The Obstacle is The Way.
Meditations. The personal journal of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, where he wrote not of the days’ deeds or tasks, and not where he wrote about his feelings. It is a very personal conversation with himself to remind him of how to think, how to behave, and how to live properly. It was written most likely never meant for publication and as what history records him as the last of the five “good Emperors” would most likely not want it so public. However, the words of wisdom contained in Meditations have stood the test of time and is as relevant today as it was during his life some two-thousand years ago. Book five, paragraph twenty is the paragraph that has reaffirmed my thinking time and time again, and when I stray from my path it is the paragraph that centers me. So powerful is this paragraph that entire books have been dedicated to the theory behind its words. None more personally impactful than Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle is the Way. Without further ado, Meditations 5.20
In a sense, people are our proper occupation. Our job is to do them good and put up with them. But when they obstruct our proper tasks, they become irrelevant to us-like sun, wind, animals. Our actions may be impeded by them, but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts its own purposes to the obstacle of our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.
The idea isn’t to ignore that things and situations can suck. On the contrary, you need to immediately acknowledge that the situation sucks, and then detach yourself from that negative mindset, as any more energy than it took to recognize that the situation sucks would be a counterproductive waste of energy. From the moment that you’ve come to grips with the difficulty of the situation forward your energy must be spent searching for a way to turn that difficulty into the path of your success, bending it to fit your needs, for however small or big that win is, it can be and will be yours if you are willing to commit yourself to finding the silver lining in all situations.
All frustrations must be looked at as an opportunity to detach, gain a 3000 ft view and adjust our thinking and adjust how we react. Listed in the preface Ryan writes of Marcus: “…And from what we know he truly saw each and every one of these obstacles as an opportunity to practice some virtue: patience, courage, humility, resourcefulness, reason, justice, and creativity.” I would be lying to you all if I said I have remotely become good at this. Time and time again I fall victim to my own frustrations with myself and others. I can say however that I am much better at it today than when I first read this book.
Not “be positive” but learn to be ceaselessly creative and opportunistic. Not: This is not so bad But: I can make this good. – Ryan Holiday
“I can make this good”… gaining that as a driver of your mindset when faced with difficulty is an incredibly powerful tool, when your vision is looking to not just mitigate damage caused by something or someone or a situation gone sideways but to take these things and make that situation a positive one. No longer is crisis management your focus, but a net positive outcome. Sometimes that net positive outcome necessitates that you take a tactical loss, who cares? We are in this game for a long long time, I’ll take a tactical loss every day for a strategic win. At the office, we have a part of our company culture that guides our vision, and that part is that being right doesn’t necessarily solve problems. So when faced with a difficult customer and a situation where tensions are on the rise I remind myself that I can make this good, I can de-escalate this and even though we are right, we are going to do what is right by the customer, it’s a short-term loss, whether it’s money, resources, time or physical assets but the customer usually recognizes that in the end we were right, but we stepped up to bat for them anyway and made their situation better at a physical cost to our company. That customer just became our customer for life and a person who will likely tell others that we are in the customer business and that the transactions that take place in servicing that customer are a side effect of providing customers with paths to success. This is a strategic win and something that absolutely makes me smile, I’m not in sales, I’m not in service, I am in relationships. When we can turn the obstacle in the way into the way there is no better feeling.
God Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. – Serenity Prayer
Addicts learn the Serenity Prayer, and in that prayer, we see some very stoic ideas, the idea that we cannot control external things, but only our perceptions and reactions. That knowledge grants a certain amount of freedom and mobility. Sometimes we get stuck on trying to change something outside of our control, imagine if you spent that energy on not trying to change the things outside of your control but changing your perspective of the things outside of your control, bending them to your will. Making them the path to your success.
“After you’ve distinguished between the things that are up to you and the things that aren’t..and the breakdown comes down to something you don’t control…you’ve got only one option: acceptance” – Ryan Holiday
In his chapter titled: “The Art of Acquiescence” Holiday writes about accepting the things you cannot control so that you can manage the things, you do control. Not only manage but master skills that you’d never thought to master. You don’t have to like accepting the things that you cannot control, but fighting them will not change the facts. Would honking at a red light make it change any quicker? No, but accepting that you’re going to have to just wait for the light to change may make the wait seem shorter (not to mention your blood pressure would be lower). This acquiescence also allows for a different perspective to take hold.
One morning I was running late on my way to the gym, it was very early in the morning and the major highway I take is generally empty at that time of day. This morning, however, it was a parking lot. GREAT! What else can possibly go wrong?! Then it hit me as I am rounding the corner to the site of various EMS strobe lights. My day is nowhere near as bad as whoever was involved in this accident. The 20 minutes or so that I spend in traffic this morning is definitely preferable to being the focus of attention of the EMS workers. That realization changed my perspective on traffic permanently. It was cemented when I got close to the scene of the accident and I couldn’t fight the realization that a family’s life had irrevocably changed for the worse that morning. No, I don’t like traffic, but I accept it, I am grateful that I am not involved in the cause of it. I acquiesced to the fact that I cannot control traffic, and when I face it now, I only hope out loud that everyone is ok. In my acquiescence, I learned patience and sympathy where previously there was neither. In my acquiescence, I became a better man.
Paragraph 5.20 of Meditations (and the entire book to be honest) and The Obstacle is The Way has been instrumental in changing my perspective and changing my mindset. The Obstacle is The Way introduced me to Stoicism and both of these books are amongst the first that I re-read every year. They are powerful books with simple messages that have lit a fire in me and have guided me ever since. Mindset and perspective are critically important to decision-making and interacting with people if you want to be successful. I could go on extensively about the lessons in both of these incredible pieces of writing, but I’ll leave some meat on the bone for another day.
Go find your win!