The Obstacle Is the Way

For that’s what Stoicism is—a great conversation that stretches back thousands of years. Men and women talking to themselves, talking themselves through obstacles and opportunities, big moments and small ones, reminding themselves to be excellent, to follow virtue, to do what is demanded of them.

It doesn’t matter what happens to us; it can be for the best if we use it to be better for ourselves and others.

What they meant when they said that the obstacle is the way is that the hardest, most heartbreaking moments of life can be transformed by endurance, by selflessness, by courage, by kindness, by decency.

What I understand today is that when the Stoics said that there was an opportunity in every obstacle, what they meant was the opportunity to practice virtue. To be a good person despite the bad things that have happened. To do good in the world despite the bad that has befallen you. They were speaking of the idea of arete. Excellence—in all forms.

The simplest idea at the center of this book is that there are hidden advantages in every situation, that businesses and teams and people can take seemingly impossible situations and find ways to triumph over them. “Hard times can be softened,” Seneca writes in one of his essays, “tight squeezes widened, and heavy loads made lighter for those who c