# The Obstacle Is the Way  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Ryan Holiday]] - Full Title:: The Obstacle Is the Way - Category: #books ## Highlights > But in a scant eighty-five words Marcus Aurelius so clearly defined and articulated a timeless idea that he eclipses the great names of those who came before him: Chrysippus, Zeno, Cleanthes, Ariston, Apollonius, Junius Rusticus, Epictetus, Seneca, Musonius Rufus. It is more than enough for us. Our actions may be impeded . . . but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. And then he concluded with powerful words destined for maxim. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. ([Location 85](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=85)) > 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. ([Location 98](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=98)) > "The Things which hurt," Benjamin Franklin wrote, "instruct." ([Location 212](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=212)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Objective judgment, now at this very moment. Unselfish action, now at this very moment. Willing acceptance—now at this very moment—of all external events. That’s all you need. —MARCUS AURELIUS ([Location 223](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=223)) > This insight lives on today in Warren Buffet’s famous adage to "be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful." ([Location 271](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=271)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > One critic, in awe of Rockefeller’s empire, described the Standard Oil trust as a "mythical protean creature" capable of metamorphosing with every attempt by the competitors or the government to dismantle it. They meant it as a criticism, but it was actually a function of Rockefeller’s personality: resilient, adaptable, calm, brilliant. He could not be rattled—not by economic crisis, not by a glittery mirage of false opportunities, not by aggressive, bullying enemies, not even by federal prosecutors (for whom he was a notoriously difficult witness to cross-examine, never rising to take the bait or defend himself or get upset). ([Location 273](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=273)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > "Oh, how blessed young men are who have to struggle for a foundation and beginning in life," he once said. "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." ([Location 280](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=280)) - Note: John D Rockefeller > 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. Or, like Rockefeller, choose not to. ([Location 288](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=288)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Too often we react emotionally, get despondent, and lose our perspective. All that does is turn bad things into really bad things. Unhelpful perceptions can invade our minds—that sacred place of reason, action and will—and throw off our compass. ([Location 300](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=300)) > 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. ([Location 302](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=302)) > 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 ([Location 313](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=313)) > Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been. —MARCUS AURELIUS ([Location 323](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=323)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a top contender for the middleweight title, at the height of his boxing career in the mid-1960s, was wrongly accused of a horrific crime he did not commit: triple homicide. He went on trial, and a biased, bogus verdict followed: three life sentences. It was a dizzying fall from the heights of success and fame. Carter reported to prison in an expensive, tailored suit, wearing a $5,000 diamond ring and a gold watch. And so, waiting in line to be entered into the general inmate population, he asked to speak to someone in charge. Looking the warden in the eye, Carter proceeded to inform him and the guards that he was not giving up the last thing he controlled: himself. 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. Whether they threw him in prison or threw him in solitary confinement for weeks on end, Carter maintained that he still had choices, choices that could not be taken from him even though his physical freedom had been. ([Location 325](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=325)) > All of this had a purpose: Every second of his energy was to be spent on his legal case. Every waking minute was spent reading—law books, philosophy, history. They hadn’t ruined his life—they’d just put him somewhere he didn’t deserve to be and he did not intend to stay there. 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. ([Location 338](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=338)) - Note: Reuben hurricane carter > Even in prison, deprived of nearly everything, some freedoms remain. Your mind remains your own (if you’re lucky, you have books) and you have time—lots of time. 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. ([Location 350](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=350)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > "Nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so," as Shakespeare put it. ([Location 358](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=358)) > 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. ([Location 367](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=367)) > What such a man needs is not courage but nerve control, cool headedness. This he can get only by practice. —THEODORE ROOSEVELT ([Location 378](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=378)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > We must possess, as Voltaire once explained about the secret to the great military success of the first Duke of Marlborough, that "tranquil courage in the midst of tumult and serenity of soul in danger, which the English call a cool head." ([Location 401](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=401)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself. —PUBLIUS SYRUS ([Location 417](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=417)) > As Gavin de Becker writes in The Gift of Fear, "When you worry, ask yourself, ‘What am I choosing to not see right now?’ What important things are you missing because you chose worry over introspection, alertness or wisdom?" ([Location 450](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=450)) > Right, no one said anything about not feeling it. No one said you can’t ever cry. Forget "manliness." If you need to take a moment, by all means, go ahead. Real strength lies in the control or, as Nassim Taleb put it, the domestication of one’s emotions, not in pretending they don’t exist. ([Location 456](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=456)) > Or try Marcus’s question: Does what happened keep you from acting with justice, generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, humility, straightforwardness? ([Location 474](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=474)) > Don’t let the force of an impression when it first hit you knock you off your feet; just say to it: Hold on a moment; let me see who you are and what you represent. Let me put you to the test. —EPICTETUS ([Location 482](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=482)) > In the writings of the Stoics we see an exercise that might well be described as Contemptuous Expressions. The Stoics use contempt as an agent to lay things bare and "to strip away the legend that encrusts them." ([Location 504](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=504)) > Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant. —VIKTOR FRANKL ([Location 524](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=524)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > In life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control. Where will I find good and bad? In me, in my choices. —EPICTETUS ([Location 573](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=573)) > Serenity Prayer. 