Book Notes - The Obstacle is The Way

Summary

The main point expressed throughout this book is that the challenge or resistance you face in your goals is what becomes the steps to pushing you to expand yourself. You should embrace these challenges rather than cower away from them. When you embrace the obstacles in your path you can come to expect them and use them to your advantage. No matter what happens, good or bad, you can use either to your advantage and grow from it. Flipping bad situations on their head as a learning experience or opportunity to challenge and prove yourself.

Key Points

• Perception
• Action
• Will

Book Notes

PART 1 - PERCEPTION

• To prevent becoming overwhelmed by the world around us we must learn how to limit our passions and their control over our lives.
• It takes skills & discipline to bat away the pest of bad perception, to separate reliable signals from deceptive ones, to filter out prejudice, expectations and fear. What is left is TRUTH.
• We will see things truly as they are - neither good nor bad.

The Discipline of Perception

• “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful” - Warren Buffet
• “Oh, how blessed young men are who have to struggle for a foundation and beginning in life” - John Rockefeller

Recognize Your Power

• “Choose not to be harmed - and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed - and you haven’t been” - Marcus Aurelis
• There is no good and bad without us, there is only perception. There is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means.
• A mistake becomes training.

Steady Your Nerves

• In situations of pressure and stress, talent is not the most sough-after characteristic. Grace and poise are, because these two attributes precede the opportunity to deploy any other skill.
• “Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself.”
• If emotion can’t change the condition or the situation you’re dealing with, it is likely an unhelpful emotion. Or, quite possibly a destructive one.
• We defeat emotions with logic. Then we can get to the root causes.

Practice Objectively

• The perceiving eye is weak; the observing eye is strong.
• Understand that the observing eye sees simply what is there. The perceiving eye sees more than what is there.

Alter Your Perspective

• When you break something apart, or look at it through some new angle, it loses its power over you.
• “Opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming around.”
• The difference between the right and wrong perspective is everything.

Is It Up to You?

• “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.”

Live In The Present Moment

• “The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything up close.”
• Focus on the moment, not the monster that may or may not be up ahead.

Think Differently

• To aim low meant to accept mediocre accomplishment
• Our perceptions determine, to an incredibly large degree what we are and are not capable of. In many ways they determine reality itself. When we believe in the obstacle more than the goal, which will inevitably triumph?

Finding the Opportunity

• Dwight D. Eisenhower’s handling of the blitzkrieg is a textbook example of the role our own perceptions play in the success or failure of those who oppose us.
• Only after you have controlled your emotions, and you can see objectively and stand steadily the next step becomes possible; A mental flip, so you’re not looking at the obstacle but at the opportunity within it.
• “There is good in everything, if only we look for it.”
• It’s our preconceptions that are the problem. They tell us that things should or need to be a certain way, so when they’re not, we naturally assume we are at a disadvantage.
• The struggle against an obstacle inevitable propels the fighter to a new level of functioning. The obstacle is an advantage, not adversity. The enemy is any perception that prevents us from seeing this.

PART II - ACTION

• Action is commonplace, right action is not.
• Not any kind of action will do, but directed action.

The Discipline of Action

• Are you the running towards the explosion? Or running away from it? Or worse, paralyzed and do nothing?
• We’ve all done it. Said “I am so [overwhelmed, tired, stressed, busy, blocked, outmatched]. And then what do we do about it? Go out and party. Or treat ourselves. Or sleep in. Or wait. It feels better to ignore or pretend. But you know deep down that this isn’t going to truly make it any better. You’ve got to act. And you’ve got to start now.

Get Moving

• “We must all either wear out or rust out, every one of us. My choice is to wear out.” - Theodore Roosevelt
• You’ve got to start to go anywhere.
• While you’re sleeping, traveling, attending meetings, or messing around online, you’re going soft. You’re not pressing ahead.
• Stay moving, always.
• If you want momentum, you’ll have to create it yourself, right now, by getting up and getting started.

Practice Persistence

• In trying all the wrong ways, a new way may emerge. This is how innovation works.
• Genius is often persistence in disguise.
• The thing standing in your way isn’t going anywhere.
• Once you start attacking an obstacle, quitting is not an option. It cannot enter your head.
• Once you envision yourself quitting altogether you might as well ring the bell. It’s done.
• “Persist and resist.” - Epictetus
• A new path, by definition, is uncleared. Only with persistence and time can we cut away debris and remove impediments.
• It’s suppose to be hard.
• Stop looking for angels and start looking for angles.

