Book Summary: 'The Obstacle Is the Way' by Ryan Holiday

 

I will start by saying, this is arguably the best among all the great books written by Ryan Holiday. It is indeed an excellent introduction to the philosophy of Stoicism. And I will try to ensure this summary delivers on its perennial value.

Now, you're not here to hear what I think about the book, so let's dive in:

Marcus Aurelius wrote that we can't stop trying to do what we want to do, even if things get difficult. Our intentions and attitudes will always be the same. We can adapt to the obstacles in our way, and our goals will still be achieved.

The more obstacles we face, the more opportunity we have to do something. Sometimes, we may find it difficult to get started, but once we do start moving, the obstacles become the thing that moves us forward.

To achieve our goals, we often have to solve difficult problems. This is how we learn to get where we want to go. Most of our problems are internal, not external.

What is the Will?  The Will is the part of us that wants to overcome our problems and achieve our goals. It's the part of us that keeps us going when things get tough. 

Action is the way we take actions to solve our problems. It's the things we do to try to solve them. What is Action?

The way we see and understand what is happening around us is important because it can either make us feel strong or weak. If we are emotional, subjective and shortsighted, we can easily become overwhelmed. But we can also choose to see things in a more objective way, which can help us stay calm and rational in difficult situations.

When we feel overwhelmed, we can try to stay calm and think about what we can do to solve the problem. First, we should try to understand how we're feeling and why. Then, we can decide what to do based on that information.

Being objective means not getting too emotional about a situation. It helps you stay calm and make sensible decisions. It also means choosing to see the good in a situation even when it's hard.

We use calming techniques to keep our nerves steady, to ignore things that bother or limit others, and to focus on things we can control.

In other phrases, through our perception of occasions, we are complicit in the introduction—in addition to the destruction—of each certainly one of our boundaries.

there's no right or bad without us, there is handiest belief. there may be the event itself and the tale we tell ourselves approximately what it way.

Steady Your Nerves

while we aim high, pressure and pressure obligingly come along for the trip. Stuff goes to appear that catches us off guard, threatens or scares us. Surprises (ugly ones, in the main) are almost assured. The hazard of being overwhelmed is constantly there.

In these conditions, skills isn't always the maximum sought-after function. Grace and poise are, due to the fact those two attributes precede the possibility to installation another skill. We have to possess, as Voltaire as soon as defined approximately the name of the game to the fantastic navy achievement of the first Duke of Marlborough, that "tranquil braveness inside the midst of tumult and serenity of soul in threat, which the English call a groovy head."

manipulate Your feelings

Uncertainty and worry are relieved by way of authority. training is authority. It’s a launch valve. With enough publicity, you may adapt out those flawlessly everyday, even innate, fears that are bred by and large from unfamiliarity. happily, unfamiliarity is straightforward to restoration (once more, not clean), which makes it feasible to increase our tolerance for strain and uncertainty.

If an emotion can’t trade the circumstance or the scenario you’re handling, it is probably an unhelpful emotion. Or, quite probable, a unfavorable one.

practice Objectivity

The word "This occurred and it is terrible" is certainly  impressions. the first—"This took place"—is goal. the second one—"it's miles bad"—is subjective.

Take your scenario and pretend it isn't occurring to you. fake it isn't critical, that it doesn’t remember. How an awful lot less difficult would it not be with a view to know what to do? How a lot extra fast and dispassionately could you size up the scenario and its options? you can write it off, greet it evenly.

regulate Your angle

recollect: We choose how we’ll examine matters. We keep the ability to inject angle right into a situation. we can’t alternate the boundaries themselves—that part of the equation is set—but the electricity of angle can exchange how the boundaries appear. How we approach, view, and contextualize an impediment, and what we tell ourselves it way, determines how daunting and attempting it will likely be to conquer.

Small tweaks can trade what once felt like not possible responsibilities. abruptly, wherein we felt vulnerable, we comprehend we're robust. With angle, we find out leverage we didn’t know we had.

