The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Adversity to Advantage

by Ryan Holiday

Our actions may be impeded… but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. And then he concluded with powerful words destined for maxim. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

Es el mensaje definitivo.

How skilled we are at cataloging what holds us back!

Not: This is not so bad. But: I can make this good.

“The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.”

When you have a goal, obstacles are actually teaching you how to get where you want to go—carving you a path. “The Things which hurt,” Benjamin Franklin wrote, “instruct.”

WHAT IS PERCEPTION? It’s how we see and understand what occurs around us—and what we decide those events will mean.

While others are excited or afraid, we will remain calm and imperturbable. We will see things simply and straightforwardly, as they truly are—neither good nor bad.

Don’t forget, there are always people out there looking to get you. They want to intimidate you. Rattle you. Pressure you into making a decision before you’ve gotten all the facts. They want you thinking and acting on their terms, not yours.

The Greeks had a word for this: apatheia. It’s the kind of calm equanimity that comes with the absence of irrational or extreme emotions. Not the loss of feeling altogether, just the loss of the harmful, unhelpful kind.