While others are excited or afraid, we will remain calm and imperturbable. But it’s worth it, for what’s left is truth.

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. 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. If we are emotional, subjective and shortsighted, we only add to our troubles. Our perceptions can be a source of strength or of great weakness. It’s how we see and understand what occurs around us-and what we decide those events will mean. It’s three interdependent, interconnected, and fluidly contingent disciplines: Perception, Action, and the Will. 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. Overcoming obstacles is a discipline of three critical steps. “The Things which hurt,” Benjamin Franklin wrote, “Instruct.” Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.” “The obstacle in the path becomes the path. In Marcus’s words is the secret to an art known as turning obstacles upside down. _The impediment to action advances action._ What stands in the way becomes the way. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting.Īnd then he concluded with powerful words destined for maxim. Our actions may be impeded… but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions.

🎧 Listen for free on Scribd (plus 1+ million other books) The Obstacle Is The Way Interesting, well-writen and useful, anyone can benefit from this book, even if you never liked philosophy. A philosophy book about being a stoic in the 21st century.

The obstacle is the way stoicism