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. ([Location 604](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=604)) > Behind the Serenity Prayer is a two-thousand-year-old Stoic phrase: "ta eph’hemin, ta ouk eph’hemin." What is up to us, what is not up to us. And what is up to us? Our emotions Our judgments Our creativity Our attitude Our perspective Our desires Our decisions Our determination ([Location 610](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=610)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close up. —CHUCK PALAHNIUK ([Location 634](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=634)) > Genius is the ability to put into effect what is in your mind. There’s no other definition of it. —F. SCOTT FITZGERALD ([Location 680](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=680)) > A good person dyes events with his own color . . . and turns whatever happens to his own benefit. —SENECA ([Location 728](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=728)) > Then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood. —SHAKESPEARE ([Location 807](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=807)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Some academic once asked Demosthenes what the three most important traits of speechmaking were. His reply says it all: "Action, Action, Action!" ([Location 857](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=857)) > People turn shit into sugar all the time—shit that’s a lot worse than whatever we’re dealing with. ([Location 875](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=875)) > No one is coming to save you. And if we’d like to go where we claim we want to go—to accomplish what we claim are our goals—there is only one way. And that’s to meet our problems with the right action. Therefore, we can always (and only) greet our obstacles with energy with persistence with a coherent and deliberate process with iteration and resilience with pragmatism with strategic vision with craftiness and savvy and an eye for opportunity and pivotal moments Are you ready to get to work? ([Location 889](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=889)) > We must all either wear out or rust out, every one of us. My choice is to wear out. —THEODORE ROOSEVELT ([Location 897](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=897)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > In the first years of World War II, there was no worse assignment for British troops than being sent to the North African front. Methodical and orderly, the British hated the grueling weather and terrain that wreaked havoc on their machines and their plans. They acted how they felt: slow, timid, cautious. German Field Marshal General Erwin Rommel, on the other hand, loved it. He saw war as a game. A dangerous, reckless, untidy, fast-paced game. And, most important, he took to this game with incredible energy and was perennially pushing his troops forward. The German troops had a saying about him: Where Rommel is, there is the front. That’s the next step: ramming your feet into the stirrups and really going for it. ([Location 924](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=924)) > He says the best way out is always through And I agree to that, or in so far As I can see no way out but through. —ROBERT FROST ([Location 956](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=956)) > Consider this mind-set. never in a hurry never worried never desperate never stopping short Remember and remind yourself of a phrase favored by Epictetus: "persist and resist." Persist in your efforts. Resist giving in to distraction, discouragement, or disorder. ([Location 1004](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1004)) > What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first steps to something better. —WENDELL PHILLIPS ([Location 1025](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1025)) > Under the comb the tangle and the straight path are the same. —HERACLITUS ([Location 1080](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1080)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble. (Quidvis recte factum quamvis humile praeclarum.) —SIR HENRY ROYCE ([Location 1147](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1147)) > The great psychologist Viktor Frankl, survivor of three concentration camps, found presumptuousness in the age-old question: "What is the meaning of life?" As though it is someone else’s responsibility to tell you. Instead, he said, the world is asking you that question. And it’s your job to answer with your actions. ([Location 1189](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1189)) > The cucumber is bitter? Then throw it out. There are brambles in the path? Then go around. That’s all you need to know. —MARCUS AURELIUS ([Location 1200](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1200)) > At twenty-one, Richard Wright was not the world-famous author he would eventually be. But poor and black, he decided he would read and no one could stop him. Did he storm the library and make a scene? No, not in the Jim Crow South he didn’t. Instead, he forged a note that said, "Dear Madam: Will you please let this nigger boy have some books by HL Mencken?" (because no one would write that about themselves, right?), and checked them out with a stolen library card, pretending they were for someone else. ([Location 1234](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1234)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > As Deng Xiaoping once said, "I don’t care if the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice." ([Location 1243](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1243)) > The Stoics had their own reminder: "Don’t go expecting Plato’s Republic." ([Location 1244](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1244)) > Whoever cannot seek the unforeseen sees nothing, for the known way is an impasse. —HERACLITUS ([Location 1254](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1254)) > In a study of some 30 conflicts comprising more than 280 campaigns from ancient to modern history, the brilliant strategist and historian B. H. Liddell Hart came to a stunning conclusion: In only 6 of the 280 campaigns was the decisive victory a result of a direct attack on the enemy’s main army. ([Location 1273](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1273)) > As Hart writes in his masterwork Strategy: [T]he Great Captain will take even the most hazardous indirect approach—if necessary over mountains, deserts or swamps, with only a fraction of the forces, even cutting himself loose from his communications. Facing, in fact, every unfavorable condition rather than accept the risk of stalemate invited by direct approach. ([Location 1278](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1278)) > As someone once put it after fighting Jigoro Kano, the legendary five-foot-tall founder of judo, "Trying to fight with Kano was like trying to fight with an empty jacket!" That can be you. ([Location 1294](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1294)) > The great philosopher Søren Kierkegaard rarely sought to convince people directly from a position of authority. Instead of lecturing, he practiced a method he called "indirect communication." Kierkegaard would write under pseudonyms, where each fake personality would embody a different platform or perspective—writing multiple times on the same subject from multiple angles to convey his point emotionally and dramatically. He would rarely tell the reader "do this" or "think that." Instead he would show new ways of looking at or understanding the world. ([Location 1307](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1307)) > Remember, sometimes the longest way around is the shortest way home. ([Location 1318](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1318)) > Wise men are able to make a fitting use even of their enmities. —PLUTARCH ([Location 1320](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1320)) > Weak compared to the forces he hoped to change, Gandhi leaned into that weakness, exaggerated it, exposed himself. He said to the most powerful occupying military in the world, I’m marching to the ocean to collect salt in direct violation of your laws. He was provoking them—What are you going to do about it? There is nothing wrong with what we’re doing—knowing that it placed authorities in an impossible dilemma: Enforce a bankrupt policy or abdicate. Within that framework, the military’s enormous strength is neutralized. Its very usage is counterproductive. ([Location 1327](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1327)) > Martin Luther King Jr., taking Gandhi’s lead, told his followers that they would meet "physical force with soul force." In other words, they would use the power of opposites. In the face of violence they would be peaceful, to hate they would answer with love—and in the process, they would expose those attributes as indefensible and evil. ([Location 1331](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1331)) > So instead of fighting obstacles, find a means of making them defeat themselves. ([Location 1345](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1345)) > The great strategist Saul Alinsky believed that if you "push a negative hard enough and deep enough it will break through into its counterside." Every positive has its negative. Every negative has its positive. The action is in the pushing through—all the way through to the other side. Making a negative into a positive. ([Location 1370](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1370)) > The harder Bucephalus ran, the sooner he got tired out. The more vicious the police response to civil disobedience, the more sympathetic the cause becomes. The more they fight, the easier it becomes. The harder you fight, the less you’ll achieve (other than exhaustion). So it goes with our problems. ([Location 1377](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1377)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstance revert at once to yourself and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better grasp of harmony if you keep going back to it. —MARCUS AURELIUS ([Location 1380](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1380)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Toussaint Louverture, the former Haitian slave turned general, so exasperated his French enemies that they once remarked: "Cet