How we interpret the occasions in our lives, our angle, is the framework for our approaching reaction—whether there will even be one or whether we’ll just lie there and take it.

where the top is going, the frame follows. perception precedes action. proper movement follows the right attitude.

Is It up to You?

when it comes to notion, this is the vital distinction to make: the difference among the matters which might be in our electricity and the matters that aren’t. That’s the distinction among the folks that can accomplish terrific matters, and the people who locate it impossible to stay sober—to keep away from not simply tablets or alcohol but all addictions.

In its own manner, the most harmful dragon we chase is the only that makes us think we can trade things which can be sincerely now not ours to change.

stay within the gift moment

The factor is that most people begin from downside (regularly without a idea they may be doing so) and do just high-quality. It’s no longer unfair, it’s universal. folks that live to tell the tale it, live on because they took matters day by day—that’s the real mystery.

You’ll locate the approach that works high-quality for you, however there are many matters which can pull you into the prevailing second: Strenuous exercising. Unplugging. A walk within the park. Meditation. Getting a canine—they’re a constant reminder of ways best the prevailing is.

One element is certain. It’s no longer simply a rely of announcing: Oh, I’ll live in the gift. you need to work at it. capture your mind whilst it wanders—don’t let it break out from you.

remember that this moment isn't always your existence, it’s just a moment in your existence. recognition on what's in the front of you, right now. ignore what it “represents" or it “approach" or "why it took place to you."

there may be masses else happening right here to care about any of that.

think in another way

"Genius is the capability to position into impact what is on your mind. There’s no different definition of it." —F. Scott Fitzgerald

Our perceptions decide, to an exceptionally massive diploma, what we are and aren't able to. in lots of methods, they decide reality itself.

that is greatly exclusive from how we’ve been taught to behave. Be practical, we’re told. pay attention to feedback. Play properly with others. Compromise. nicely, what if the “different" celebration is inaccurate? What if traditional know-how is just too conservative? It’s this all-too-not unusual impulse to bitch, defer, after which surrender that holds us returned.

An entrepreneur is a person with faith of their capacity to make some thing where there was nothing earlier than. while given an unfair project, some rightly see it as a risk to check what they’re fabricated from—to provide all of it they’ve got, understanding full properly how difficult it will likely be to win. They see it as an opportunity because it is often in that desperate not anything-to-lose state that we are our maximum innovative.

locating the possibility

"That which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger" is not a cliché but fact.

whilst humans are:

impolite or disrespectful:

They underestimate us. A large advantage.

conniving:

We received’t need to express regret while we make an instance out of them.

important or question our talents:

decrease expectations are less complicated to exceed.

lazy:

Makes something we accomplish appear all of the extra admirable.

put together to act

issues are not often as terrible as we assume—or rather, they're exactly as bad as we think.

It’s a large leap forward to comprehend that the worst thing to appear is never the event, however the event and losing your head.

The call for on you is this: once you see the world as it's miles, for what it's miles, you must act. The right belief—goal, rational, formidable, easy—isolates the impediment and exposes it for what it's miles.

A clearer head makes for steadier arms.

and then the ones hands ought to be put to paintings. appropriate use.

component II: movement

what's movement?

motion is commonplace, right motion isn't always. As a subject, it’s no longer any sort of motion so that it will do, however directed action. the entirety must be done inside the provider of the whole. little by little, action through movement, we’ll dismantle the limitations in the front of us.

action requires courage, no longer brashness—innovative utility and now not brute pressure. Our movements and selections define us: We should make certain to act with deliberation, boldness, and persistence. the ones are the attributes of right and effective action. nothing else—not thinking or evasion or resource from others. motion is the answer and the treatment to our predicaments.

The area of movement

We’ve all finished it. said: "i'm so [overwhelmed, tired, stressed, busy, blocked, outmatched]."

and then what will we do approximately it? go out and birthday party. Or treat ourselves. Or sleep in. Or wait.

