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

by Ryan Holiday

“Bad companies are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great companies are improved by them.”

There are a few things to keep in mind when faced with a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. We must try: To be objective To control emotions and keep an even keel To choose to see the good in a situation To steady our nerves To ignore what disturbs or limits others To place things in perspective To revert to the present moment To focus on what can be controlled

Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself. —PUBLILIUS SYRUS

An entrepreneur is someone with faith in their ability to make something where there was nothing before. To them, the idea that no one has ever done this or that is a good thing. When given an unfair task, some rightly see it as a chance to test what they’re made of—to give it all they’ve got, knowing full well how difficult it will be to win. They see it as an opportunity because it is often in that desperate nothing-to-lose state that we are our most creative. Our best ideas come from there, where obstacles illuminate new options.

It doesn’t always feel that way but constraints in life are a good thing. Especially if we can accept them and let them direct us. They push us to places and to develop skills that we’d otherwise never have pursued. Would we rather have everything? Sure, but that isn’t up to us.

As the saying goes, “Man proposes but God disposes. ” As fate would have it. Heaven forbid. Nature permitting. Murphy’s Law. Whatever version you prefer, it’s all the same. Not that much has changed between their time and ours—they were just more cognizant of it.

(a) you’re robust and resilient enough to handle whatever occurs, (b) you can’t do anything about it anyway, and (c) you’re looking at a big-enough picture and long-enough time line that whatever you have to accept is still only a negligible blip on the way to your goal. We’re indifferent and that’s not a weakness. As Francis Bacon once said, nature, in order to be commanded, must be obeyed.

Reminding ourselves each day that we will die helps us treat our time as a gift. Someone on a deadline doesn’t indulge himself with attempts at the impossible, he doesn’t waste time complaining about how he’d like things to be. They figure out what they need to do and do it, fitting in as much as possible before the clock expires. They figure out how, when that moment strikes, to say, Of course, I would have liked to last a little longer, but I made a lot of out what I was already given so this works too.

“transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation and desire into undertaking.” It’s a loop that becomes easier over time.

See things for what they are. Do what we can. Endure and bear what we must. What blocked the path now is a path. What once impeded action advances action. The Obstacle is the Way.