The Obstacle Is the Way

Ryan Holiday, like Steven Pressfield, is a no-nonsense writer whose words inspire you to start that project you’ve been putting off.

Already started it but running into some, well, obstacles? Holiday describes in his book how obstacles are a good thing and inspires us to look for creative solutions. This book made me reframe how I look at challenges, both personally and professionally.

The title of the book describes the message of the book perfectly and I’ve learned through this book to see opportunity when life throws curveballs my way.

I happened to have read this book not too long prior to being diagnosed with breast cancer at age 47 and because of the message of the book, my first response to my diagnosis after the shock and immediate sadness passed was, “What am I supposed to learn from this? Where is this experience going to lead me?”

And I re-read this book during the year I underwent surgeries to remove and recover… show more.

This book is really for anyone trying to do anything hard in life – because life is freaking hard. I actually find this to be the single most useful (and nearly best) nonfiction title in my library (of about 2,500 volumes), and it’s useful for everything – but, given that Holiday mainly makes his living writing bestselling books, once again writers enjoy a particular embarrassment of riches here. Also N.B. – contains the secret of life.

Part of the reason why I’m such a fan of this book is that I was able to implement what I learned from it immediately. For me, the biggest takeaway has been why and how I should look at the problems that frustrate me as opportunities rather than obstacles. For example, my business partner and I have a history of disagreeing. In the past, I would allow that to frustrate and upset me. Now I approach our relationship from the perspective that any problem he is experiencing is actually my problem too. Inventors face many obstacles on their path to… show more.

This was the first book that I ever read on Stoicism and it really got me into the philosophy. It’s a great overview of Stoicism in the modern world and shows us how we can turn obstacles into opportunities.