These are the best quotes and highlights from the book The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday.
As the title suggests – The Obstacle is the Way – Ryan Holiday suggests in this book that obstacles are not barriers to accomplishment, but rather may be a doorway to success if clearly interpreted. This book contains part of the timeless stoic philosophy that has assisted great achievers such as Steve Jobs, John D. Rockefeller, and others in turning adversity into advantage.
Quotes From The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday
Focus on the moment, not the monsters that may or may not be up ahead.
There is no good or bad without us, there is only perception.
In life, it doesn’t matter what happens to you or where you came from. It matters what you do with what happens and what you’ve been given.
The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.
In every situation, life is asking us a question, and our actions are the answer.
Read: Sapiens
You know what’s better than building things up in your imagination? Building things up in real life.
Failure shows us the way by showing us what isn’t the way.
Remember that this moment is not your life, it’s just a moment in your life.
Blessings and burdens are not mutually exclusive.
Failure really can be an asset if what you’re trying to do is improve, learn, or do something new.
Think progress, not perfection.
If an emotion can’t change the condition or the situation you’re dealing with, it is likely an unhelpful emotion.
When setbacks come, we respond by working twice as hard.
Action and failure are two sides of the same coin. One doesn’t come without the other. What breaks this critical connection down is when people stop acting because they’ve taken failure the wrong way.
Uncertainty and fear are relieved by authority. Training is authority.
Our perceptions are the thing that we’re in complete control of.
Our perceptions determine, to an incredibly large degree, what we are and are not capable of.
No one said it would be easy and of course, the stakes are high, but the path is there for those ready to take it.
Seize this moment to deploy the plan that has long sat dormant in your head.
An entrepreneur is someone with faith in their ability to make something where there was nothing before.
Death doesn’t make life pointless, but rather purposeful.
Also Read: Grit by Angela Duckworth
Bad companies are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great companies are improved by them.
Every negative has a positive. Push a negative hard enough and deep enough that it will break through into its counterside.
Too often we react emotionally, get despondent, and lose our perspective. All that does is turn bad things into really bad things.
Life speeds on the bold and favors the brave.
Bad luck is actually a chance for us to make up some time.
If something is in our control, it’s worth every ounce of our efforts and energy. Death is not one of those things.
Focusing exclusively on what is in our power magnifies and enhances our power.
When you can break apart something, or look at it from some new angle, it loses its power over you.
Each project matters and the only degrading part is giving less than one is capable of giving.
Doing new things invariably means obstacles.
No harshness, no deprivation, no toil should interfere with our empathy toward others.
It’s much easier to control our perceptions and emotions than it is to give up our desire to control other people and events.
You don’t convince people by challenging their longest and most firmly held opinions. You find common ground and work from there.
Our capacity to try, try, try is inextricably linked with our ability and tolerance to fail, fail, fail.
Outward appearances are deceptive. What’s within them, beneath them, is what matters.
If Perception and Action were the disciplines of the mind and the body, then Will is the discipline of the heart and the soul.
See things for what they are. Do what we can. Endure and bear what we must.
You love it because it’s all fuel. And you don’t just want fuel. You need it. You can’t go anywhere without it.
Once you start attacking an obstacle, quitting is not an option.
