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

by Ryan Holiday

Many of our problems come from having too much: rapid technological disruption, junk food, traditions that tell us the way we’re supposed to live our lives. We’re soft, entitled, and scared of conflict. Great times are great softeners. Abundance can be its own obstacle, as many people can attest. Our generation needs an approach for overcoming obstacles and thriving amid chaos more than ever.

You will come across obstacles in life—fair and unfair. And you will discover, time and time again, that what matters most is not what these obstacles are but how we see them, how we react to them, and whether we keep our composure. You will learn that this reaction determines how successful we will be in overcoming—or possibly thriving because of—them.

There is no good or bad without us, there is only perception. There is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means.

When America raced to send the first men into space, they trained the astronauts in one skill more than in any other: the art of not panicking. When people panic, they make mistakes. They override systems. They disregard procedures, ignore rules. They deviate from the plan. They become unresponsive and stop thinking clearly. They just react—not to what they need to react to, but to the survival hormones that are coursing through their veins. Welcome to the source of most of our problems down here on Earth. Everything is planned down to the letter, then something goes wrong and the first thing we do is trade in our plan for a good ol’ emotional freak-out. Some of us almost crave sounding the alarm, because it’s easier than dealing with whatever is staring us in the face. At 150 miles above Earth in a spaceship smaller than a VW, this is death. Panic is suicide. So panic has to be trained out. And it does not go easily.

What we’re forgetting in that instance, as billionaire serial entrepreneur Richard Branson likes to say, is that “business opportunities are like buses; there’s always another coming around.” One meeting is nothing in a lifetime of meetings, one deal is just one deal. In fact, we may have actually dodged a bullet. The next opportunity might be better.

This is how they focus their efforts. It’s a lot easier to fight addiction when you aren’t also fighting the fact that you were born, that your parents were monsters, or that you lost everything. That stuff is done. Delivered. Zero in one hundred chances that you can change it. So what if you focused on what you can change? That’s where you can make a difference.

It’s a cliché question to ask, What would I change about my life if the doctor told me I had cancer? After our answer, we inevitably comfort ourselves with the same insidious lie: Well, thank God I don’t have cancer. But we do. The diagnosis is terminal for all of us. A death sentence has been decreed. Each second, probability is eating away at the chances that we’ll be alive tomorrow; something is coming and you’ll never be able to stop it. Be ready for when that day comes. Remember the serenity prayer: If something is in our control, it’s worth every ounce of our efforts and energy. Death is not one of those things—it is not in our control how long we will live or what will come and take us from life.

The great law of nature is that it never stops. There is no end. Just when you think you’ve successfully navigated one obstacle, another emerges. But that’s what keeps life interesting. And as you’re starting to see, that’s what creates opportunities. Life is a process of breaking through these impediments—a series of fortified lines that we must break through. Each time, you’ll learn something. Each time, you’ll develop strength, wisdom, and perspective.

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.