The Obstacle is the Way: The Ancient Art of Turning Adversity to Advantage

the brilliant strategic advice that Obama’s adviser Rahm Emanuel, once gave him. “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. [A] crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.”

Everything is a chance to do and be your best. Only self-absorbed assholes think they are too good for whatever their current station requires.

The great strategist Saul Alinsky believed that if you “push a negative hard enough and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.” Every positive has its negative. Every negative has its positive. The action is in the pushing through—all the way through to the other side. Making a negative into a positive.

The process is about finishing. Finishing games. Finishing workouts. Finishing film sessions. Finishing drives. Finishing reps. Finishing plays. Finishing blocks. Finishing the smallest task you have right in front of you and finishing it well. Whether it’s pursuing the pinnacle of success in your field

bad without us, there is only perception. There is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means.

In the chaos of sport, as in life, process provides us a way. It says: Okay, you’ve got to do something very difficult. Don’t focus on that. Instead break it down into pieces. Simply do what you need to do right now.

There’s a saying in Latin: Vires acquirit eundo (We gather strength as we go).

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Nature and Selected Essays. New York: Penguin, 2003.

strength, wisdom, and perspective. Each time, a little more of the competition falls away. Until all that is left is you: the best version of you. As the Haitian proverb puts it: Behind mountains are more mountains.

Welcome to the power of perception. Applicable in each and