The Obstacle Is the Way
The Timeless Art of Turning Adversity to Advantage
Ratings135
Average rating3.9
When reading about modern stoicism, this one kept coming up as a book recommendation. The focus is on resiliency and growth mindset when it comes to opposition. This may seem like common advice, but it's sometimes most difficult to remember when in the worst positions.
An inspiring and approachable call to action. This book found me at the right time in my life, and hope that it spurs the change I am seeking.
While I found “Ego is the enemy” a bit more well built, this book was really good in forcing you to envision things in a different way, helping you to cope with adversity and obstacles by changing the way you think about them (or see them, or feel them even). While still heavily based on the Stoïc teachings, Ryan Holiday offers a great lot of examples of people overcoming adversity and building something new, better and stronger upon at first seemingly impossible obstacles. Quite inspiring and really helpful for everyone willing to improve himself.
Perhaps not ideal to read cover to cover but a chapter here and there can be very inspiring. What I liked about this book is that it did not try to convince you that there was some key to a better life and you could unlock it with some secret knowledge only the author knew; this book acknowledges that life is hard and really bad things will happen. Actually, Holiday acknowledges that the more success we find the more trials we will pass through. This book is not about avoiding trails, it's about embracing them with stoic wisdom, that was refreshing in what one could consider a “self-help” book.
I encourage you to read this book. It's bloody useful. Definitely an upgrade on ones cognition.
A really good book. Although this book was short it was really dense, I can see myself rereading it in the future and getting a lot more out of it. It was a good introduction to stoic philosophy.
At first glance I fell prey of availability bias and confirmation bias and my first impression was; this book has nothing new to offer but some generic advice that you could come across any self-help book. This book just like majority of self-help books is containing plenty of famous quotes from well-known people, as well as general advises such as perseverance and persistent for that matter. However I could overcome my biases and start observing what this book has to offer.
Ryan talk about the influence that stoicism had on his life and how revolutionized it has been for him. He explicitly mention that he is not going to talk about stoicism in large and advise the audience to go through the originals such as Meditations by Marcus Aurelius in particular. His aim where illustrating how stoicism comes handy in other famous people life and how stoicism could look like in real life.
The author also talk about perception and how it could be real game-changer in one's life. How great people thrive not in spite of adversity that happened to them but because of it. He quotes Andy Grove (of the founders and the CEO of Intel): “Bad companies are destroyed by crisis, Good companies survive them, Great companies are improved by them”, as well as some other nice examples. Ryan also describes what post-mortem is and how great companies and people use it to their advantage.
I have been through the audio book narrated by Ryan Holiday which ends with nice interview between him and Tim Ferriss. He will talk about his personal life and his profession. Both authors exchange their insights about stoicism and why they are appreciating it.
When reading about modern stoicism, this one kept coming up as a book recommendation. The focus is on resiliency and growth mindset when it comes to opposition. This may seem like common advice, but it's sometimes most difficult to remember when in the worst positions.
Hatte starke “tschakka - Du schaffst das”, und “Du musst es nur wollen” Vibes, die die Hustle Culture weiter befeuern.
Wenig Substanz, viel Kalendersprüche.
It's a good book and I def recommend you read it. But it falls short here and there with oversimplification and extrapolating stories where there are none. Also did not like the fact that many stories are copy pasted to/from Daily Stoic.
This was my review for Holiday's other book ‘Ego is the Enemy':
“At times this book feels largely like a collection of biography book reports and inspirational quotes, but I think the overall lessons contained are vital. Very easy to read, if a bit shallow.”
That about sums this one up as well, frankly.
Can't say I've ever studied the stoic's before, but I enjoyed the perspective of this book. The bottom line is how you can take anything - good, bad, or ugly - and leverage it for good (even if the “good” is just education of what not to do next time...). While it's not written from a Christian perspective, it is in line with my beliefs that God is quite capable of doing just that on a larger scale (Rom 8:28).
It has made me stop and pause when things don't go my way (even the smallest things) about how I can turn it around to my benefit. It's largely a matter of attitude.