Datasets:

Sephfox

/

A.I.R.RConsciousnessDataset

like 3

We must be willing to roll with the punches and respond to life's challenges with strength and flexibility.

We will be tested by life's adversity, but we can choose to respond with courage and composure.

We must accept that there are some things in life that we cannot control, but we can control our own thoughts and actions.

We must be willing to take action in the face of life's obstacles, no matter how daunting they may seem.

The event is in the hand of God.

Everything we could think of have been done, the troops are fit everybody is doing his best. The answer is in the lap of the gods.

Man proposes but God disposes.

Amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it . . . but love it.

He learned how to assert himself without ever being overbearing the way he'd been in the past.

Nature, in order to be commanded, must be obeyed.

You're robust and resilient enough to handle whatever occurs, (b) you can't do anything about it anyway, and (c) you're looking at a big-enough picture and long-enough time line that whatever you have to accept is still only a negligible blip on the way to your goal.

Cheerfulness in all situations, especially the bad ones.

In Marcus's words is the secret to an art known as turning obstacles upside down. To act with "a reverse clause," so there is always a way out or another route to get to where you need to go. So that setbacks or problems are always expected and never permanent. Making certain that what impedes us can empower us.

They had the ability to see obstacles for what they were, the ingenuity to tackle them, and the will to endure a world mostly beyond their comprehension and control.

Well, far too many gave up. But a few didn't. They took "twice as good" as a challenge. They practiced harder. Looked for shortcuts and weak spots. Discerned allies among strange faces. Got kicked around a bit. Everything was an obstacle they had to flip.

Problems become opportunities.

On the path to successful action, we will fail—possibly many times. And that's okay. It can be a good thing, even. Action and failure are two sides of the same coin. One doesn't come without the other. What breaks this critical connection down is when people stop acting—because they've taken failure the wrong way.

When failure does come, ask: What went wrong here? What can be improved? What am I missing? This helps birth alternative ways of doing what needs to be done, ways that are often much better than what we started with. Failure puts you in corners you have to think your way out of. It is a source of breakthroughs.

An artist is given many different canvases and commissions in their lifetime, and what matters is that they treat each one as a priority. Whether it's the most glamorous or highest paying is irrelevant. Each project matters, and the only degrading part is giving less than one is capable of giving.

But a desire to help? No harshness, no deprivation, no toil should interfere with our empathy toward others. Compassion is always an option. Camaraderie as well. That's a power of the will that can never be taken away, only relinquished.

And so, if even our own mortality can have some benefit, how dare you say that you can't derive value from each and every other kind of obstacle you encounter?

It is so much better to be this way, isn't it? There is a lightness and a flexibility to this approach that seem very different from how weand most people—choose to live. With our disappointments and resentments and frustrations.

We can see the "bad" things that happen in our lives with gratitude and not with regret because we turn them from disaster to real benefit—from defeat to victory.

Fate doesn't have to be fatalistic. It can be destiny and freedom just as easily.

To be sure, no one is saying you've got to do it all at once.

In mastering these three disciplines we have the tools to flip any obstacle upside down. We are worthy of any and every challenge.

Of course, it is not enough to simply read this or say it. We must practice these maxims, rolling them over and over in our minds and acting on them until they become muscle memory.

So that under pressure and trial we get better—become better people, leaders, and thinkers. Because those trials and pressures will inevitably come. And they won't ever stop coming.

But don't worry, you're prepared for this now, this life of obstacles and adversity. You know how to handle them, how to brush aside obstacles and even benefit from them. You understand the process.

You are a person of action. And the thread of Stoicism runs through your life just as it did through theirs—just as it has for all of history, sometimes explicitly, sometimes not.

The essence of philosophy is action—in making good on the ability to turn the obstacle upside down with our minds. Understanding our problems for what's within them and their greater context. To see things *philosophically* and act accordingly.

Philosophy was never what happened in the classroom. It was a set of lessons from the battlefield of life.

The Latin translation for the title of *Enchiridion*—Epictetus's famous work—means "close at hand," or as some have said, "in your hands." That's what the philosophy was meant for: to be in your hands, to be an extension of you. Not something you read once and put up on a shelf. It was meant, as Marcus once wrote, to make us boxers instead of fencers—to wield our weaponry, we simply need to close our fists.

Now you are a philosopher and a person of action. And that is not a contradiction.Ryan brings philosophy out from the classroom and thrusts it back where it belongs, in our daily lives, helping anyone approaching any problem address it with equanimity and poise.

Ryan Holiday's The Obstacle is the Way decants in concentrated form the timeless techniques for self-mastery as employed to world-conquering effect by philosophers and men of action from Alexander the Great to Marcus Aurelius to Steve Jobs.

