You Need An Ethical Will | Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling

Summary

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The Daily Stoic Podcast: "You Need An Ethical Will"

Guest: Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling
Host: Ryan Holiday
Date: June 21, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this introspective Father's Day episode, Ryan Holiday sits down with Lieutenant General Mark Hertling—decorated Army veteran and author of If I Don’t: A Father’s Wartime Journal—to explore the importance of transmitting not just material assets but ethical and moral values across generations. Using the concept of the "ethical will," inspired by traditions in Jewish culture and echoing stoic philosophy, they discuss how parents can deliberately pass on lessons in character, honesty, and self-reflection, leaving a legacy that transcends career achievements or financial success.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why an Ethical Will Matters

• Ethical vs. Material Wills
  • Ryan Holiday (04:52): Introduces the ethical will as “the character I’m trying to bequeath to you. Here are the values I want you to live by,” contrasting it with conventional wills about property.
  • Hertling’s Purpose: Mark wrote his book after being warned of potentially massive casualties on deployment—his attempt to leave lasting guidance for his sons should he not return home (01:15).

2. Lessons Learned and Passed Down

• Reflections on Fatherhood

  • Hertling speaks to the changing nature of parental wisdom as children become parents themselves and the need to focus on character above material successes (05:43).
  • Quote: “It isn’t the monetary success or the great job and the parking space... It’s really your character and how you treat other people.” — Mark Hertling (06:48)

• MacArthur’s Prayer for His Son

  • Hertling describes how this prayer became a family touchstone and a reminder of the true goals in raising children, advocating for virtues over accolades (06:21).

3. The Precision of Developing Character

• Nature vs. Nurture in Leadership
  • Hertling discusses debates about whether leadership is innate or developed and emphasizes intentionality in building character (“elements of presence and intellect and stewardship”—07:55).
  • Quote: “We assume it will happen if they’re good people, but boy, that’s part of the reflection too...what are your values, what are your behavioral patterns, what do you talk about at dinner?” — Mark Hertling (08:24)

4. The Military as a Model for Character Development

• A Decline in Character Focus Outside the Military

  • Holiday and Hertling agree that the military remains a rare space where character is systematically taught and evaluated, unlike much of secular society (08:51).

• Reflection and Self-Examination

  • Both stress the need for structured self-evaluation and introspection—a habit promoted by both Stoicism and military tradition (09:53).

5. Scar Tissue, Failure, and Honest Legacy

• Honesty About Failures

  • Hertling notes his book contains “more scar tissue than successes”—a departure from most leadership memoirs that only focus on triumphs (10:36).
  • He emphasizes providing real, sometimes painful lessons to help his children avoid similar mistakes.

• Quote: “It was kind of picking the scabs as I went through to give advice to our sons: don’t do what I’m doing here.” — Mark Hertling (10:52)

6. Generational Progress and Pattern Recognition

• Learning from the Past

  • Ryan (12:19): Argues that openly sharing mistakes speeds up learning for future generations: “You’re only as sick as your secrets...What we’re forcing our kids to do is go through the world under the impression that they’re the only one...that’s had this problem.”
  • Hertling: A good legacy isn’t being seen as a “wise old man,” but encouraging descendants to try, reflect, and claim lessons for themselves (13:45).

• History as Family and Cultural Guidance

  • Both highlight the importance of recognizing family patterns—both beneficial and harmful—and deciding which to continue or end.

• Memorable Quote:

  • Ryan (15:04): “We can be an ancestor for our kids or a ghost.”
  • Hertling’s Response (15:31): “I gotta tell you, I love that quote. I’m gonna steal that one. That is classic.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On what truly matters:

  • “It’s really your character and how you treat other people.” — Hertling (06:48)

• On the responsibility of honesty:

  • “You’re only as sick as your secrets.” — Holiday (12:19)

• On parental legacy:

  • “It was partially a legacy, but now I don’t want our grandkids saying...he gave us all this advice. If that’s what comes out of this, it’s a failure...Maybe that enlightens them a little bit.” — Hertling (13:45)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [04:52] — The idea of the ethical will and the origins of Mark’s book
• [05:43] — Hertling on the importance of character and MacArthur’s Prayer
• [07:55] — The debate: Is leadership born or developed?
• [08:51] — The military’s unique focus on character
• [09:53] — Importance of regular, Stoic-inspired self-reflection
• [10:36] — Scar tissue: On learning from failures
• [12:19] — The importance of family transparency and breaking cycles
• [13:45] — What the legacy should be: Encouraging self-discovery
• [15:04] — “Ancestor or a ghost?” — Family history as ongoing influence

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Conclusion

This episode offers heartfelt, practical wisdom on how to use personal and family history for growth—emphasizing character, transparency, and the courage to share not just triumphs but also vulnerabilities and failures. Holiday and Hertling together propose that the true ethical inheritance is the ability (and willingness) to reflect, self-correct, and aim to be a positive force for generations to come.

