The Obstacle is the Way
Hello and welcome to one of my absolute favourite topics.
This week is really one that has made such a difference to my mindset and my life since I started practicing it and in fact one of my own personal mantras I write down every day is still: I am stoic.
Now Few of us would consider ourselves philosophers.
Fortunately, there are a few philosophical systems which are designed to produce quite dramatic real-world effects without all the nonsense. Unfortunately, they get punished because they lack the ambiguity required for weeks of lectures and expensive textbooks. I definitely didn’t encounter Stoicism in any of my university philosophy lectures.
Stoicism doesn’t concern itself with complicated theories about the world, but with helping us overcome destructive emotions and act on what can be acted upon. Just like an entrepreneur, a leader, an athlete or a modern person, it’s built for action, not endless debate.
And as you’re well aware by now. Agoge Project is all about taking action.
- Founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in 3rd Century BC
- Made famous by Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus
Marcus Aurelius was the last good emporer of ancient rome. He’s the father in the film the gladiator, not that the film is historically accurate.
Seneca the Younger was a roman philosopher and playright. He wrote widely on stoicism bringing it to the masses. He experienced both the top of politics at the time as well as experiencing exlile to corsica later in life and was a stoic through all of it.
And Epictetus, who was born a slave and later got his freedom and started teaching philosphy for 25 years in Rome. However I won’t bore you with more details and am happy to recommend further books on the topic.
Stoics believed that virtue to be based on actions rather than words and that we can’t control external events, instead we control what we can and accept what we can’t.
Just to give you a bit of social proof on modern day stoics, I’ve collected a selection of modern stoics. You can see a collection of US presidents in there, leading economists over the years, authors, investors, entrepreneurs and coaches.
And a lot of these people credit much of their success to Stoicism. I know that Bill Clinton reads Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations every year and Bill Belichick credits Stoicism to much of the success of himself and his team over the years.
Stoicism at it’s core is actually very simple.
In the words of Epictetus:
“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.”
This is one of my absolute favourite stoic stories and forgive me if you’ve heard it already:
At around 5:30 in the evening on Dec. 10, 1914, a massive explosion erupted in West Orange, New Jersey. Ten buildings in legendary inventor Thomas Edison’s plant, which made up more than half of the site, were engulfed in flames. Between six and eight fire departments rushed to the scene, but the chemical-fueled inferno was too powerful to put out quickly.
According to a 1961 Reader’s Digest article by Edison’s son Charles, Edison calmly walked over to him as he watched the fire destroy his dad’s work. In a childlike voice, Edison told his 24-year-old son, “Go get your mother and all her friends. They’ll never see a fire like this again.” When Charles objected, Edison said, “It’s all right. We’ve just got rid of a lot of rubbish.”
Later, at the scene of the blaze, Edison was quoted in The New York Times as saying, “Although I am over 67 years old, I’ll start all over again tomorrow.” He told the reporter that he was exhausted from remaining at the scene until the chaos was under control, but he stuck to his word and immediately began rebuilding the next morning without firing any of his employees.
After thoroughly surveying the damage, Edison determined that he’d lost $919,788 (about $23 million in today’s dollars), according to Matthew Josephson’s biography. The flames had consumed years of priceless records and prototypes, and his plant’s insurance covered only about a third of the total damage.
But after just three weeks, with a sizable loan from his friend Henry Ford, Edison got part of the plant up and running again. His employees worked double shifts and set to work producing more than ever. Edison and his team went on to make almost $10 million in revenue the following year.
So what does this look like in practice and how can you use it to your benefit?
There’s a method called the dichotomy of control by Epictetus. This is basically that our most important choice in life is whether to concern ourselves with things external to ourselves, or internal to ourselves.
Most people choose to concern themselves with things external to themselves, since they believe that benefit, happiness and harms, come from objects external to themselves.
So what would be an example of this?
- Getting a promotion at work
- Winning the lottery
- Someone breaking up with you
- The weather
A better strategy for getting what you want is to focus on only on those things over which you have control and are internal to yourself.
Whilst most people seek to gain contentment by changing the world around them, Epictetus advises us to gain contentment by changing ourselves. More precisely, by changing our desires.
So if we can change our desires to things in our control, then we’ll be able to find happiness and fulfilment since we’re in the driving seat.
So if we focus on the things that we can control and just accept those that we can’t we can avoid upset, misfortune and feeling miserable.
But what does this look like more in practice.
Well, let’s boil this down a bit further. Whilst there are things you can’t control at all and things you have control over, there is a middle ground of things over which we have some, but not complete control.
An example of this would winning a game of tennis. Ultimately, we don’t have complete control over the final outcome. But we do have some control over it. We can practice hard, we can train and prepare. This will increase our chances, but can’t guarantee the win.
So the dichotomy is actually a trichotomy.
So this brings us on to how to deal with obstacles. Since shit will happen to you in life. Stuff won’t go your way and won’t go to plan and there are many roadblocks along the way.
What separates the successful people out. The winners, the outliers and the leaders is their mindset.
We spoke about control. If you categorise everything into within your control or external to your control, you can accept what can’t be changed, and find an alternative.
The Stoics have a great 7 step process to deal with any obstacle that comes your way. Let me share this with you now.
We’ve all had knee jerk reactions. Kicked a bin. Punched a wall. Did that ever solve the problem?