Inspired by Marcus Aurelius and concepts of Stoicism, Ryan Holiday has written a brilliant and engaging book, well beyond his years, teaching us how to deal with life's adversities and to turn negatives into positives.

Ryan Holiday teaches us how to summon our best selves. Most of us spend our lives dodging the hard stuff. Holiday exposes the tragic fallacy of this approach to living and offers us instead the philosophy of the Stoics, whose timeless lessons lead us out of fear, difficulty, and paralysis to triumph.

Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture.

You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

Love everything that happens: *AMOR FATI*

Meditate on your mortality

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.

He rarely rose to excess or anger, and never to hatred or bitterness.

It turns out that the wisdom of that short passage from Marcus Aurelius can be found in others as well, men and women who followed it like he did.

That struggle is the one constant in all of their lives.

Whatever we face, we have a choice: Will we be blocked by obstacles, or will we advance through and over them?

It asks: Are you worthy? Can you get past the things that inevitably fall in your way? Will you stand up and show us what you're made of?

And a rarer breed still has shown that they not only have what it takes, but they thrive and rally at every such challenge.

We're dissatisfied with our jobs, our relationships, our place in the world. We're trying to get somewhere, but something stands in the way.

So we do nothing. We blame our bosses, the economy, our politicians, other people, or we write ourselves off as failures or our goals as impossible. When really only one thing is at fault: our attitude and approach.

There have been countless lessons (and books) about achieving success, but no one ever taught us how to overcome failure, how to think about obstacles, how to treat and triumph over them, and so we are stuck.

What do these figures have that we lack? What are we missing?

John D. Rockefeller had it—for him it was cool headedness and self-discipline. Demosthenes, the great Athenian orator, had it—for him it was a relentless drive to improve himself through action and practice. Abraham Lincoln had it—for him it was humility, endurance, and compassionate will.

As it turns out, this is one thing all great men and women of history have in common. Like oxygen to a fire, obstacles became 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.

These were people who flipped their obstacles upside down. Who lived the words of Marcus Aurelius and followed a group which Cicero called the only "real philosophers"—the ancient Stoics—even if they'd never read them.* They had the ability to see obstacles for what they were, the ingenuity to tackle them, and the will to endure a world mostly beyond their comprehension and control.

The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never *forget,* within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.

They took "twice as good" as a challenge. They practiced harder. Looked for shortcuts and weak spots.

Whether we're having trouble getting a job, fighting against discrimination, running low on funds, stuck in a bad relationship, locking horns with some aggressive opponent, have an employee or student we just can't seem to reach, or are in the middle of a creative block, we need to know that there is a way. When we meet with adversity, we can turn it to advantage, based on their example.

All great victories, be they in politics, business, art, or seduction, involved resolving vexing problems with a potent cocktail of creativity, focus, and daring. When you have a goal, obstacles are actually teaching you how to get where you want to go—carving you a path.

Today, most of our obstacles are internal, not external. Since World War II we have lived in some of the most prosperous times in history. There are fewer armies to face, fewer fatal diseases and far more safety nets. But the world still rarely does exactly what we want.

Our generation needs an approach for overcoming obstacles and thriving amid chaos more than ever. One that will help turn our problems on their heads, using them as canvases on which to paint master works.

Overcoming obstacles is a discipline of three critical steps.

It begins with how we look at our specific problems, our attitude or approach; then the energy and creativity with which we actively break them down and turn them into opportunities; finally, the cultivation and maintenance of an inner will that allows us to handle defeat and difficulty.

It's three interdependent, interconnected, and fluidly contingent disciplines: Perception, Action, and the Will.

WHAT IS PERCEPTION? It's how we see and understand what occurs around us—and what we decide those events will mean. Our perceptions can be a source of strength or of great weakness. If we are emotional, subjective and shortsighted, we only add to our troubles.

To prevent becoming overwhelmed by the world around us, we must, as the ancients practiced, learn how to limit our passions and their control over our lives.

It takes skill and discipline to bat away the pests of bad perceptions, to separate reliable signals from deceptive ones, to filter out prejudice, expectation, and fear.

Rockefeller immediately put those insights to use. At twenty-five, a group of investors offered to invest approximately $500,000 at his direction if he could find the right oil wells in which to deploy the money. Grateful for the opportunity, Rockefeller set out to tour the nearby oil fields. A few days later, he shocked his backers by returning to Cleveland empty-handed, not having spent or invested a dollar of the funds. The opportunity didn't feel right to him at the time, no matter how excited the rest of the market was—so he refunded the money and stayed away from drilling.