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Transcript

[Ryan Holiday]

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom, into the real world.

Hey, it's Ryan.

Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast.

Today is Father's Day.

Yesterday we did a deep dive into Marcus Aurelius and Antoninus. What Marcus learns from his stepfather.

That was a sort of how to father episode. And then second half of that episode

was maybe a little bit what not to do about Tom Junod's complicated relationship with his father when he came on the Daily Stoic podcast. Today I am talking to Lieutenant General Mark Hertling. He spent almost 40 years in the US Army. Started as a tank platoon leader, became commander of U.S. army Europe and the 7th Army. He did combat tours in Desert Storm and Iraq, and then he helped support military transformation across Eastern Europe.

Spent, you know, many years in uniform,

many years deployed, was in combat many times.

Thankfully, he came home.

But there were many moments, I'm sure, where he didn't know if he would return. And that's. He has this great book called if I Don't A Father's Wartime Journal, which

was the thoughts that he put down

on his first deployment when he was

told there'd be casualties as high as

50% in his unit. You know, what did he want to leave to his two young sons? It's sort of an ethical will. It's a great book. You should definitely read it.

And I'm gonna bring out a fuller

episode later, but he and I wanted to talk about some fatherhood stuff.

I think you're really gonna like it.

It's a palate cleanser after Tom Junod's sort of complicated relationship with his father. But you should definitely read Tom Junod's book. In the days of my youth, I was told what it means to be a man. It's a great book, and so is Mark's book. So two great fatherhood books for today. And doesn't hurt always to reread Mark Aurelius passage on Antoninus either.

Happy Father's Day, everyone.

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So you wrote this, this book for your sons, trying to sort of pass these lessons on to them. There is this in the Jewish tradition, there's this idea of an ethical will, right? We write a will that, you know, says, hey, you get the house. You know, you get the life insurance policy. You know, you get Mom's jewelry and Dad's jackets. And then you got to decide what to do with all these books that you don't want and all the other stuff. Right? But the. The ethical will of, like, hey, here. Here's the character I'm trying to bequeath to you. Here are the values I want you to live by. It strikes me that was the primary reason that you're. You're writing the book. And in the years since, what do you feel like you got right? And what do you feel like maybe you would emphasize more now as far as lessons, let's say people are listening to this on Father's Day.

[Lieutenant General Mark Hertling]

Yeah, well, and that's why it's important on Father's Day, because I. I'm lucky enough. We're lucky. My wife and I are lucky enough to have two great sons with wonderful grandchildren. And what's fascinating to me is when you see your sons or your daughters raise their own family, something changes in you. So what I was bequeathing to get to your question is more lessons for them to reflect on. I talk throughout the book about emotions and character and leadership, but the last chapter is repeating something both our boys actually have hung in their house, which is MacArthur's prayer for his son. Build me a son, O Lord, who is. And then he goes on and describes what he wants his son to be. Well, now we have two sons. That prayer was important to us when they were young and what we were trying to do with them. But now it's important for them to remember MacArthur's prayer for their children. And here's what the son or the daughters that you're building and what it takes to really remind them of what is important in life. It isn't the monetary success or the great job and the parking space outside your building. It's really your character and how you treat other people.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah, it's interesting, right? If you're reflecting on your kids as they get older, do you want them to be really, really successful, really, really financially secure, really, really powerful, or do you like them to be great people? And I think everyone intuitively knows the answer to that question. And then you think, but what do I spend the most time talking about or working on? It's like, you know, how are your grades? How are you doing in sports? How are your manners? It's weird. We all know Character is the most important thing. And as you said, the Greeks but believe that character was destiny. And yet we kind of just assume the character side of things will take care of itself. That's not what we measure and work on day to day.

[Lieutenant General Mark Hertling]

Right. And I often have a debate with my MDA students. Is leadership born or is it developed? Is it part of who you are? It's a little bit of both. And you can build that character by being aware of what it consists of. Here are the elements of character. Here are the elements of presence and intellect and stewardship. And yet I don't think we talk as much about the precision of developing character as we should. You know, we assume it will happen if they're good people, but boy, that's part of the reflection too, of what are your values, what are your behavioral patterns, what do you talk about at dinner, and the things that build who you are to be that good person. And that takes as much effort as being a great business person or lawyer or, you know, minister or whatever. Right.

[Ryan Holiday]

Well, and it does feel like the military tradition is one of the few places left in our society where character is explicitly taught, talked about, you know, evaluated, developed in a way that, you know, the rest of sort of secular society it isn't. And if anything, you could argue we're living in a time of sort of like vice development or, or sort of the sidelining of character because it feels like it's insufficient to get ahead in this sort of crazy, upside down world that we're living in.