It feels better to disregard or faux. however you recognize deep down that that isn’t going to truly make it any better. You’ve were given to behave. and also you’ve were given to start now.

therefore, we are able to constantly (and only) greet our limitations

with energy

with patience

with a coherent and planned manner

with iteration and resilience

with pragmatism

with strategic imaginative and prescient

with craftiness and savvy

and an eye for opportunity and pivotal moments

Get transferring

That’s how folks that grow to be incredible at matters—whether it’s flying or blowing via gender stereotypes—do. They begin. anywhere. in any case. They don’t care if the conditions are best or in the event that they’re being slighted. due to the fact they know that once they get commenced, if they could simply get a few momentum, they are able to make it work.

inform your self: The time for that has handed. The wind is rising. The bell’s been rung. Get started out, get transferring.

That’s the subsequent step: ramming your ft into the stirrups and surely going for it.

even as you’re slumbering, visiting, attending meetings, or messing round online, the same thing is happening to you. You’re going tender. You’re now not aggressive sufficient. You’re now not pressing in advance.

For some motive, in recent times we tend to downplay the significance of aggression, of taking risks, of barreling forward. It’s likely as it’s been negatively associated with sure notions of violence or masculinity.

And that’s the very last element: stay shifting, usually.

So whilst you’re pissed off in pursuit of your own goals, don’t sit there and whinge which you don’t have what you want or that this impediment gained’t budge. if you haven’t even attempted yet, then of route you'll nevertheless be inside the precise same region. You haven’t absolutely pursued anything.

simply because the situations aren’t exactly in your liking, otherwise you don’t experience geared up yet, doesn’t imply you get a pass. in case you need momentum, you’ll need to create it your self, right now, by means of getting up and getting started out.

practice staying power

Genius frequently surely is just persistence in cover.

recollect and remind your self of a phrase desired through Epictetus: "persist and face up to." Persist for your efforts. face up to giving in to distraction, discouragement, or ailment.

It’s okay to be discouraged. It’s not okay to stop.

In other words: It’s imagined to be hard. Your first tries aren’t going to paintings. It’s goings to take lots out of you—however power is an asset we can constantly find extra of.

when human beings ask where we are, what we’re doing, how that “scenario" is coming along, the answer need to be clear: We’re operating on it. We’re getting closer. whilst setbacks come, we respond by way of running twice as hard.

Iterate

"what is defeat? not anything but education; nothing however the first steps to something higher." —Wendell Phillips

while failure does come, ask: What went incorrect right here? What can be stepped forward? What am I missing?

first-rate entrepreneurs are:

by no means wedded to a function

in no way afraid to lose a touch of their funding

never bitter or embarrassed

never out of the game for lengthy

They slip frequently, however they don’t fall.

the one way to assure we don’t gain from failure—to make certain it's far a horrific factor—is to not research from it.

It’s time you keep in mind that the world is telling you something with each and every failure and movement. It’s remarks—giving you precise commands on a way to improve, it’s seeking to wake you up out of your cluelessness. It’s looking to train you some thing. listen.

lessons come tough best in case you’re deaf to them. Don’t be.

comply with the process

How frequently will we compromise or settle because we sense that the actual solution is too bold or outdoor our grasp? How often can we count on that exchange is not possible as it’s too large? includes too many one of a kind businesses? Or worse, how many human beings are paralyzed via all their thoughts and inspirations? They chase all of them and go nowhere, distracting themselves and never making headway.

most of these troubles are solvable. every would fall apart underneath the manner. We’ve just wrongly assumed that it has to happen , and we give up on the thought of it.

Subordinate electricity to the method. replace fear with the process.

address those proper in front of you first. Come back to the others later. You’ll get there.

