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

by Ryan Holiday

There is a certain humility required in the approach. It means accepting that the way you originally wanted to do things is not possible. You just haven’t got it in you to do it the “traditional” way. But so what? What matters is whether a certain approach gets you to where you want to go. And let’s be clear, using obstacles against themselves is very different from doing nothing. Passive resistance is, in fact, incredibly active. But those actions come in the form of discipline, self-control, fearlessness, determination, and grand strategy. The great strategist Saul Alinsky believed that if you “push a negative hard enough and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.” Every positive has its negative. Every negative has its positive. The action is in the pushing through—all the way through to the other side. Making a negative into a positive.