[Lieutenant General Mark Hertling]

Couldn't say it better. And that's the thing. Are we taking time again, the reflections of the book? Are we taking times to analyze our own self, to see where we're centered, to find out the things we're doing? And that was really one of the purposes of the book was to say we all need to take that time to reflect and we don't do it as much as we should.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah, the stoics talked about this idea of putting yourself up for review, you know, sort of at the end of the day, maybe it's 2 in the morning. Like you are on the, on the, on the COVID of the book here, and you're going, hey, what did I do well, what could I have done better? You know, and how do I know whether I did well or if I could have done better? If I, if I'm not clear about what I believe and what I'm trying to accomplish? Right. Like, what's my north Star here? What's my. What is the compass by which I'm evaluating. Did I. Did I win an award? Did I make money? Did somebody pat me on the back? Or did I do the right thing? You know, did I live in accordance with those values? And that is that inner dialogue that we have to be having. And then we have to teach our children how to have. We can't just expect them to have it.

[Lieutenant General Mark Hertling]

Yeah. You know, it's interesting. My publisher, when he first read the book and said, yeah, I want to publish this, he said, you know, this isn't like most leadership books. He says most leadership books are the people saying how great they were and how they succeeded and everything. He says, you have more scar tissue than you have successes in this book. And that's the first time I've heard anybody say that. And I said, yeah. And it was kind of picking the scabs, as I went through to give advice to our sons. Don't do what I'm doing here. You know, take a look at your friendships. Make good choices. And it is going back to your question from earlier. It is an attempt to teach character and the elements thereof versus just proclaim what I have because I've had more failures than I've had successes.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah. And the ability to be honest with yourself about what those failures are and to put them up for review is how ideally you don't. You don't repeat them. And then you're giving your children a leg up by not forcing them to start from scratch. Right. Like, ideally, the battles that you fight, literally and figuratively, your children can pick up where you left off. They don't have to do them the exact same way. You can't spare your children everything. And there's no book or set of ideas that are going to teach them everything they need to know. But they shouldn't have to learn everything by trial and error.

[Lieutenant General Mark Hertling]

Right. But they're still going to have the scar tissue even if they take your advice. All people make mistakes. So, you know, it's just, okay, dad told me that I should do this versus that, and I didn't do that. So, okay, I've got a. I've got a little scratch on myself now. Yeah.

[Ryan Holiday]

Well, and that speeds up the process. Like, even if you make all the same mistakes that your parents made or that you had tried to prevent them from making, the fact that. That you as the parent were honest about your own struggles with them and what you learned makes the pattern recognition faster. Right. Like they say in recovery, like, you're only as sick as your secrets. Right. And when we hold things Close. And we don't articulate what we've gone through, what we did wrong, where we could have done better. What we're forcing our kids to do is go through the world under the impression that they're the only one in this family tree that's had this problem or this temptation or gone down, made this mistake. Even with innocuous stuff in my family, I'm like, wait, like, this has been a thing that we've dealt with for generations, but just nobody brought it up. Like, it's. I could have gotten to this solution faster if shame hadn't been hiding what happened.

[Lieutenant General Mark Hertling]

Yeah. It's the old expression. If you want a new approach, read an old book.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yes. Yes.

[Lieutenant General Mark Hertling]

Right.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah. It's foolish to think you can spare your children from everything you ever went through, but if you can spare them from one thing that you went through, well, then we're making progress. Right. It's not as much progress as we could, and that is the study of history, how often we make the same mistakes over and over and over again. But the idea is we err a little bit less each time, and that's what propels us forward.

[Lieutenant General Mark Hertling]

Yeah. It was interesting in a conversation with our son, who typed it up for me, he said, boy, this is really going to be a great legacy for the family. And I said, hey, Scott, I said, here's the deal. I said, when I started this thing, it was partially a legacy, but now I don't want our grandkids saying, boy, that Grandpa Hertling was just such a smart guy, and he gave us all this advice. If that's what comes out of this, it's a failure. What I want them thinking about is when they read the different sections and the journal entries and the reflections to say, hmm, I ought to take that on. I ought to try that, you know? And maybe that enlightens them a little bit. Not so much that I was a wise old man before I died, but boy, oh, boy, he passed along some gems for us to think about.

[Ryan Holiday]

And recognizing parts of yourself in that ancestor, good and bad. Oh, I have this. And that's the tradition that I want to continue. And this is the part of the family legacy that stops with me. Right. Like I'm wearing a Bruce Springsteen shirt. He has this great line about, you know, we can be an ancestor for our kids or a ghost.

Right.

And I think, in a way, we're both those things for our kids. There's the parts of us and our history and our genetics and whatever that can haunt our family. And subsequent generations. And then there's the, the good parts that they get to carry forward that they benefit from, that guide them. And, and I think that's what I think we get when we have a good sense of, of general history, but also our, our family history, the good and the bad.

[Lieutenant General Mark Hertling]

I gotta tell you, I love that quote. I'm gonna steal that one. That is classic. That is great.

[Ryan Holiday]

I think that's a great Father's Day.

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