Everyone faces obstacles: a lost job, a failed project, an illness or simply a problem that will not go away. Ryan Holiday argues that the ancient Stoic philosophers had a practical method for these moments, and that people throughout history have used it, often without knowing its name.
In The Obstacle Is the Way, he turns that method into three disciplines: perception, action and will. This guide condenses the expanded tenth anniversary edition into twelve ideas, with the stories that carry them and practical steps for each. It closes with a one-page summary, two worksheets and a cheat sheet.
1 What stands in the way becomes the way
Ryan Holiday builds the book on one passage from Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor who wrote private notes to himself around the year 170, partly while at war. Marcus wrote that our actions may be blocked, but our intentions and attitudes cannot be, because the mind can adapt and turn an obstacle to its own use.
2 See clearly before you act
The first discipline is perception. Holiday's example is John D. Rockefeller, who took his first job as a bookkeeper in Cleveland at sixteen. Two years later came the Panic of 1857, a national financial crisis that hit his city hard. He could have panicked or quit finance for something safer.
3 You keep control of yourself
Holiday tells the story of the boxer Rubin Hurricane Carter. At the height of his career in the mid-1960s, he was wrongly convicted of a triple murder and given three life sentences. When he arrived at prison, he told the warden and guards that he would not give up the one thing he still controlled, himself.
4 Control your emotions and practice objectivity
When America first trained astronauts, Holiday writes, the skill it drilled most was not panicking. NASA rehearsed launch day for them hundreds of times, from breakfast to the ride to the launch site, so nothing would be unfamiliar. John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, kept his heart rate under a hundred beats per minute for nearly a day in space.
5 Change the frame, and ask whether it is up to you
Holiday tells how the Athenian general Pericles was setting sail with 150 ships when an eclipse plunged the fleet into darkness and his crew panicked. Pericles held his cloak in front of a steersman's face and asked whether he was afraid of that darkness. When the man said no, Pericles asked why the cause should matter.
6 Stay in the present and look for opportunity
Holiday lists companies started in depressions or crises, among them FedEx during the 1973 oil crisis, UPS during the Panic of 1907 and Hewlett-Packard during the Great Depression. Their founders could not control the economy. They could only focus on the work in front of them.
7 Get moving, and keep moving
The second discipline is action. Holiday's model is Demosthenes, who was born sickly, lost his father at seven and had his inheritance stolen by his guardians. He also had a severe speech impediment. Yet he set out to become a great speaker after watching one hold a crowd.
8 Persist, and treat failure as practice
For nearly a year in the American Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant tried to take the city of Vicksburg on the Mississippi. He attacked head-on, tried to go around, dug a canal and flooded land to float boats past. Nothing worked, newspapers mocked him and a replacement was waiting.
9 Follow the process, and do each job well
Holiday describes Nick Saban, who coached the University of Alabama football team for seventeen seasons. Saban taught his players to think not about championships but about what they had to do in this drill, on this play, in this moment. He called it The Process.
10 Go around, and use the obstacle against itself
Not every obstacle should be attacked head-on. Holiday notes that George Washington, often pictured as a bold general, mostly avoided big battles with the stronger British army. He hit where he was not expected, kept his small army alive and wore the enemy down.
11 Build your will and prepare for the worst
The third discipline is will, the inner strength for situations you cannot change. Holiday describes Abraham Lincoln's lifelong depression, which twice nearly drove him to suicide. Lincoln learned to endure it, and that endurance, Holiday argues, prepared him to lead through the Civil War.
12 Accept, love what happens and begin again
Some obstacles cannot be overcome, only accepted. Holiday tells how Ernest Hemingway's wife lost a bag containing almost all his manuscripts at a Paris train station in 1922. Years of work vanished. Holiday writes that the loss pushed Hemingway to start fresh and helped him find a new style.
The Obstacle Is the Way in short
The Obstacle Is the Way applies Stoic philosophy to everyday problems. Ryan Holiday starts from a line by Marcus Aurelius: what blocks action can advance it, and what stands in the way becomes the way. Every obstacle, he argues, carries a chance to grow.
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