Step 2 — Control your emotions
This is where the technique comes in handy that you’re practicing. Being a Witness. Noting what’s going on. Are you thinking? Are you feeling? What are you thinking and feeling? Take a step back and breathe.
“Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself.”
— Publius Syrus
When America first sent astronauts into space, they trained them in one skill more than any other: the art of not panicking.Here on Earth, when something goes wrong we trade in our plan for a good ol’ emotional freak-out. As Nassim Taleb put it, real strength lies in the domestication of one’s emotions, not in pretending they don’t exist.
Step 3 — Practice Objectivity
In our lives, how many problems seem to come from applying judgments to things we don’t control?
Perceptions give us information at the exact moment when it would be better to focus on what is immediately in front of us.We must question our animalistic impulse to immediately perceive what happens. But this takes strength and is a muscle that must be developed.
“Don’t let the force of an impression when it first hits 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
Step 4 — Practice Comtemptuous expressions
The Stoics used contempt to lay things bare and “strip away the legend that encrusts them.”Roasted meat is a dead animal. Vintage wine is old, fermented grapes.We can do this for anything that stands in our way, seeing things as they truly, actually are, not as we’ve made them in our minds.
Traffic, it’s just a bunch of cars on a road. It’s just some heaps of metal.
“Like seeing roasted meat and other dishes in front of you and suddenly realizing: This is a dead fish. A dead bird. A dead pig. Perceptions like that — latching onto things and piercing through them, so we see what they really are. That’s what we need to do all the time.”
Step 5 — Alter your perspective
On the left, do you see a young lady, or an old lady? On the right, is it a rabbit or a duck?
Remember: We choose how we’ll look at things.What we must do is limit and expand our perspective to whatever will keep us calmest and most ready for the task at hand.Think of it as selective editing — not to deceive others, but to properly orient ourselves.
Remember the big fire and Thomas Edison. Look at it from a different lens.
What can you learn from this? What’s the upside. What do you want? Use positive empowering thoughts and language.
Step 6 — Live in the present moment
It doesn’t matter whether this is the worst time to be alive or the best, whether you’re in a good job market or a bad one. What matters right now is right now. Focus on the moment, on what you can control right now. Not what may or may not be ahead.
It comes back down to control. Can you control the past? No. Can you control the future? Maybe. But how do you do that? By controling the present. What can you do right now to improve your situation.
Step 7 — Look for the opportunity
The reality is every situation, no matter how negative, provides us with a positive, exposed benefit we can act on, if only we look for it.
Maybe you were injured recently and are laid up in bed recovering. Now you have the time to start the book or the screenplay you’ve been meaning to write. Or finally complete GTA Vice City.
That business decision that turned out to be a mistake? See it as a hypothesis that was wrong. Like scientist you can learn from it and use it in your next experiment.
Remember: This a complete flip. Seeing through the negative, past its underside, and into its corollary: the positive.
Another way of putting it: Does getting upset provide you with more options? Sometimes it does. But in this instance? No, I suppose not.
Give me some examples.
The impediment to action is the action. What stands in the way, is the way.
Practive Negative Visualisation
If it comes as a constant surprise each and every time something unexpected occurs, you’re not only going to be miserable whenever you attempt something big, you’re going to have a much harder time accepting it and moving on to attempts two, three, and four.
The only guarantee, ever, is that things could go wrong. The only thing we can use to mitigate this is anticipation, because the only variable we control completely is ourselves.
The world might call you a pessimist. Who cares? It’s far better to seem like a downer than to be blindsided or caught off guard.
If we have prepared ourselves for the obstacles that are inevitably on their way, we can rest assured that it’s other people who have not. In other words, this bad luck is actually a chance for us to make up some time. We become like runners who train on hills or at altitude so they can beat racers who expected the course would be flat. Anticipation doesn’t magically make things easier, of course. But we are more prepared for them to be as hard as they need to be, as hard as they actually are.
As Marcus Aurrelius here states:
“The art of living is more like wresting than dancing, because an artful life requires being prepared to meet and withstand sudden and unexpected attacks.”
And this is very true. Things are happening around us all the time. We can’t change that. We don’t have control of that. What we do have control over is how we react to it.
As we’ve discussed, one could look out at the world right now and see a lot of negative. Or you could grab the other handle, as Epictetus says, and see the positive.
It’s an open question: Is this a great time to be alive or a terrible one?
Are we blessed to have spent twenty years without any major wars, without any truly global crises, with sustained periods of economic prosperity and incredible technological advances? Or has it been twenty years with three major recessions, with the terror of terrorism, disruptive or disappointing tech, and now with a global pandemic?
Here’s the Stoic’s answer: It doesn’t matter.
Because you don’t control when you live. What history will think of this period compared to other periods is meaningless. The only thing that counts is that you’re alive right now.
We don’t choose when we live, we choose how we live.
That’s it. You didn’t ask for this moment. Maybe you’d prefer things to be different. Well…they aren’t. And you’re going to have to make do. Understand this and you will be wise. Adhere to it and you will be successful.
How can we make the most of right now? That’s the question. How can we live well within — or in spite — of what’s happening? That’s our job.
“Choose not to be harmed and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed and you haven’t been.”
“So other people hurt me? That’s their problem. Their character and actions are not mine. What is done to me is ordained by nature and what I do by my own.”
“Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions — not outside.”
-Marcus Aurelius
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This article was written by Stuart Munnich. If you’d like to know more or receive notifications for future articles, please head over to the Agoge Project Website or subscribe to updates right here!