Iterate

• Failure is a feature. It’s the preceding feature to nearly all successes. Each time that happens we have new options. Problems become opportunities.
• Failure puts you in corners you have to think your way out of. It is a source of breakthroughs.
• Learning from failure ain’t free. The tuition is paid in discomfort or loss and having to start over.
• The one way to guarantee we don’t benefit from failure, is to not learn from it.
• Lessons come hard only if you’re deaf to them.
• Failure shows us the way - by showing us what isn’t the way.

Follow the Process

• You’ve got something very difficult to do. Break it down into pieces. Do what you need to do right now. Then do the next thing. Follow the process and not the prize.
• Don’t think about the end. Think about surviving.
• We are A-to-Z thinkers, fretting over A, obsessing over Z, yet forgetting all about B through Y.
• The process is about doing the right things right now. Not worrying about what might happen later, or the results, or the whole picture.

Do Your Job, Do It Right

• Everything we do matters. Everything is a chance to do and be your best.
• We owe it to ourselves to do it well.
• Whatever we face, our job is to respond with: hard work, honesty, helping others as best we can.

What’s Right is What Works

• Don’t worry about the ‘right’ way, worry about the right way. That is how we get things done.
• Any way the works - thats the motto.
• We spend a lot of time thinking about how things are suppose to be trying to get it all perfect. We tell ourselves that we’ll get started when all the conditions are right. When, really, it’d be better to focus on making due with what we’ve got. On focusing on results instead of petty methods.
• “I don’’t care if the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.”
• Think progress, not perfection.

In Praise of the Flank Attack

• Take a step back then go around the problem. Find some leverage. Approach from what is called the “line of least expectation”.
• Are you trying to barge through the front door? Because the back door, side doors, and windows may have been left open.
• Our disadvantages force us to be creative against our obstacles.
• Remember, sometimes the longest way around is the shortest way home.

Use Obstacles Against Themselves

• You can use the actions of others against themselves instead of acting yourself.
• Sometimes a problem needs less of you, and not more.
• When we want things so badly we can be our own worst enemy. In our eagerness, we strip the very screw we may want to turn and make it impossible to ever get what we want. We spin our tires in the snow or mud and dig a deeper rut.
• We get so consumed with moving forward that we forget there are other ways to get to where we are heading. It doesn’t occur to us that standing still or even heading backwards , might be the best way to advance.

Channel Your Energy

• Adversity can harden you. Or it can loosen you up and make you better if you let it in.
• Instead of giving in to frustration, we can put it to good use. It can power our actions.
• We act out, instead of act.
• Physical looseness combined with mental restraint. That is powerful. It’s a power that drives opponents nuts. It’s like we aren’t even trying like we’ve tuned out the world. Like we’re immune to external stressors or limitations on the march towards our goals. Because we are.

Seize the Offensive

• “The best men are not those who have waited for chance but those who have taken them; besieged chance, and conquered the chance, and made change the servitor.” - E.H. Chapin
• If you think it simply enough to take advantage of the opportunities that arise in your life, you will fall short of greatness.
• What you must do is learn how to press forward precisely when everyone around you sees disaster.
• While others are arrested by discouragement, we are not.
• Ordinary people shy way from negative situations, just as they do with failure. They do their best to avoid trouble. What great people do is the opposite. They are best in these situations. They turn personal tragedy or misfortune - really anything, everything- to their advantage.
• We sit here and complain that we’re not given opportunities or chances. But we are.

Prepare For None Of It to Work

• “In the meantime, cling tooth and nail to the following rule: not to give into adversity, not to trust prosperity, and always take full not of fortune’s habit of behaving as she pleases” -Seneca
• Run it through your head like this: Nothing can ever prevent us from trying. Ever.

##PART III - WILL

• Too often people think that will is how bad we want something. In actuality, the will has a lot more to do with surrender than with strength.