homme fait donc l’ouverture partout" ("This man makes an opening everywhere"). He was so fluid, so uncontainable, he was actually given the surname Louverture, meaning "the opening." It makes sense. ([Location 1405](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1405)) > The best men are not those who have waited for chances but who have taken them; besieged chance, conquered the chance, and made chance the servitor. —E. H. CHAPIN ([Location 1421](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1421)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Ignore the politics and focus on the brilliant strategic advice that Obama’s adviser Rahm Emanuel, once gave him. "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. [A] crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before." ([Location 1439](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1439)) > If you look at history, some of our greatest leaders used shocking or negative events to push through much-needed reforms that otherwise would have had little chance of passing. We can apply that in our own lives. You always planned to do something. Write a screenplay. Travel. Start a business. Approach a possible mentor. Launch a movement. Well, now something has happened—some disruptive event like a failure or an accident or a tragedy. Use it. ([Location 1441](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1441)) > Every chemical reaction requires a catalyst. Let this be yours. ([Location 1448](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1448)) > If you don’t take that, it’s on you. Napoleon described war in simple terms: Two armies are two bodies that clash and attempt to frighten each other. At impact, there is a moment of panic and it is that moment that the superior commander turns to his advantage. ([Location 1457](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1457)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > In the meantime, cling tooth and nail to the following rule: not to give in to adversity, not to trust prosperity, and always take full note of fortune’s habit of behaving just as she pleases. —SENECA ([Location 1474](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1474)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Lincoln was strong and decisive as a leader. But he also embodied the Stoic maxim: sustine et abstine. Bear and forbear. ([Location 1558](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1558)) > give up our desire to control other people and events. It’s easier to persist in our efforts and actions than to endure the uncomfortable or the painful. It’s easier to think and act than it is to practice wisdom. These lessons come harder but are, in the end, the most critical to wresting advantage from adversity. In every situation, we can Always prepare ourselves for more difficult times. Always accept what we’re unable to change. Always manage our expectations. Always persevere. Always learn to love our fate and what happens to us. Always protect our inner self, retreat into ourselves. Always submit to a greater, larger cause. Always remind ourselves of our own mortality. And, of course, prepare to start the cycle once more. ([Location 1572](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1572)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > If thy faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small. —PROVERBS 24:10 ([Location 1583](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1583)) > During Passover Seder, the menu is bitter herbs and unleavened bread—the "bread of affliction." Why? In some ways, this taps into the fortitude that sustained the community for generations. The ritual not only celebrates and honors Jewish traditions, but it prompts those partaking in the feast to visualize and possess the strength that has kept them going. This is strikingly similar to what the Stoics called the Inner Citadel, that fortress inside of us that no external adversity can ever break down. An important caveat is that we are not born with such a structure; it must be built and actively reinforced. During the good times, we strengthen ourselves and our bodies so that during the difficult times, we can depend on it. We protect our inner fortress so it may protect us. ([Location 1616](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1616)) > You’ll have far better luck toughening yourself up than you ever will trying to take the teeth out of a world that is—at best—indifferent to your existence. ([Location 1624](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1624)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > It’s almost a cliché at this point, but the observation that the way to strengthen an arch is to put weight on it—because it binds the stones together, and only with tension does it hold weight—is a great metaphor. ([Location 1631](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1631)) > Offer a guarantee and disaster threatens. —ANCIENT INSCRIPTION AT THE ORACLE OF DELPHI ([Location 1640](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1640)) > She is using a technique designed by psychologist Gary Klein known as a premortem. ([Location 1645](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1645)) > Mike Tyson, who, reflecting on the collapse of his fortune and fame, told a reporter, "If you’re not humble, life will visit humbleness upon you." ([Location 1654](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1654)) > Today, the premortem is increasingly popular in business circles, from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies and the Harvard Business Review. But like all great ideas, it is actually nothing new. The credit goes to the Stoics. They even had a better name: premeditatio malorum (premeditation of evils). ([Location 1658](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1658)) > A writer like Seneca would begin by reviewing or rehearsing his plans, say, to take a trip. And then he would go over, in his head (or in writing), the things that could go wrong or prevent it from happening: a storm could arise, the captain could fall ill, the ship could be attacked by pirates. "Nothing happens to the wise man against his expectation," he wrote to a friend.  ". . . nor do all things turn out for him as he wished but as he reckoned—and above all he reckoned that something could block his plans." Always prepared for disruption, always working that disruption into our plans. Fitted, as they say, for defeat or victory. And let’s be honest, a pleasant surprise is a lot better than an unpleasant one. What if . . . Then I will . . . What if . . . Instead I’ll just . . . What if . . . No problem, we can always . . . And in the case where nothing could be done, the Stoics would use it as an important practice to do something the rest of us too often fail to do: manage expectations. Because sometimes the only answer to "What if . . ." is, It will suck but we’ll be okay. ([Location 1660](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1660)) > Common wisdom provides us with the maxims: Beware the calm before the storm. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. The worst is yet to come. It gets worse before it gets better. ([Location 1680](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1680)) > The Fates guide the person who accepts them and hinder the person who resists them. —CLEANTHES ([Location 1703](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1703)) > "True genius," as the infamous Dr. Samuel Johnson once said, "is a mind of large general powers accidentally determined in some particular direction." ([Location 1717](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1717)) > You don’t have to like something to master it—or to use it to some advantage. When the cause of our problem lies outside of us, we are better for accepting it and moving on. For ceasing to kick and fight against it, and coming to terms with it. The Stoics have a beautiful name for this attitude. They call it the Art of Acquiescence. ([Location 1731](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1731)) > Think of George Washington, putting everything he had into the American Revolution, and then saying, "The event is in the hand of God." Or Eisenhower, writing to his wife on the eve of the Allied invasion at Sicily: "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." These were not guys prone to settling or leaving the details up to other people—but they understood ultimately that what happened would happen. And they’d go from there. ([Location 1757](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1757)) > "Man proposes but God disposes. ([Location 1762](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1762)) > As Francis Bacon once said, nature, in order to be commanded, must be obeyed. ([Location 1773](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1773)) > My formula for greatness in a human being is 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. —NIETZSCHE ([Location 1775](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1775)) > Edison calmly but quickly made his way to the fire, through the now hundreds of onlookers and devastated employees, looking for his son. "Go get your mother and all her friends," he told his son with childlike excitement. "They’ll never see a fire like this again." What?! Don’t worry, Edison calmed him. "It’s all right. We’ve