Do Your process, Do It right

occasionally, on the street to wherein we are going or in which we want to be, we ought to do matters that we’d rather no longer do.

however you, you’re so busy considering the destiny, you don’t take any satisfaction within the tasks you’re given proper now.

everything we do topics...even once you already done the achievement you sought. everything is a danger to do and be your first-rate. most effective self-absorbed assholes suppose they're too top for something their cutting-edge station requires.

To some thing we face, our job is to respond with:

tough work

honesty

supporting others as great we are able to

You have to by no means have to ask your self, however what am I presupposed to do now? due to the fact you understand the answer: your job.

whether anyone notices, whether we’re paid for it, whether the undertaking seems correctly—it doesn’t depend. we can and always have to act with those 3 traits—no matter the obstacle.

What’s proper is What Works

Pragmatism isn't always so much realism as flexibility. but so a lot of us spend so much time searching out the perfect solution that we pass up what’s proper in the front people.

begin thinking like a thorough pragmatist: still ambitious, competitive, and rooted in ideals, however also imminently sensible and guided by the feasible.

assume progress, not perfection.

In reward of the Flank attack

In a study of some 30 conflicts comprising more than 280 campaigns from ancient to fashionable history, the incredible strategist and historian B. H. Liddell Hart got here to a beautiful conclusion: In only 6 of the 280 campaigns was the decisive victory a end result of a direct assault on the enemy’s primary army.

while you’re at your wit’s stop, straining and straining with all of your may, when people let you know you appear like you might pop a vein...

Take a step lower back, then move around the trouble. find a few leverage. method from what's known as the "line of least expectation."

You don’t persuade people by challenging their longest and maximum firmly held evaluations. You discover commonplace floor and work from there.

Use barriers towards Themselves

Opposites work. Nonaction may be action. It uses the power of others and allows us to take in their electricity as our personal. letting them—or the impediment—do the work for us.

on occasion to your lifestyles you need to have persistence—await brief barriers to fizzle out.

Channel Your electricity

To be physically and mentally unfastened takes no skills. That’s simply recklessness. (We need right action, now not motion length.) To be bodily and mentally tight? That’s known as anxiety. It doesn’t paintings, both. eventually we snap. however physical looseness blended with mental restraint? that is effective.

seize the Offensive

if you assume it’s sincerely sufficient to take gain of the possibilities that stand up for your lifestyles, you will fall short of greatness. everyone sentient can try this. What you must do is discover ways to press forward exactly whilst everyone round you sees disaster.

You continually planned to do some thing. Write a screenplay. tour. start a commercial enterprise. method a probable mentor. launch a movement.

properly, now some thing has befell—a few disruptive occasion like a failure or an accident or a tragedy. Use it.

normal humans turn away from poor situations, simply as they do with failure. They do their first-class to keep away from hassle. What tremendous people do is the alternative. they're their great in these situations. They turn non-public tragedy or misfortune—actually something, everything—to their benefit.

prepare for None of It to paintings

Run it through your head like this: not anything can ever prevent us from trying. Ever.

All creativity and dedication apart, after we’ve attempted, a few limitations may additionally become not possible to triumph over.

We need to be willing to roll the cube and lose. prepare, at the quit of the day, for none of it to paintings.

component III: Will

what's Will?

Will is our internal energy, that can by no means be laid low with the outside international. it's far our final trump card.

positioned in some situation that appears unchangeable and undeniably poor, we will flip it right into a mastering enjoy, a humbling enjoy, a threat to provide comfort to others. That’s will electricity. however that needs to be cultivated. We have to prepare for adversity and turmoil, we have to analyze the artwork of acquiescence and exercise cheerfulness even in darkish instances. Too often human beings think so as to is how horrific we need some thing. In reality, the desire has a lot extra to do with give up than with power.

true will is quiet humility, resilience, and flexibility; the other kind of will is weak spot disguised via bluster and ambition. See which lasts longer underneath the hardest of barriers.

