The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

It’s almost a cliché at this point, but the observation that the way to strengthen an arch is to put weight on it—because it binds the stones together, and only with tension does it hold weight—is a great metaphor. The path of least resistance is a terrible teacher. We can’t afford to shy away from the things that intimidate us. We don’t need to ta

In the face of violence they would be peaceful, to hate they would answer with love—and in the process, they would expose those attributes as indefensible and evil.

You love it because it’s all fuel. And you don’t just want fuel. You need it.

Life is not about one obstacle, but many. What’s required of us is not some shortsighted focus on a single facet of a problem, but simply a determination that we will get to where we need to go, somehow, someway, and nothing will stop us. We will overcome every obstacle—and there will be many in life—until we get there. Persistence is an action. Pe

The old way of business—where companies guess what customers want from research and then produce those products in a lab, isolated and insulated from feedback—reflects a fear of failure and is deeply fragile in relation to

If I can’t solve this for myself, how can I at least make this better for other people?

and objectivity that allowed Rockefeller to seize advantage from obstacle after obstacle in his life,

The only guarantee, ever, is that things will go wrong. The only thing we can use to mitigate this is anticipation.

If Perception and Action were the disciplines of the mind and the body, then Will is the discipline of the heart and the soul.