laziness and cowardice disguised as intelligence – Zain Kahn
The outcome of the culture war is conformity.
The average person has just conformed to one of these off-the-shelf worldviews to avoid conflict and seem smart, hireable, and worthy of love (even if they strongly disagree with the core beliefs).
A male friend of mine painted their nails and wore a rainbow badge to work each day. I asked him why. “Tim, everyone at work is doing this to show their support and if I don’t do it, I’ll be seen as not being socially responsible.”
After a couple of drinks, he admitted the whole thing was a sham and he wished his workplace would stop talking about it and focus on making their products better.
That’s cowardliness right there. Pretending to be something you’re not and conforming just so you can fit in. Then virtue signalling with flags, slogans, and dedicated days to honor causes you don’t believe in.
A former female colleague of mine said it best:
“Instead of having international women’s day and giving us chocolate cake, can they they just pay us the same as men and give us the same opportunities men have?”
When she said it in public people’s faces went red. I didn’t know what to say. I still don’t.
If everyone’s scared to speak, courage becomes the new currency.
The massive opportunity for you right now
This essay may seem quite depressing. But…
There’s a glorious upside. The average person is a coward. Cowardliness is on the rise. This is a big opportunity for you.
All you have to do is be a tiny bit courageous and avoid cowardly acts, and you’ll become more successful than most of the people you think are your competition.
This is how I escaped being a coward:
Dare to learn ethical persuasion and sell your ideas
Don’t ghost people. Instead, reply to people with yeses and noes.
When you feel fear, accept it and see it as a sign of future growth.
Have uncomfortable conversations instead of delaying them.
Practice small acts of courage each day, like “Can I have 10% off my coffee today?” when you buy your daily cup.
Pursue your dream even if people tell you it’s stupid.
Build a side hustle even if you have no idea how it could replace your current work
Tell people what you really think.
Stay away from conformity as a way to fit in.
Reject the culture war at every level. Be kind. Assume you know nothing. Assume foreign wars are 10x more complex than you think and that you probably won’t solve them with your one-sentence tweet.
Engage in more debates to challenge your worldview.
Dare to hold two conflicting ideas in your mind without your head exploding.
The bar has never been lower. This is the greatest time in the 21st century to be a free individual and do whatever you want with your life online.
Don’t be a coward. Feel the fear and take action anyway.
