So maybe Marcus Aurelius isn’t for you. Seneca is a bore, and you think Epictetus needs to get a clue about life. If Stoicism has failed to capture your imagination, I have one last prescription for you. The Obstacle is the Way, by Ryan Holiday, is the penicillin that cures whatever could possibly ail you. Stoicism for the modern age, and written for anyone who can look at problems in their life as challenges or obstacles. If you can do this, Holiday argues the world becomes yours. I’d like to think he is right. Holiday makes it easier by illustrating the travails of numerous historical figures overcoming their own problems in novel and simple ways. (Simple does not mean easy.) The treatment is simple: use perception, action, and will to overcome any thing that stands in your way.
We all have the same twenty-four hours in a day that every great man or woman of history has had to accomplish their goals. Yet most people look at their goals daily and say “Tomorrow”, “It’s too hard,” “If only I had…” or “If X wasn’t in my way,” etc.. These are bullshit stories we tell ourselves to make us feel better about our failures. Do not accept them and they no longer have power. “There 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 (p.22)” Embrace the challenges that enter your life, and you will get better at facing them, and soon the problems that seemed to loom so large will be molehills in the rearview mirror.
As it turns out, this is one thing all great men and women of history have in common. Like oxygen to a fire, obstacles become fuel for the blaze that was their ambition. Nothing could stop them, they were (and continue to be) impossible to discourage or contain. Every impediment only served to make the inferno within them burn with greater ferocity. (p. 4)
Here in the twenty-first century, we are given so many blessings and technologies that make life seem easy. One can get everything and anything at the press of a button on a screen. Yet as soon as things don’t turn out the way we expect, we are stopped on a dime. We don’t know how to proceed. We have become weak with the blessings of the future. It doesn’t have to be this way. The blessings in our life can make life easier, but they should not be crutches we rely on as they can be taken away at any time. When things don’t go your way, realize the opportunity you have to succeed and be prepared to act.
Once you have a good grasp of reality and realize the advantages that come with even the worst of positions, one must act. Break the problem down into parts and crack away at them one by one. Theodore Roosevelt once said, “We must all either wear out or rust out, every one of us. My choice is to wear out.” Will you wear out or rust out?
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Eventually with consistent driven action, one must reach their goal eventually. It does not matter if you eat the elephant nose to tail, or hoof to spine.
Pragmatism is not so much realism as flexibility. There are a lot of ways to get from point A to point B. It doesn’t have to be a straight line. It’s just got to get you where you need to go. But so many of us spend so much time looking for the perfect solution that we pass up what is right in front of us. (p. 101)
The will to continue when everything stands in the way is the mark of a stoic and a success. We always have control over our mind, it is the one thing that can not be taken away from us, by fate, governments, obstacles or anything. How we react and feel about any given situation is the most important thing. Life will not turn out like we hoped or expected. Pain is inevitable; you will get knocked on your ass. Do you have the inner strength to get back up and brush yourself off? Do you have the humility to undertake everything you do with effort towards your goal, knowing that the path is hidden from us, except for that next step?
The rules of the game are simple, life will throw challenges at you. How you respond to them will probe the temper of your soul. Make it strong, and keep pushing forward. If you only accept from the universe what you want, eventually it will be given it to you.
“Nothing can ever prevent us from trying. Ever (p. 123.)”
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