The field of the will

this is the road for the final field: the will. If notion and motion have been the disciplines of the thoughts and the body, then Will is the discipline of the coronary heart and the soul. the will is the one element we manage completely, continually. while i'm able to try to mitigate harmful perceptions and supply one hundred percentage of my power to actions, the ones attempts can be thwarted or inhibited. My will is exceptional, because it is within me.

the need is the important 1/3 field. we can assume, act, and sooner or later regulate to a global that is inherently unpredictable. the will is what prepares us for this, protects us against it, and lets in us to thrive and be satisfied no matter it. it's also the most tough of all the disciplines.

these classes come more difficult however are, in the long run, the most essential to wresting advantage from adversity. In each situation, we will

usually prepare ourselves for extra tough instances.

constantly take delivery of what we’re not able to alternate.

usually manipulate our expectancies.

continually persevere.

usually learn how to love our destiny and what happens to us.

continually protect our internal self, retreat into ourselves.

always put up to a extra, larger reason.

always remind ourselves of our personal mortality.

And, of path, put together to start the cycle another time.

build Your inner fortress

To be first rate at some thing takes practice. obstacles and adversity are not any exceptional.

Are you okay being alone? Are you robust enough to go a few more rounds if it comes to that? Are you comfortable with challenges? Does uncertainty hassle you? How does pressure experience?

due to the fact this stuff will appear to you. nobody knows when or how, but their appearance is certain. And life will call for a solution. you chose this for your self, a life of doing matters. Now you better be organized for what it entails.

Anticipation (thinking Negatively)

A premortem is unique. In it, we appearance to check what may want to cross incorrect, what is going to move wrong, earlier, before we begin. some distance too many bold undertakings fail for preventable motives. a ways too many people don’t have a backup plan because they decline to take into account that some thing might not cross exactly as they desire.

With anticipation, we have time to elevate defenses, or maybe keep away from them totally. We’re prepared to be pushed off course because we’ve plotted a way lower back. we can face up to going to portions if things didn’t pass as planned. With anticipation, we are able to bear.

The artwork of Acquiescence

once you’ve prominent among the things which are as much as you and the matters that aren’t (ta eph’hemin, ta very welleph’hemin), and the smash comes all the way down to something you don’t manipulate . . . you’ve got most effective one alternative: popularity.

You don’t ought to like something to grasp it—or to use it to some benefit.

And matters can continually be worse. not to be glib, however the subsequent time you:

Lose money?

don't forget, you can have misplaced a chum.

lost that process?

What in case you’d lost a limb?

misplaced your home?

you can have lost the whole lot.

Love the whole thing That occurs: Amor Fati

"My components for greatness in a person is amor fati: that one wants not anything to be one-of-a-kind, no longer ahead, not backward, no longer in all eternity. not merely endure what's essential, still much less conceal it . . . but find it irresistible." —Nietzsche

To do great things, we want with a purpose to endure tragedy and setbacks. We’ve got to like what we do and all that it entails, true and awful. We must discover ways to locate pleasure in every unmarried aspect that happens.

it is the act of turning what we ought to do into what we get to do.

The purpose is:

now not: I’m okay with this.

no longer: I think I experience true approximately this.

but: I sense awesome about it.

because if it took place, then it was supposed to take place, and i'm happy that it did whilst it did. i'm meant to make the satisfactory of it.

And proceed to do exactly that.

Perseverance

If patience is attempting to remedy a few tough hassle with dogged determination and hammering until the wreck occurs, then lots of humans can be stated to be continual. but perseverance is something large. It’s the lengthy sport. It’s approximately what occurs now not simply in round one but in spherical two and every spherical after—and then the fight after that and the combat after that, till the quit.

existence isn't always about one obstacle, but many. What’s required folks isn't always some shortsighted cognizance on a single facet of a trouble, however virtually a willpower that we are able to get to in which we want to head, by hook or by crook, somehow, and nothing will stop us.

patience is an motion. Perseverance is an issue of will. One is electricity. the other, persistence.

