The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

by Ryan Holiday

The Fates guide the person who accepts them and hinder the person who resists them. —CLEANTHES

He chose the latter, channeling the energy into his writing, which others put into oratory instead. There he found his medium. He found he could express himself clearly. Writing was his strength. Jefferson was the one the founding fathers turned to when they needed the Declaration of Independence. He wrote one of the most important documents in history, in a single draft.

It’s time to be humble and flexible enough to acknowledge the same in our own lives. That there is always someone or something that could change the plan.

Your obstacle may not be so serious or violent. But they are nevertheless significant and outside your control. They warrant only one response: a smile.

As the Stoics commanded themselves: Cheerfulness in all situations, especially the bad ones. Who knows where Edison and Johnson learned this epithet, but they clearly did.

There are far more failures in the world due to a collapse of will than there will ever be from objectively conclusive external events.

Perseverance. Force of purpose. Indomitable will. Those traits were once uniquely part of the American DNA. But they’ve been weakening for some time. As Emerson wrote in 1841,

Unity over Self.

We’re in this together. Even if we can’t carry the load all the way, we’re going to take our crack at picking up the heavy end. We’re going to be of service to others. Help ourselves by helping them. Becoming better because of it, drawing purpose from it.

Pride can be broken. Toughness has its limits. But a desire to help? No harshness, no deprivation, no toil should interfere with our empathy toward others. Compassion is always an option. Camaraderie as well. That’s a power of the will that can never be taken away, only relinquished.

Help your fellow humans thrive and survive, contribute your little bit to the universe before it swallows you up, and be happy with that. Lend a hand to others. Be strong for them, and it will make you stronger.

This is encouraging: It means that embracing the precariousness of our own existence can be exhilarating and empowering.

Life is a process of breaking through these impediments—a series of fortified lines that we must break through.

Knowing that life is a marathon and not a sprint is important. Conserve your energy. Understand that each battle is only one of many and that you can use it to make the next one easier. More important, you must keep them all in real perspective.

Never rattled. Never frantic. Always hustling and acting with creativity. Never anything but deliberate.

Never attempting to do the impossible—but everything up to that line.

Simply flipping the obstacles that life throws at you by improving in spite of them, because of them. And therefore no longer afraid. But excited, cheerfu...

We can turn even this to our advantage. Always. It is an opportunity. Always.

Nothing stands in their way. Rather, everything guides them on the way.

We can see the “bad” things that happen in our lives with gratitude and not with regret because we turn them from disaster to real benefit—from defeat to victory. Fate doesn’t have to be fatalistic. It can be destiny and freedom just as easily.

First, see clearly. Next, act correctly. Finally, endure and accept the world as it is.

The philosopher and writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb defined a Stoic as someone who “transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation and desire into undertaking.” It’s a loop that becomes easier over time.

Vires acquirit eundo (We gather strength as we go). That’s how it works. That’s our motto.

(We gather strength as we go). That’s how it works. That’s our motto.

What blocked the path now is a path. What once impeded action advances action. The Obstacle is the Way.