It was this intense self-discipline and objectivity that allowed Rockefeller to seize advantage from obstacle after obstacle in his life, during the Civil War, and the panics of 1873, 1907, and 1929. As he once put it: He was inclined to see the opportunity in every disaster. To that we could add: He had the strength to resist temptation or excitement, no matter how seductive, no matter the situation.

Within twenty years of that first crisis, Rockefeller would alone control 90 percent of the oil market. His greedy competitors had perished. His nervous colleagues had sold their shares and left the business. His weak-hearted doubters had missed out.

For the rest of his life, the greater the chaos, the calmer Rockefeller would become, particularly when others around him were either panicked or mad with greed. He would make much of his fortune during these market fluctuations—because he could see while others could not.

Oh, how blessed young men are who have to struggle for a foundation and beginning in life.

I shall never cease to be grateful for the three and half years of apprenticeship and the difficulties to be overcome, all along the way.

You will come across obstacles in life—fair and unfair. And you will discover, time and time again, that what matters most is not what these obstacles are but how we see them, how we react to them, and whether we keep our composure.

Where one person sees a crisis, another can see opportunity.

Where one is blinded by success, another sees reality with ruthless objectivity. Where one loses control of emotions, another can remain calm.

Desperation, despair, fear, powerlessness—these reactions are functions of our perceptions. You must realize: Nothing *makes* us feel this way; we *choose* to give in to such feelings.

And it is precisely at this divergence—between how Rockefeller perceived his environment and how the rest of the world typically does—that his nearly incomprehensible success was born.

We can learn to perceive things differently, to cut through the illusions that others believe or fear. We can stop seeing the "problems" in front of us as problems. We can learn to focus on what things really are.

Our brains evolved for an environment very different from the one we currently inhabit. As a result, we carry all kinds of biological baggage. Humans are still primed to detect threats and dangers that no longer exist—think of the cold sweat when you're stressed about money, or the fight-or-flight response that kicks in when your boss yells at you. Our safety is not truly at risk here—there is little danger that we will starve or that violence will break out—though it certainly feels that way sometimes.

We have a choice about how we respond to this situation (or any situation, for that matter). We can be blindly led by these primal feelings or we can understand them and learn to filter them. Discipline in perception lets you clearly see the advantage and the proper course of action in every situation—without the pestilence of panic or fear.

There are a few things to keep in mind when faced with a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. We must try: To be objective To control emotions and keep an even keel To choose to see the good in a situation To steady our nerves To ignore what disturbs or limits others To place things in perspective To revert to the present moment To focus on what can be controlled This is how you see the opportunity within the obstacle. It does not happen on its own. It is a process—one that results from selfdiscipline and logic.

Choose not to be harmed—and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed—and you haven't been.

In his remarkable declaration, he told them, in so many words, "I know you had nothing to do with the injustice that brought me to this jail, so I'm willing to stay here until I get out. But I will not, under any circumstances, be treated like a prisoner—because I am not and never will be *powerless.*"

Instead of breaking down—as many would have done in such a bleak situation—Carter declined to surrender the freedoms that were innately his: his attitude, his beliefs, his choices.

Was he angry about what happened? Of course. He was furious. But understanding that anger was not constructive, he refused to rage. He refused to break or grovel or despair.

He would learn and read and make the most of the time he had on his hands. He would leave prison not only a free and innocent man, but a better and improved one.

No one can force us to give up or to believe something that is untrue (such as, that a situation is absolutely hopeless or impossible to improve). Our perceptions are the thing that we're in complete control of.

They can throw us in jail, label us, deprive us of our possessions, but they'll never control our thoughts, our beliefs, our *reactions*.

Carter did not have much power, but he understood that that was not the same thing as being powerless. Many great figures, from Nelson Mandela to Malcolm X, have come to understand this fundamental distinction. It's how they turned prison into the workshop where they transformed themselves and the schoolhouse where they began to transform others.

In fact, if we have our wits fully about us, we can step back and remember that situations, by themselves, cannot be good or bad. This is something—a judgment—that we, as human beings, bring to them with our perceptions.

"Nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so," as Shakespeare put it.

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.

Just because your mind tells you that something is awful or evil or unplanned or otherwise negative doesn't mean you have to agree.

Just because other people say that something is hopeless or crazy or broken to pieces doesn't mean it is. We decide what story to tell ourselves. Or whether we will tell one at all.

That's a man who has steadied himself properly. That's a man who has a job to do and would bear anything to get it done. That's nerve.

There is always a countermove, always an escape or a way through, so there is no reason to get worked up.

If your nerve holds, then nothing really did 'happen'—our perception made sure it was nothing of consequence.

When people panic, they make mistakes. They override systems. They disregard procedures, ignore rules. They deviate from the plan.