just got rid of a lot of rubbish." ([Location 1782](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1782)) > As Jack London, the famous novelist, reported from ringside seats: No one understands him, this man who smiles. Well, the story of the fight is the story of a smile. If ever a man won by nothing more fatiguing than a smile, Johnson won today. ([Location 1814](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1814)) > "Gentleman, I am hardening on this enterprise. I repeat, I am now hardening towards this enterprise." —WINSTON CHURCHILL ([Location 1842](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1842)) > That Tennyson line in full: Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield ([Location 1865](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1865)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > As Emerson wrote in 1841, If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life. ([Location 1877](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1877)) > This is perseverance. And with it, Emerson said, "with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear." ([Location 1889](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1889)) > To quote Beethoven: "The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and industry, Thus far and no farther." ([Location 1891](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1891)) > Determination, if you think about it, is invincible. Nothing other than death can prevent us from following Churchill’s old acronym: KBO. Keep Buggering On. ([Location 1896](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1896)) > A few years ago, in the middle of the financial crisis, the artist and musician Henry Rollins managed to express this deeply human obligation better than millennia of religious doctrine ever have: People are getting a little desperate. People might not show their best elements to you. You must never lower yourself to being a person you don’t like. There is no better time than now to have a moral and civic backbone. To have a moral and civic true north. This is a tremendous opportunity for you, a young person, to be heroic. ([Location 1934](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1934)) > Sometimes when we are personally stuck with some intractable or impossible problem, one of the best ways to create opportunities or new avenues for movement is to think: If I can’t solve this for myself, how can I at least make this better for other people? Take it for granted, for a second, that there is nothing else in it for us, nothing we can do for ourselves. How can we use this situation to benefit others? How can we salvage some good out of this? If not for me, then for my family or the others I’m leading or those who might later find themselves in a similar situation. ([Location 1943](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1943)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Pride can be broken. Toughness has its limits. 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. ([Location 1959](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1959)) > Stop pretending that what you’re going through is somehow special or unfair. Whatever trouble you’re having—no matter how difficult—is not some unique misfortune picked out especially for you. It just is what it is. ([Location 1961](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1961)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. —DR. JOHNSON ([Location 1973](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1973)) > In late 1569, a French nobleman named Michel de Montaigne was given up as dead after being flung from a galloping horse. As his friends carried his limp and bloodied body home, Montaigne watched life slip away from his physical self, not traumatically but almost flimsily, like some dancing spirit on the "tip of his lips." Only to have it return at the last possible second. ([Location 1975](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1975)) > And so it was for Montaigne. Coming so close to death energized him, made him curious. No longer was death something to be afraid of—looking it in the eyes had been a relief, even inspiring. ([Location 1982](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1982)) > Death doesn’t make life pointless, but rather purposeful. ([Location 1984](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1984)) > For instance, Montaigne once wrote of an ancient drinking game in which participants took turns holding up a painting of a corpse inside a coffin and toasting to it: "Drink and be merry for when you’re dead you will look like this." ([Location 1991](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1991)) > As Shakespeare wrote in The Tempest not many years later, as he himself was growing older, "Every third thought shall be my grave." ([Location 1993](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1993)) > Every culture has its own way of teaching the same lesson: Memento mori, the Romans would remind themselves. Remember you are mortal. ([Location 1994](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1994)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > They figure out what they need to do and do it, fitting in as much as possible before the clock expires. They figure out how, when that moment strikes, to say, Of course, I would have liked to last a little longer, but I made a lot of out what I was already given so this works too. ([Location 2015](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=2015)) > Live on in your blessings, your destiny’s been won. But ours calls us on from one ordeal to the next. —VIRGIL ([Location 2026](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=2026)) > As the Haitian proverb puts it: Behind mountains are more mountains. Elysium is a myth. One does not overcome an obstacle to enter the land of no obstacles. ([Location 2033](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=2033)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Late in his reign, sick and possibly near death, Marcus Aurelius received surprising news. His old friend and most trusted general, Avidius Cassius, had rebelled in Syria. Having heard the emperor was vulnerable or possibly dead, the ambitious general had decided to declare himself Caesar and forcibly seize the throne. Marcus should have been angry. History would have forgiven him for wanting to avenge this enemy. To crush this man who had betrayed him, who threatened his life, his family, and his legacy. Instead, Marcus did nothing—going as far as to keep the news secret from his troops, who might have been enraged or provoked on his behalf—but waited to see if Cassius would come to his senses. The man did not. And so Marcus Aurelius called a council of his soldiers and made a rather extraordinary announcement. They would march against Cassius and obtain the "great prize of war and of victory." But of course, because it was Marcus, this war prize was something wholly different. They would capture Cassius and endeavor not to kill him, but ". . . forgive a man who has wronged one, to remain a friend to one who has transgressed friendship, to continue faithful to one who has broken faith." Marcus had controlled his perceptions. He wasn’t angry, he didn’t despise his enemy. He would not say an ill word against him. He would not take it personally. Then he acted—rightly and firmly—ordering troops to Rome to calm the panicking crowds and then set out to do what must be done: protect the empire, put down a threat. As he told his men, if there was one profit they could derive from this awful situation that they had not wanted, it would be to "settle this affair well and show to all mankind that there is a right way to deal even with civil wars." The obstacle becomes the way. ([Location 2045](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=2045)) > The Stoics liked to use the metaphor of fire. Writing in his journal, Marcus once reminded himself that "when the fire is strong, it soon appropriates to itself the matter which is heaped on it, and consumes it, and rises higher by means of this very material." ([Location 2063](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=2063)) > The philosopher and writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb defined a Stoic as someone who "transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation and desire into undertaking." It’s a loop that becomes easier over time. ([Location 2096](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=2096)) > There’s a saying in Latin: Vires acquirit eundo (We gather strength as we go). That’s how it works. That’s our motto. ([Location 2099](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=2099)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > See things for what they are. Do what we can. Endure and bear what we must. What blocked the path now is a path. What once impeded action advances action. The Obstacle is the Way. ([Location 2115](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=2115)) > To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school . . . it is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU ([Location 2120](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=2120)) > When Thomas Jefferson died, he had a copy of Seneca on his nightstand. ([Location 2130](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=2130)) # The Obstacle Is the Way  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Ryan Holiday]] - Full Title:: The Obstacle Is the Way - Category: #books ## Highlights > But in a scant eighty-five words Marcus Aurelius so clearly defined and articulated a timeless idea that he eclipses the great names of those who came before him: Chrysippus, Zeno, Cleanthes, Ariston, Apollonius, Junius Rusticus, Epictetus, Seneca, Musonius Rufus. It is more than enough for us. Our actions may be impeded . . . but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. And then he concluded with powerful words destined for maxim. