Obstacles Flashcards
The Value of Obstacles
The great individuals and businesses find ways to transform weakness into strength. They find something holding them back and use it to advance, using the obstacle as an advantage. Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, said this about crises: “Bad companies are destroyed by crises. Good companies survive them. Great companies are improved by them,” Which explains exactly what was just mentioned. They turn the crisis (an obstacle) into something valuable. Another note quoted from the story of a king explains similar improvement: “The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.”.
The best quote is probably from Marcus Aurelius, again mentioning how obstacles can advance action and be of great value: “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 purposes the obstacle to our acting… The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. “.
When Facing Obstacles You 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
These are choices that are up to us and they will help get us across the finish line. To argue, to complain, or worse, to just give up, are also choices. These are choices that more often than not, do nothing to get us across the finish line.
The Perceiving Eye and the Observing Eye
We often see the world through our perceiving eye, which is weak, instead of our observing eye, which is strong. “This happened and it is bad”, “This happened” - is objective and “it is bad” - is subjective. This sentence shows why you need to remove YOU from the equation because we add opinions where we don’t have to. This is how obstacles become obstacles, since we perceive them as being obstacles, Ryan Holiday writes this: “To one person a situation may be negative. To another, that same situation may be a positive.”. There will always be a positive side to a negative situation. You may see your employee making a mistake as an obstacle, but it could also be seen as valuable training, so there is no need to complain and feel bad when we can see the flip side. It’s the wind blowing against you when biking, it’s either perceived as something that sucks or as being extra training that only improves you. It’s important to note that one person can see a crisis and another person can see an opportunity and we choose which one to see.
An exercise to train this would be to think of all the ways to solve a specific problem, where you think of all the solutions. You can quickly find out that the first perceived situation has many solutions and benefits for you to draw upon. Remember everything takes repetition, so the more you practice this, the better you will become at seeing the situation for what it is and not perceiving it to be.
Persistence and Perseverance
“Persist and resist”. This is what Epictetus once said, to persist in your efforts and to resist giving in to distraction, discouragement and disorder. Persisting is to keep pegging away at the obstacle until it is done, without letting failure stop us, not being rushed or distracted. It’s okay to be discouraged and to fail but never okay to quit. You may want to quit, but you persist and don’t quit, inching a little closer every day. The success stories don’t happen overnight, they are made pegging away the obstacle every day, countless hours grinding, even though people only see the overnight success. Sometimes obstacles will be overwhelming, so don’t focus on the obstacle, but focus on improving a little bit every day, step by step. You do the right thing, right now, and stop worrying about the larger picture. Sometimes it’s wise to look up and make sure you are on track.
Persistence will help you overcome obstacles, but in the journey of life, many obstacles will appear. For this you need perseverance, the Germans call this, Sitzfleisch, staying power. This requires endurance and a matter of will instead of energy and motivation, and you might be restrained in persisting, but your perseverance can never be restrained, that’s kept safe in your inner citadel.
Find A Way
Always be in search of the flank attack. When you are the most strained and exhausted, take a step back and reassess the situation. Find some leverage, go around the problem and approach from the “line of least expectation. You often can’t just confront the competition head-on, especially when being the underdog. So instead of going through the front door, which is the line of most expectations, go around and find leverage and go through a window, side door or backdoor, finding the line of least expectations and attacking. It’s not easy to implement the underdog mentality of always finding innovative strategies, but this is exactly how you become truly great.
The obstacles can’t always be flanked or worn down by sheer persistence, and instead, you have to use the obstacle against itself. Before steam engines, boats could not travel up the strong Mississippi River, so they instead tied boats going down the river together with boats going up the river and wrapped the rope around a tree. This would sling-shot the boat going up the river when the other boat went down the river, using the obstacle against itself.
Lowkey måske en plakat
“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” - Ryan Holiday