We’d be so much higher following the lead of Emerson’s counterexample. someone who's inclined to strive no longer one issue, however "attempts all of the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, maintains a faculty, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his ft."

that is perseverance. And with it, Emerson stated, "with the exercising of self-accept as true with, new powers shall seem." the good component about real perseverance is that it could’t be stopped with the aid of some thing except loss of life.

some thing bigger Than yourself

anything you’re going through, whatever is protecting you down or status on your way, may be became a source of energy—via contemplating people apart from yourself.

pleasure can be broken. durability has its limits. however a choice to help? No harshness, no deprivation, no toil must intervene with our empathy in the direction of others. Compassion is always an choice. Camaraderie as well. That’s a power of the need that may never be taken away, only relinquished.

help your fellow people thrive and continue to exist, contribute your little bit to the universe before it swallows you up, and be satisfied with that. lend a hand to others. Be strong for them, and it's going to make you more potent.

Meditate in your Mortality

each tradition has its own manner of coaching the same lesson: memento mori, the Romans would remind themselves. don't forget you're mortal.

Reminding ourselves each day that we can die enables us treat our time as a gift.

put together to begin once more

because the Haitian proverb places it: behind mountains are extra mountains.

Elysium is a fantasy. One does not triumph over an obstacle to go into the land of no obstacles.

at the contrary, the more you accomplish, the more things will stand to your way. There are always extra boundaries, bigger challenges. You’re always combating uphill. Get used to it and teach consequently.

knowing that lifestyles is a marathon and now not a dash is critical. conserve your power. keep in mind that every struggle is only certainly one of many and that you may use it to make the next one easier. greater essential, you need to keep them all in actual angle.

by no means rattled. never frantic. always hustling and acting with creativity. in no way some thing but deliberate. never trying to do the impossible—but everything up to that line.

definitely flipping the barriers that lifestyles throws at you by way of improving despite them, because of them.

And consequently not afraid. however excited, pleased, and eagerly waiting for the following spherical.

very last thoughts

What stood in the way became the way. What impeded action in some manner superior it.

With this triad, they:

First, see sincerely.

subsequent, act efficiently.

subsequently, endure and take delivery of the world as it is.

The logician and creator Nassim Nicholas Taleb defined a Stoic as a person who "transforms fear into prudence, ache into transformation, errors into initiation and desire into challenge." It’s a loop that becomes less complicated through the years.

Of course, it isn't always sufficient to certainly read this or say it. We must practice those maxims, rolling them time and again in our minds and acting on them till they emerge as muscle reminiscence.

You’re organized for this now, this lifestyles of limitations and adversity. you know the way to manage them, a way to push aside limitations or even benefit from them. You apprehend the procedure.

you are schooled within the artwork of coping with your perceptions and impressions. Like Rockefeller, you’re cool beneath stress, immune to insults and abuse. you see opportunity in the darkest of places.

you're capable of direct your actions with strength and staying power. Like Demosthenes, you assume responsibility for your self—teaching yourself, compensating for risks, and pursuing your rightful calling and place within the world.

you're iron-spined and own a tremendous and effective will. Like Lincoln, you realize that lifestyles is an ordeal. it's going to not be clean, but you are prepared to offer it the whole thing you have regardless, equipped to undergo, persevere, and encourage others.

What they did changed into easy (simple, not smooth). but let’s say it all over again just to remind ourselves:

See matters for what they're.

Do what we are able to.

bear and endure what we must.

What blocked the route now's a course.

What as soon as impeded action advances movement.

The obstacle is the manner.

Postscript

You’re Now a truth seeker. Congratulations.

"To be a logician is not simply to have subtle mind, nor even to establish a school . . . it's to provide remedy to some of the problems of life, not simplest theoretically, however practically.” —Henry David Thoreau

The essence of philosophy is motion—in making accurate at the ability to show the obstacle the other way up with our minds. understanding our problems for what’s within them and their greater context. to peer matters philosophically and act consequently.

Now you're a truth seeker and a person of motion. And that isn't a contradiction.