Obstacles make us stronger
‘‘Obstacle is the Way’ is an inspiring book and very apt in times we are living. Ryan begins with a story of Marcus Aurelius, the last of the five good Roman emperors and possibly the wisest Emperor to have governed Rome. Marcus was a Stoic, and his diary-Meditations-have guided people over the centuries.
Marcus writes
The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.
What Marcus meant was that the Stoic turns every negative into a positive—no matter how harmful or undesirable a situation becomes-to use the problem as an opportunity to be our best selves. The Stoic grows more resilient and better with every obstacle they face, and so can we- a core message of the book.
Alexander cutting the Gordian knot and fulfilling his prophecy
This book in not only about Stoicism, Ryan packs it with examples and lessons that Ryan learnt along the way as he overcame enormous challenges in his life-learnt first-hand how ‘success can be an imposter’. And what Ben Horowitz has so brilliantly written about in the “The hard things, about the hard things”.
The three disciplines
Ryan talks about three interdependent, interconnected, and fluidly contingent disciplines: Perception, Action, and the Will.
The Discipline of Perception:
We act as we see things, and most people cannot perceive a crisis as an opportunity. We perceive what our fears, frustrations, insecurities, emotions drive us to see. The story of how John Rockefeller kept an iron nerve and trained himself to see with ruthless objectivity enabled him to weather the great panic of 1857. The lessons he learnt helped him to take calculated risks that propelled to be the richest man in the world.
The Greeks had a word for this: apatheia. It’s the calm tranquillity that comes with the absence of irrational or extreme emotions.
Nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so, as Shakespeare put it.
It is not about being just an optimist, but to be “ceaselessly creative and opportunistic.” Perception is everything. Our perceptions determine, in no small degree, what we are and are not capable of doing. They choose reality itself.
As Ryan asks pertinently:
When we believe in the obstacle more than in the goal, which will inevitably triumph?
The Discipline of Action
The second part of the book deals with how to take action. First, Ryan asks us to remember: Action is commonplace, right action is not. As a discipline, it’s not any kind of activity that will do, but directed action.
Ryan shares many examples - the story of how Demosthenes became the greatest orator that Ancient Greece had ever seen is moving. In the book, the great British historian B. H. Liddell Hart, writes that
The Great Captain will take even the most hazardous indirect approach — over mountains, deserts or swamps, with only a fraction of the forces, even cutting himself loose from his communications. Facing, in fact, every unfavourable condition rather than accept the risk of stalemate invited by direct approach.
But some obstacles are impossible to overcome, some paths impassable which requires the discipline of the Will.
The Discipline of Will:
As Ryan writes:
The Will is the third critical discipline. We can think, act, and finally adjust to an unpredictable world. The Will prepares us for this, protects us against it, and allows us to thrive and be happy despite it. It is also the most difficult of all the disciplines. It’s what allows us to stand undisturbed while others wilt and give in to disorder.
Ryan shares many examples in this section of the book- Abraham Lincoln, who battled his demons and a debilitating depression to lead. Theodore Roosevelt who willed himself to become a healthy adult from a sickly and bedridden child.Top of Form
The journey never ends
We all have a choice- to succumb to the obstacles in our path or triumph over them. The journey never ends. Just when you thought you had successfully navigated a challenge, another emerges. Life is a marathon and not a sprint as Ryan reminds us and the obstacles in our path, build our stamina and resilience to find a way through the challenges yet to come, till we eventually reach the end of the line.