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. ([Location 85](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=85)) > 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. ([Location 98](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=98)) > "The Things which hurt," Benjamin Franklin wrote, "instruct." ([Location 212](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=212)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Objective judgment, now at this very moment. Unselfish action, now at this very moment. Willing acceptance—now at this very moment—of all external events. That’s all you need. —MARCUS AURELIUS ([Location 223](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=223)) > This insight lives on today in Warren Buffet’s famous adage to "be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful." ([Location 271](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=271)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > One critic, in awe of Rockefeller’s empire, described the Standard Oil trust as a "mythical protean creature" capable of metamorphosing with every attempt by the competitors or the government to dismantle it. They meant it as a criticism, but it was actually a function of Rockefeller’s personality: resilient, adaptable, calm, brilliant. He could not be rattled—not by economic crisis, not by a glittery mirage of false opportunities, not by aggressive, bullying enemies, not even by federal prosecutors (for whom he was a notoriously difficult witness to cross-examine, never rising to take the bait or defend himself or get upset). ([Location 273](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=273)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > "Oh, how blessed young men are who have to struggle for a foundation and beginning in life," he once said. "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." ([Location 280](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=280)) - Note: John D Rockefeller > 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. Or, like Rockefeller, choose not to. ([Location 288](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=288)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Too often we react emotionally, get despondent, and lose our perspective. All that does is turn bad things into really bad things. Unhelpful perceptions can invade our minds—that sacred place of reason, action and will—and throw off our compass. ([Location 300](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=300)) > 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. ([Location 302](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=302)) > 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 ([Location 313](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=313)) > Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been. —MARCUS AURELIUS ([Location 323](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=323)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a top contender for the middleweight title, at the height of his boxing career in the mid-1960s, was wrongly accused of a horrific crime he did not commit: triple homicide. He went on trial, and a biased, bogus verdict followed: three life sentences. It was a dizzying fall from the heights of success and fame. Carter reported to prison in an expensive, tailored suit, wearing a $5,000 diamond ring and a gold watch. And so, waiting in line to be entered into the general inmate population, he asked to speak to someone in charge. Looking the warden in the eye, Carter proceeded to inform him and the guards that he was not giving up the last thing he controlled: himself. 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. Whether they threw him in prison or threw him in solitary confinement for weeks on end, Carter maintained that he still had choices, choices that could not be taken from him even though his physical freedom had been. ([Location 325](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=325)) > All of this had a purpose: Every second of his energy was to be spent on his legal case. Every waking minute was spent reading—law books, philosophy, history. They hadn’t ruined his life—they’d just put him somewhere he didn’t deserve to be and he did not intend to stay there. 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. ([Location 338](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=338)) - Note: Reuben hurricane carter > Even in prison, deprived of nearly everything, some freedoms remain. Your mind remains your own (if you’re lucky, you have books) and you have time—lots of time. 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. ([Location 350](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=350)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > "Nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so," as Shakespeare put it. ([Location 358](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=358)) > 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. ([Location 367](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=367)) > What such a man needs is not courage but nerve control, cool headedness. This he can get only by practice. —THEODORE ROOSEVELT ([Location 378](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=378)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > We must possess, as Voltaire once explained about the secret to the great military success of the first Duke of Marlborough, that "tranquil courage in the midst of tumult and serenity of soul in danger, which the English call a cool head." ([Location 401](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=401)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself. —PUBLIUS SYRUS ([Location 417](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=417)) > As Gavin de Becker writes in The Gift of Fear, "When you worry, ask yourself, ‘What am I choosing to not see right now?’ What important things are you missing because you chose worry over introspection, alertness or wisdom?" ([Location 450](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=450)) > Right, no one said anything about not feeling it. No one said you can’t ever cry. Forget "manliness." If you need to take a moment, by all means, go ahead. Real strength lies in the control or, as Nassim Taleb put it, the domestication of one’s emotions, not in pretending they don’t exist. ([Location 456](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=456)) > Or try Marcus’s question: Does what happened keep you from acting with justice, generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, humility, straightforwardness? ([Location 474](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=474)) > Don’t let the force of an impression when it first hit you knock you off your feet; just say to it: Hold on a moment; let me see who you are and what you represent. Let me put you to the test. —EPICTETUS ([Location 482](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=482)) > In the writings of the Stoics we see an exercise that might well be described as Contemptuous Expressions. The Stoics use contempt as an agent to lay things bare and "to strip away the legend that encrusts them." ([Location 504](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=504)) > Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant. —VIKTOR FRANKL ([Location 524](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=524)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > In life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control. Where will I find good and bad? In me, in my choices. —EPICTETUS ([Location 573](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=573)) > Serenity Prayer. 