How Can I Benefit
From Life’s Biggest Obstacles?
When’s the last time you cried? I
mean, really cried?
Or if you’re not the crying type,
when’s the last time you woke up in a cold sweat? Couldn’t fall asleep? Loathed
leaving the warmth of your bed?
Or how about the last time you
struggled through a daunting task – final exams, an impossible
conversation with a parent, scavenging around for funding so you and your
employees could eat?
When’s the last time you saw a
monster of an obstacle before you — scary, hairy, and grinning like a
sonofabitch — and felt like cowering into the fetal position, cursing and
intimidated?
If you’re a human being here on
planet Earth, it probably hasn’t been too long. Could have been last week.
Hell, it may have been this morning.
Here’s a thought: what if those
monsters were, in fact, not monsters at all? What if those obstacles were
actually your best friends, your wisest teachers, your greatest allies? And
what if instead of hating your obstacles, you learned to love them?
The Obstacle is the Way
This
is the very idea Ryan Holiday explores in his newest book, [Amazon UK, Amazon US]. Using examples
from Marcus Aurelius to Amelia Earhart, Ulysses S. Grant to Barack Obama, Holiday
shows that the greatest feats in humanity weren’t accomplished in the absence
of obstacles — they were accomplished because of them.
Obstacles, Holiday suggests, are
just blessings in disguise. And so instead of cowering before the monstrous
obstacles in our life, we should learn to embrace them.
Here are 10 ways to benefit
from life’s biggest obstacles (with 10 of my favorite quotes from The
Obstacle is The Way):
1. Obstacles show us who we really are
“Certain things in
life will cut you open like a knife. When that happens–at that exposing
moment–the world gets a glimpse of what’s truly inside you. So what will be
revealed when you’re sliced open by tension and pressure? Iron? Or air?
Or bullshit?”
In my solo travels,
I learned most about myself during the absolute worst moments.
Times of loneliness (and realizing a fear of rejection was holding me
back). Times of sadness (and facing the fact that part of my happiness was
irrationally dependent on others). Times of heartbreak (and secretly wishing a
bus would hit me and remove the ache).
This is ugly stuff to admit.
Obstacles that force us to feel these things expose our core — which can be scary
if we don’t like what we see.
The good news is that once we’ve
revealed our darkest demons, we can begin dealing with them.
2. Obstacles instruct us on what we
need to do next
“In every situation,
that which blocks our path actually presents a new path with a new part of us.
If someone you love hurts you, there is a chance to practice forgiveness.”
Like neon signs, obstacles literally
spell out what we must do — especially those obstacles that hurt the most. They
reveal the parts within us that need fine-tuning. They show us the things
inhibiting our own growth. And once exposed, they show us what to do next —
lean into them, learn from them, and get past them.
Or as Benjamin Franklin would say,
“The things which hurt, instruct.”
3. Obstacles make us tougher
“Nobody is born with a
steel backbone. We have to forge it ourselves.”
If an obstacles rips us open and we
see air (or bullshit, I suppose), this isn’t something to shy away from.
Instead, we can look it in the face and resolve to do something about
it. Obstacles give us a chance to practice courage — courage to improve our
situation, our world, and ourselves.
And if we find that our courage,
quite frankly, kinda sucks? Obstacles make us tougher for the next round.
4. Obstacles help us focus on what’s
important
“We want to have
goals, yes, so everything we do can be in service to something purposeful. When
we know what we’re really setting out to do, the obstacles that arise tend to
seem smaller, more manageable.”
When we don’t know what’s important
to us, we can’t tell the difference between obstacles worthy of our time, and
those that aren’t. Every challenge in our periphery looks like a massive
mountain we must climb.
But once we determine and define
that thing (or things) we most want to accomplish, suddenly the majority of our
obstacles reduce themselves to molehills. We’re now focused and can pour our
energy into the few true mountains worthy of us.
5. Obstacles make us more creative
“Only in struggling
with the impediments that made others quit can we find ourselves on untrodden
territory–only by persisting and resisting can we learn what others were too
impatient to be taught.”
When it feels like all is lost, when
the obstacle before us is the baddest badass we’ve seen — what can we do? We
can give up. Or we can get creative.
It’s like the story of the lecturer
asking the audience to raise their hands as high as they can.
“Higher!” he yells, and everyone is
somehow able to reach a little higher.
“Higher still!” Again, miraculously, everyone found an extra inch to reach.
“Can you go any higher? Is there anything more you
can do?!?” And suddenly people are leaping onto their chairs, jumping up and
down.
In other words, people got creative.
They started pulling out all the stops — chairs, tables, athleticism — to reach
higher than they initially thought possible. When all feels lost, obstacles
help us stretch our creative muscles.
Sometimes it helps to ask: Is
there anything more I can do?
6. Obstacles help us find (or define)
meaning in our lives
“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.”
It’s uncommon knowledge that
President Lincoln battled with depression throughout his life. Yet the man is
legendary for leading the United States through one of it’s most challenging
times: the Civil War.
Lincoln learned how to find meaning
in his inner turmoil by focusing his efforts outward to unite an entire nation:
“[Lincoln] learned to
endure all this, articulate it, and find benefit and meaning from it…Above all,
he found purpose and relief in a cause bigger than himself and his personal
struggles.”
7. Obstacles remind us that the deepest
meaning is found outside of ourselves
As Lincoln discovered, the richest
flavors of meaning are found when we stop peering so intensely at our own
problems, and start to look at ways we can help the world around us.
“You won’t have time
to think of your own suffering, because there are other people suffering and
you’re too focused on them.”
The added benefit? Focusing outward
helps us improve ourselves inward as well.
8. Obstacles give us the opportunity to
change our lives for the better
Or sometimes, an excuse,
to change our lives.
I’m forever intrigued by the concept
of the impetus — the tragedy, the disaster, the death — that causes one to make
a massive, deliberate life change. It’s something I discussed in my TEDx talk in
April.
Got dumped? Laid off? Developed
shingles? Diagnosed with something terrible? Witnessed a close friend die?
Look at these events as life’s way
of helping you reassess your existence. And in doing so, providing a window of
opportunity to make a change in your life, if you so dare to make it.
“Well, now something
has happened–some disruptive event like a failure or an accident or a
tragedy. Use it.”
9. Obstacles can give us greater inner
peace
“If what’s up to us is
the playing field, then what is not up to us are the rules and conditions of
the game.”
The biggest, baddest obstacles in
life — think natural disasters, economic depressions, and untimely death —
remind us something that’s easy to forget: how little control we actually have
over most things in life. Yet in the same breath, we’re reminded of the single
thing we do have control over: our reaction.
These obstacles remind us of the
importance of detaching what happens to us from how we
react. As we internalize this, we’re able to achieve a higher level of
inner peace. And this inner peace allows us to love our obstacles even more.
10. Obstacles prepare us for death.
“Someone on a deadline
doesn’t indulge himself with attempts at the impossible, he doesn’t waste time
complaining about how he’d like things to be.”
Let’s face it: we’re all on a
timeline.
Death is the ultimate obstacle — the
single, inevitable, impossible elephant in the room which we will never
conquer.
Once we embrace this, all other
obstacles reduce themselves to less than impossible. And finally,
we’re able to focus our efforts on the obstacles we can get
past.
Armed with this knowledge, we can
courageously grin back at our Obstacles, and love them fiercely — for having
the privilege to grapple with those hairy monsters for yet another day means
we’re still human, still on Earth, and still very much alive.
