About

The Obstacle Is The Way is a modern take on Stoicism, which helps you endure life’s struggles with grace and resilience by drawing lessons from ancient heroes, former presidents, modern actors, and athletes, and how they turned adversity into success through the power of perception, action, and will.

You might wonder if there is a way to turn problems into opportunities. Ryan Holiday demonstrates in this book that there is a way for us to convert seemingly hopeless situations into successes. And all of this while employing various philosophical ideas. 

 

Notable quotes

• “It 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.”
• “Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.”
• “Think progress, not perfection.”
• “The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.”
• “We forget: In life, it doesn’t matter what happens to you or where you came from. It matters what you do with what happens and what you’ve been given.”
• “Focus on the moment, not the monsters that may or may not be up ahead.”
• “If an emotion can’t change the condition or the situation you’re dealing with, it is likely an unhelpful emotion. Or, quite possibly, a destructive one. But it’s what I feel. Right, no one said anything about not feeling it. No one said you can’t even cry. Forget “manliness.” If you need to take a moment, by all means, go ahead. Real strength lies in the control or, as Nassim Taleb put it, the domestication of one’s emotions, not in pretending they don’t exist.”
• “Wherever we are, whatever we’re doing and wherever we are going, we owe it to ourselves, to our art, to the world to do it well.”
• “Where the head goes, the body follows. Perception precedes action. Right action follows the right perspective.”
• “For all species other than us humans, things just are what they are. Our problem is that we’re always trying to figure out what things mean—why things are the way they are. As though the why matters. Emerson put it best: “We cannot spend the day in explanation.” Don’t waste time on false constructs.”
• “The only guarantee, ever, is that things will go wrong. The only thing we can use to mitigate this is anticipation. Because the only variable we control completely is ourselves.”
• “It’s okay to be discouraged. It’s not okay to quit. To know you want to quit but to plant your feet and keep inching closer until you take the impenetrable fortress you’ve decided to lay siege to in your own life—that’s persistence.”
• “In life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control. Where will I find good and bad? In me, in my choices.”
• “We’ve all done it. Said: “I am so [overwhelmed, tired, stressed, busy, blocked, outmatched].” And then what do we do about it? Go out and party. Or treat ourselves. Or sleep in. Or wait. It feels better to ignore or pretend. But you know deep down that isn’t going to truly make it any better. You’ve got to act. And you’ve got to start now.”
• “Andrew Carnegie famously put it. There’s nothing shameful about sweeping. It’s just another opportunity to excel—and to learn. But you, you’re so busy thinking about the future, you don’t take any pride in the tasks you’re given right now. You just phone it all in, cash your paycheck, and dream of some higher station in life. Or you think, This is just a job, it isn’t who I am, it doesn’t matter. Foolishness. Everything we do matters—whether it’s making smoothies while you save up money or studying for the bar—even after you already achieved the success you sought.”
• “In every situation, life is asking us a question, and our actions are the answer.”
• “Failure shows us the way—by showing us what isn’t the way.”
• “You know what’s better than building things up in your imagination? Building things up in real life.”
• “Remember that this moment is not your life, it’s just a moment in your life. Focus on what is in front of you, right now. Ignore what it “represents” or it “means” or “why it happened to you.”
• “To argue, to complain, or worse, to just give up, these are choices. Choices that more often than not, do nothing to get us across the finish line.”