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. ([Location 604](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=604)) > Behind the Serenity Prayer is a two-thousand-year-old Stoic phrase: "ta eph’hemin, ta ouk eph’hemin." What is up to us, what is not up to us. And what is up to us? Our emotions Our judgments Our creativity Our attitude Our perspective Our desires Our decisions Our determination ([Location 610](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=610)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close up. —CHUCK PALAHNIUK ([Location 634](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=634)) > Genius is the ability to put into effect what is in your mind. There’s no other definition of it. —F. SCOTT FITZGERALD ([Location 680](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=680)) > A good person dyes events with his own color . . . and turns whatever happens to his own benefit. —SENECA ([Location 728](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=728)) > Then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood. —SHAKESPEARE ([Location 807](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=807)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Some academic once asked Demosthenes what the three most important traits of speechmaking were. His reply says it all: "Action, Action, Action!" ([Location 857](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=857)) > People turn shit into sugar all the time—shit that’s a lot worse than whatever we’re dealing with. ([Location 875](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=875)) > No one is coming to save you. And if we’d like to go where we claim we want to go—to accomplish what we claim are our goals—there is only one way. And that’s to meet our problems with the right action. Therefore, we can always (and only) greet our obstacles with energy with persistence with a coherent and deliberate process with iteration and resilience with pragmatism with strategic vision with craftiness and savvy and an eye for opportunity and pivotal moments Are you ready to get to work? ([Location 889](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=889)) > We must all either wear out or rust out, every one of us. My choice is to wear out. —THEODORE ROOSEVELT ([Location 897](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=897)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > In the first years of World War II, there was no worse assignment for British troops than being sent to the North African front. Methodical and orderly, the British hated the grueling weather and terrain that wreaked havoc on their machines and their plans. They acted how they felt: slow, timid, cautious. German Field Marshal General Erwin Rommel, on the other hand, loved it. He saw war as a game. A dangerous, reckless, untidy, fast-paced game. And, most important, he took to this game with incredible energy and was perennially pushing his troops forward. The German troops had a saying about him: Where Rommel is, there is the front. That’s the next step: ramming your feet into the stirrups and really going for it. ([Location 924](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=924)) > He says the best way out is always through And I agree to that, or in so far As I can see no way out but through. —ROBERT FROST ([Location 956](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=956)) > Consider this mind-set. never in a hurry never worried never desperate never stopping short Remember and remind yourself of a phrase favored by Epictetus: "persist and resist." Persist in your efforts. Resist giving in to distraction, discouragement, or disorder. ([Location 1004](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1004)) > What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first steps to something better. —WENDELL PHILLIPS ([Location 1025](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1025)) > Under the comb the tangle and the straight path are the same. —HERACLITUS ([Location 1080](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1080)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble. (Quidvis recte factum quamvis humile praeclarum.) —SIR HENRY ROYCE ([Location 1147](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1147)) > The great psychologist Viktor Frankl, survivor of three concentration camps, found presumptuousness in the age-old question: "What is the meaning of life?" As though it is someone else’s responsibility to tell you. Instead, he said, the world is asking you that question. And it’s your job to answer with your actions. ([Location 1189](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1189)) > The cucumber is bitter? Then throw it out. There are brambles in the path? Then go around. That’s all you need to know. —MARCUS AURELIUS ([Location 1200](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1200)) > At twenty-one, Richard Wright was not the world-famous author he would eventually be. But poor and black, he decided he would read and no one could stop him. Did he storm the library and make a scene? No, not in the Jim Crow South he didn’t. Instead, he forged a note that said, "Dear Madam: Will you please let this nigger boy have some books by HL Mencken?" (because no one would write that about themselves, right?), and checked them out with a stolen library card, pretending they were for someone else. ([Location 1234](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1234)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > As Deng Xiaoping once said, "I don’t care if the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice." ([Location 1243](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1243)) > The Stoics had their own reminder: "Don’t go expecting Plato’s Republic." ([Location 1244](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1244)) > Whoever cannot seek the unforeseen sees nothing, for the known way is an impasse. —HERACLITUS ([Location 1254](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1254)) > In a study of some 30 conflicts comprising more than 280 campaigns from ancient to modern history, the brilliant strategist and historian B. H. Liddell Hart came to a stunning conclusion: In only 6 of the 280 campaigns was the decisive victory a result of a direct attack on the enemy’s main army. ([Location 1273](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1273)) > As Hart writes in his masterwork Strategy: [T]he Great Captain will take even the most hazardous indirect approach—if necessary over mountains, deserts or swamps, with only a fraction of the forces, even cutting himself loose from his communications. Facing, in fact, every unfavorable condition rather than accept the risk of stalemate invited by direct approach. ([Location 1278](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1278)) > As someone once put it after fighting Jigoro Kano, the legendary five-foot-tall founder of judo, "Trying to fight with Kano was like trying to fight with an empty jacket!" That can be you. ([Location 1294](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1294)) > The great philosopher Søren Kierkegaard rarely sought to convince people directly from a position of authority. Instead of lecturing, he practiced a method he called "indirect communication." Kierkegaard would write under pseudonyms, where each fake personality would embody a different platform or perspective—writing multiple times on the same subject from multiple angles to convey his point emotionally and dramatically. He would rarely tell the reader "do this" or "think that." Instead he would show new ways of looking at or understanding the world. ([Location 1307](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1307)) > Remember, sometimes the longest way around is the shortest way home. ([Location 1318](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1318)) > Wise men are able to make a fitting use even of their enmities. —PLUTARCH ([Location 1320](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1320)) > Weak compared to the forces he hoped to change, Gandhi leaned into that weakness, exaggerated it, exposed himself. He said to the most powerful occupying military in the world, I’m marching to the ocean to collect salt in direct violation of your laws. He was provoking them—What are you going to do about it? There is nothing wrong with what we’re doing—knowing that it placed authorities in an impossible dilemma: Enforce a bankrupt policy or abdicate. Within that framework, the military’s enormous strength is neutralized. Its very usage is counterproductive. ([Location 1327](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1327)) > Martin Luther King Jr., taking Gandhi’s lead, told his followers that they would meet "physical force with soul force." In other words, they would use the power of opposites. In the face of violence they would be peaceful, to hate they would answer with love—and in the process, they would expose those attributes as indefensible and evil. ([Location 1331](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1331)) > So instead of fighting obstacles, find a means of making them defeat themselves. ([Location 1345](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1345)) > The great strategist Saul Alinsky believed that if you "push a negative hard enough and deep enough it will break through into its counterside." Every positive has its negative. Every negative has its positive. The action is in the pushing through—all the way through to the other side. Making a negative into a positive. ([Location 1370](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1370)) > The harder Bucephalus ran, the sooner he got tired out. The more vicious the police response to civil disobedience, the more sympathetic the cause becomes. The more they fight, the easier it becomes. The harder you fight, the less you’ll achieve (other than exhaustion). So it goes with our problems. ([Location 1377](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1377)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstance revert at once to yourself and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better grasp of harmony if you keep going back to it. —MARCUS AURELIUS ([Location 1380](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1380)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Toussaint Louverture, the former Haitian slave turned general, so exasperated his French enemies that they once remarked: "Cet homme