The Discipline of The Will

• It is not always possible for one man to rid the world of a great evil or stop a country bent towards conflict. Of course we try- because it can happen. But we should be ready for it not to. And we need to be able to find a greater purpose in this suffering and handle it with firmness and forbearance.
• This is the avenue for the final discipline: The Will. If perception and action were disciplines of the mind and the body, then will is the discipline of the heart and the soul. The will is the one thing we control completely, always. Whereas I can try to mitigate harmful perceptions and give 100 percent of my energy to actions, those attempts can be thwarted or inhibited. My will is different, because it is within me.
• It is the strength to endure, contextualize and derive meaning from the obstacles we cannot simply overcome (which as it happens, is the way of flipping the unflippable).
• We can think, act, and finally adjust to a world that is inherently unpredictable. This will is what prepares us for this, protects us against it, and allows us to thrive and be happy in spite of it.

Build Your Inner Citadel

• The inner citadel, that fortress inside of us that no external adversity can ever break down. It must be built and actively reinforced. During the good times, we strengthen ourselves and our bodies sos that during the difficult times, we can depend on it.
• The only way to strengthen and arch, is to put weight on it.
• The path of least resistance is a terrible teacher. We can’t afford to shy away from the things that intimidate us. We don’t need to take our wetness for granted.

Anticipation (Thinking Negatively)

• Your plan and the way things turn out rarely resemble each other. What you think you observe is also rarely what you’ll get.
• “if your not humble, life will visit humbleness upon you.” - Mike Tyson
• “Nothing happens to the wise man against his expectation.” - Seneca
• The only guarantee, ever is that things will go wrong.
• The only variable we control completely is ourselves.
• We are prepared for failure and ready for success.

The Art of Acquiescence

• Constraints in life are a good thing, they can direct us- push us to places and develop skills that we’d otherwise never have pursued.
• We must accept the things outside our control that happen to us.
• We often think about how things could have been better. Rarely do we consider how much worse things could have been.
• There is always someone or something that can change our plan.
• “Man proposes, God diposes”
• As fate would have it. Heaven forbid
• Nature permitting. Murphy’s law.
• If we use the metaphor that life is a game, it means playing the dice or the chips or the cards where they play.
• Nature, in order to be commanded, must be obeyed.

Love Everything That Happens - Amor Fati (A love of fate)

• To do great things we must be able to endure tragedy and setbacks.
• We must learn how to find joy in everything that happens.
• The next step after we discard our expectations and accept what happens to us, that certain things are outside of our control, is to love whatever happens to us and facing it with unfailing cheerfulness.
• This is the act of turning what we must do into what we get to do.
• Cheerfulness in all situations, especially the bad ones.
• We don’t get to choose what happens to us, but we can always choose how we feel about it. Why on earth would you choose to feel anything but good?
• There is always some good- even if only barely perceptible at first- contained within the bad. And we can find it and be cheerful because of it.

Perseverance

• Life is not about one obstacle, but many. We will overcome each obstacle- and there will be many- until we get there. Persistence is an action. Perseverance is a matter of the will. One is energy. The other, endurance.
• Persist and persevere.
• Our actions can be constrained, but our will can’t be.
• The true threat to determination, then, is not what happens to us, but us ourselves. Why would you be your own worse enemy.

Something Bigger Than Yourself

[INSERT QUOTE] pg. 163 - Henry Rollings - When we focus on others, on helping them or simply providing a good example, our own personal fears and troubles will diminish. - Sharped purpose gives us strength. - When you inflate your own role & self worth you will take losses personally and feel alone. - Start thinking: Unity over self. We’re in this together. - Help ourselves by helping them. Becoming better because of it, drawing purpose from it. - Whatever is in your way, can be turned into a source of strength by thinking of people other than yourself. You won’t have time to think of your own suffering and you’re too focused on them.

Meditate On Your Mortality

• Memento Mori (Remember you are mortal)
• Reminding ourselves each day that we will die helps us treat our time as a gift.
• Death is the most universal of our obstacles. It’s the one we can do the least about.

Prepare to Start Again

• Behind mountains are more mountains.
• The more you accomplish, the more things will stand in your way. You’re always fighting uphill. Get used to it.
• Passing one obstacle simply says you’re worthy of more.
• Simply flipping the obstacles that life throws at you by improving in spite of them, because of them. And no longer afraid. But excited, cheerful, and eagerly anticipating the next round.

Final Thoughts

• Bad stuff will happen to us. We can turn even this to our advantage. Always. It is an opportunity. Always.
• Vires acquirit eundo (We gather strength as we go).
• See things for what they are. Do what we can.
• Endure and bear what we must.

What blocked the path is now the path. What once impedes action advances action. The Obstacle is the Way.