fait donc l’ouverture partout" ("This man makes an opening everywhere"). He was so fluid, so uncontainable, he was actually given the surname Louverture, meaning "the opening." It makes sense. ([Location 1405](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1405)) > The best men are not those who have waited for chances but who have taken them; besieged chance, conquered the chance, and made chance the servitor. —E. H. CHAPIN ([Location 1421](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1421)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Ignore the politics and focus on the brilliant strategic advice that Obama’s adviser Rahm Emanuel, once gave him. "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. [A] crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before." ([Location 1439](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1439)) > If you look at history, some of our greatest leaders used shocking or negative events to push through much-needed reforms that otherwise would have had little chance of passing. We can apply that in our own lives. You always planned to do something. Write a screenplay. Travel. Start a business. Approach a possible mentor. Launch a movement. Well, now something has happened—some disruptive event like a failure or an accident or a tragedy. Use it. ([Location 1441](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1441)) > Every chemical reaction requires a catalyst. Let this be yours. ([Location 1448](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1448)) > If you don’t take that, it’s on you. Napoleon described war in simple terms: Two armies are two bodies that clash and attempt to frighten each other. At impact, there is a moment of panic and it is that moment that the superior commander turns to his advantage. ([Location 1457](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1457)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > In the meantime, cling tooth and nail to the following rule: not to give in to adversity, not to trust prosperity, and always take full note of fortune’s habit of behaving just as she pleases. —SENECA ([Location 1474](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1474)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Lincoln was strong and decisive as a leader. But he also embodied the Stoic maxim: sustine et abstine. Bear and forbear. ([Location 1558](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1558)) > give up our desire to control other people and events. It’s easier to persist in our efforts and actions than to endure the uncomfortable or the painful. It’s easier to think and act than it is to practice wisdom. These lessons come harder but are, in the end, the most critical to wresting advantage from adversity. In every situation, we can Always prepare ourselves for more difficult times. Always accept what we’re unable to change. Always manage our expectations. Always persevere. Always learn to love our fate and what happens to us. Always protect our inner self, retreat into ourselves. Always submit to a greater, larger cause. Always remind ourselves of our own mortality. And, of course, prepare to start the cycle once more. ([Location 1572](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1572)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > If thy faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small. —PROVERBS 24:10 ([Location 1583](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1583)) > During Passover Seder, the menu is bitter herbs and unleavened bread—the "bread of affliction." Why? In some ways, this taps into the fortitude that sustained the community for generations. The ritual not only celebrates and honors Jewish traditions, but it prompts those partaking in the feast to visualize and possess the strength that has kept them going. This is strikingly similar to what the Stoics called the Inner Citadel, that fortress inside of us that no external adversity can ever break down. An important caveat is that we are not born with such a structure; it must be built and actively reinforced. During the good times, we strengthen ourselves and our bodies so that during the difficult times, we can depend on it. We protect our inner fortress so it may protect us. ([Location 1616](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1616)) > You’ll have far better luck toughening yourself up than you ever will trying to take the teeth out of a world that is—at best—indifferent to your existence. ([Location 1624](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1624)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > It’s almost a cliché at this point, but the observation that the way to strengthen an arch is to put weight on it—because it binds the stones together, and only with tension does it hold weight—is a great metaphor. ([Location 1631](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1631)) > Offer a guarantee and disaster threatens. —ANCIENT INSCRIPTION AT THE ORACLE OF DELPHI ([Location 1640](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1640)) > She is using a technique designed by psychologist Gary Klein known as a premortem. ([Location 1645](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1645)) > Mike Tyson, who, reflecting on the collapse of his fortune and fame, told a reporter, "If you’re not humble, life will visit humbleness upon you." ([Location 1654](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1654)) > Today, the premortem is increasingly popular in business circles, from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies and the Harvard Business Review. But like all great ideas, it is actually nothing new. The credit goes to the Stoics. They even had a better name: premeditatio malorum (premeditation of evils). ([Location 1658](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1658)) > A writer like Seneca would begin by reviewing or rehearsing his plans, say, to take a trip. And then he would go over, in his head (or in writing), the things that could go wrong or prevent it from happening: a storm could arise, the captain could fall ill, the ship could be attacked by pirates. "Nothing happens to the wise man against his expectation," he wrote to a friend.  ". . . nor do all things turn out for him as he wished but as he reckoned—and above all he reckoned that something could block his plans." Always prepared for disruption, always working that disruption into our plans. Fitted, as they say, for defeat or victory. And let’s be honest, a pleasant surprise is a lot better than an unpleasant one. What if . . . Then I will . . . What if . . . Instead I’ll just . . . What if . . . No problem, we can always . . . And in the case where nothing could be done, the Stoics would use it as an important practice to do something the rest of us too often fail to do: manage expectations. Because sometimes the only answer to "What if . . ." is, It will suck but we’ll be okay. ([Location 1660](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1660)) > Common wisdom provides us with the maxims: Beware the calm before the storm. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. The worst is yet to come. It gets worse before it gets better. ([Location 1680](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1680)) > The Fates guide the person who accepts them and hinder the person who resists them. —CLEANTHES ([Location 1703](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1703)) > "True genius," as the infamous Dr. Samuel Johnson once said, "is a mind of large general powers accidentally determined in some particular direction." ([Location 1717](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1717)) > You don’t have to like something to master it—or to use it to some advantage. When the cause of our problem lies outside of us, we are better for accepting it and moving on. For ceasing to kick and fight against it, and coming to terms with it. The Stoics have a beautiful name for this attitude. They call it the Art of Acquiescence. ([Location 1731](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1731)) > Think of George Washington, putting everything he had into the American Revolution, and then saying, "The event is in the hand of God." Or Eisenhower, writing to his wife on the eve of the Allied invasion at Sicily: "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." These were not guys prone to settling or leaving the details up to other people—but they understood ultimately that what happened would happen. And they’d go from there. ([Location 1757](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1757)) > "Man proposes but God disposes. ([Location 1762](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1762)) > As Francis Bacon once said, nature, in order to be commanded, must be obeyed. ([Location 1773](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1773)) > My formula for greatness in a human being is 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. —NIETZSCHE ([Location 1775](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1775)) > Edison calmly but quickly made his way to the fire, through the now hundreds of onlookers and devastated employees, looking for his son. "Go get your mother and all her friends," he told his son with childlike excitement. "They’ll never see a fire like this again." What?! Don’t worry, Edison calmed him. "It’s all right. We’ve just got rid of a lot of rubbish." ([Location 1782](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1782)) > As Jack London, the famous novelist, reported from ringside seats: No one understands him, this man who smiles. Well, the story of the fight is the story of a smile. If ever a man won by nothing more fatiguing than a smile, Johnson won today. ([Location 1814](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1814)) > "Gentleman, I am hardening on this enterprise. I repeat, I am now hardening towards this enterprise." —WINSTON CHURCHILL ([Location 1842](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1842)) > That Tennyson line in full: Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield ([Location 1865](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1865)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > As Emerson wrote in 1841, If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life. ([Location 1877](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1877)) > This is perseverance. And with it, Emerson said, "with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear." ([Location 1889](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1889)) > To quote Beethoven: "The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and industry, Thus far and no farther." ([Location 1891](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1891)) > Determination, if you think about it, is invincible. Nothing other than death can prevent us from following Churchill’s old acronym: KBO. Keep Buggering On. ([Location 1896](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1896)) > A few years ago, in the middle of the financial crisis, the artist and musician Henry Rollins managed to express this deeply human obligation better than millennia of religious doctrine ever have: People are getting a little desperate. People might not show their best elements to you. You must never lower yourself to being a person you don’t like. There is no better time than now to have a moral and civic backbone. To have a moral and civic true north. This is a tremendous opportunity for you, a young person, to be heroic. ([Location 1934](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1934)) > Sometimes when we are personally stuck with some intractable or impossible problem, one of the best ways to create opportunities or new avenues for movement is to think: If I can’t solve this for myself, how can I at least make this better for other people? Take it for granted, for a second, that there is nothing else in it for us, nothing we can do for ourselves. How can we use this situation to benefit others? How can we salvage some good out of this? If not for me, then for my family or the others I’m leading or those who might later find themselves in a similar situation. ([Location 1943](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1943)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Pride can be broken. Toughness has its limits. 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. ([Location 1959](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1959)) > Stop pretending that what you’re going through is somehow special or unfair. Whatever trouble you’re having—no matter how difficult—is not some unique misfortune picked out especially for you. It just is what it is. ([Location 1961](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1961)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. —DR. JOHNSON ([Location 1973](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1973)) > In late 1569, a French nobleman named Michel de Montaigne was given up as dead after being flung from a galloping horse. As his friends carried his limp and bloodied body home, Montaigne watched life slip away from his physical self, not traumatically but almost flimsily, like some dancing spirit on the "tip of his lips." Only to have it return at the last possible second. ([Location 1975](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1975)) > And so it was for Montaigne. Coming so close to death energized him, made him curious. No longer was death something to be afraid of—looking it in the eyes had been a relief, even inspiring. ([Location 1982](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1982)) > Death doesn’t make life pointless, but rather purposeful. ([Location 1984](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1984)) > For instance, Montaigne once wrote of an ancient drinking game in which participants took turns holding up a painting of a corpse inside a coffin and toasting to it: "Drink and be merry for when you’re dead you will look like this." ([Location 1991](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1991)) > As Shakespeare wrote in The Tempest not many years later, as he himself was growing older, "Every third thought shall be my grave." ([Location 1993](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1993)) > Every culture has its own way of teaching the same lesson: Memento mori, the Romans would remind themselves. Remember you are mortal. ([Location 1994](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=1994)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > They figure out what they need to do and do it, fitting in as much as possible before the clock expires. They figure out how, when that moment strikes, to say, Of course, I would have liked to last a little longer, but I made a lot of out what I was already given so this works too. ([Location 2015](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=2015)) > Live on in your blessings, your destiny’s been won. But ours calls us on from one ordeal to the next. —VIRGIL ([Location 2026](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=2026)) > As the Haitian proverb puts it: Behind mountains are more mountains. Elysium is a myth. One does not overcome an obstacle to enter the land of no obstacles. ([Location 2033](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=2033)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Late in his reign, sick and possibly near death, Marcus Aurelius received surprising news. His old friend and most trusted general, Avidius Cassius, had rebelled in Syria. Having heard the emperor was vulnerable or possibly dead, the ambitious general had decided to declare himself Caesar and forcibly seize the throne. Marcus should have been angry. History would have forgiven him for wanting to avenge this enemy. To crush this man who had betrayed him, who threatened his life, his family, and his legacy. Instead, Marcus did nothing—going as far as to keep the news secret from his troops, who might have been enraged or provoked on his behalf—but waited to see if Cassius would come to his senses. The man did not. And so Marcus Aurelius called a council of his soldiers and made a rather extraordinary announcement. They would march against Cassius and obtain the "great prize of war and of victory." But of course, because it was Marcus, this war prize was something wholly different. They would capture Cassius and endeavor not to kill him, but ". . . forgive a man who has wronged one, to remain a friend to one who has transgressed friendship, to continue faithful to one who has broken faith." Marcus had controlled his perceptions. He wasn’t angry, he didn’t despise his enemy. He would not say an ill word against him. He would not take it personally. Then he acted—rightly and firmly—ordering troops to Rome to calm the panicking crowds and then set out to do what must be done: protect the empire, put down a threat. As he told his men, if there was one profit they could derive from this awful situation that they had not wanted, it would be to "settle this affair well and show to all mankind that there is a right way to deal even with civil wars." The obstacle becomes the way. ([Location 2045](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=2045)) > The Stoics liked to use the metaphor of fire. Writing in his journal, Marcus once reminded himself that "when the fire is strong, it soon appropriates to itself the matter which is heaped on it, and consumes it, and rises higher by means of this very material." ([Location 2063](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=2063)) > The philosopher and writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb defined a Stoic as someone who "transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation and desire into undertaking." It’s a loop that becomes easier over time. ([Location 2096](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=2096)) > There’s a saying in Latin: Vires acquirit eundo (We gather strength as we go). That’s how it works. That’s our motto. ([Location 2099](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=2099)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > See things for what they are. Do what we can. Endure and bear what we must. What blocked the path now is a path. What once impeded action advances action. The Obstacle is the Way. ([Location 2115](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=2115)) > To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school . . . it is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU ([Location 2120](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=2120)) > When Thomas Jefferson died, he had a copy of Seneca on his nightstand. ([Location 2130](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1B8K&location=2130))