Takeaway-A.20-The Obstacle Is the Way

The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph is a fantastic book which draws from ancient philosophy, applies it to the success stories of ancient heroes, historic figures, modern celebrities and CEOs, and derives framework from it, which anyone can follow to face struggles in their life with the right perception, actions and will to get through them. So, the book is also a motivational read for anyone who feels like they're stuck and they have nowhere to go.

The key takeaways of the book are:

Overcoming obstacles is a discipline of three critical steps. It begins with how we look at our specific problems, our attitude or approach; then the energy and creativity with which we actively break them down and turn them into opportunities; finally, the cultivation and maintenance of an inner will that allows us to handle defeat and difficulty. Its three interdependent, interconnected and fluidly contingent disciplines of Perception, Action, and the Will.

A. THE DISCIPLINE OF PERCEPTION

1. Perception: Perception is how we see and understand what occurs around us and what we decide those events will mean. Our perceptions can be a source of strength or of great weakness. If we are emotional, subjective and shortsighted, we only add to our troubles and vice-versa.

There are a few things to keep in mind when faced with a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. We 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. That is how, we can see the opportunity within the obstacle. It does not happen on its own. It is a process; one that results from self-discipline and logic.

2. Manage your perceptions, be objective and control emotions: Perception precedes action. So, you need to manage your perceptions by observing things from an objective point of view (i.e. take yourself out of the situation and pretend it’s happening to someone else and it’s not that important) which prevent you from adding unnecessary and harmful emotion to a situation. The aim is to see these things as they really are, without any of the ornamentation.

You need to question your impulse. You can disagree with it and examine the threat before you act. But this takes strength. It’s a muscle that must be developed and muscles are developed by tension, by lifting and holding. The more you try it, the better you get at it. The more skilled you become seeing things for what they are, the more perception will work for you rather than against you.

So as and when you face an obstacle, pretend that you are not in the situation and you are giving advice to a friend. Don’t worry about missed opportunities or prior mistakes in business or relationships. What may seem horrible at the time could even turn out to be a good thing. All of this can be done by controlling your emotions with logic, self-discipline and focusing on what is within your control, asking yourself if the emotion you are feeling is helpful to you in your situation and arriving at root causes which are actionable. 

3. Recognize Your Power and see good in situation: Reactions like desperation, despair, fear, powerlessness are functions of our perceptions. Nothing makes us feel this way; we choose to give in to such feelings. There is no concept of good or bad in this world, they only exist within us. Our perception of events and things as either good or bad are what cultivates the meanings. In simpler terms, it’s up to us to assign meaning to any specific event or obstacle we face. The meaning isn’t there until we prescribe it. In life, we will come across fair and unfair obstacles. What matters most is not what these obstacles are but how we see them, how we react to them and whether we keep our composure.

4. Steady Your Nerves: When we aim high; pressure, stress, unpleasant surprises and the risk of being overwhelmed is always there. In such stressful situations, talent is not the most desirable trait. Grace, calmness and solution orientation are, because these attributes precede the opportunity to deploy any other skill.

5. Alter Your Perspective: Perspective relates to context which is a sense of the larger picture of the world, not just what is immediately in front of us and framing which is an individual’s unique way of looking at the world, a way that interprets its events. Moreover, we choose how we’ll look at things. We retain the ability to inject perspective into a situation. We can’t change obstacles themselves-that part of the equation is set-but the power of perspective can change how the obstacles appear. How we approach, view, contextualize an obstacle and what we tell ourselves it means; determines how daunting and trying it will be to overcome. Is our perspective truly giving us perspective or is it what’s actually causing the problem? That’s the question.

What we can 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. That’s why, when you can break apart something or look at it from some new angle, it loses its power over you. Take what you’re afraid of when fear strikes you and break it apart. Perception precedes action. Right action follows the right perspective.

6. Is It Up To You? : In life our first job is to divide and distinguish things that are externals which you cannot control but the choices you make with regard to them are controllable. So, one can find good and bad within them and in their choices. So, what if you focused on what you can change? That’s where you can make a difference and the things that are up to us are our emotions, judgments, creativity, attitude, perspective, desires, decisions and determination.

So, to argue, complain, give up etc. are all choices. Choices that more often than not, do nothing to get us across the finish line. When it comes to perception, the crucial distinction to make is the difference between the things that are in our power and the things that aren’t. Focusing exclusively on what is in our power magnifies and enhances our power. But every ounce of energy directed at things we can’t actually influence is wasted-self-indulgent and self-destructive. So much power of ours and that of other people’s is frittered away in this manner. To see an obstacle as a challenge, to make the best of it anyway, that is also a choice-a choice that is up to us.

7. Live in the Present Moment: The implications of our obstacle are theoretical; they exist in the past and the future. We live in the moment and the more we embrace that, the easier the obstacle will be to face and move. So, no matter whatever bad things may or may not happen, you need to focus on the current moment by exercising, unplugging, walking and meditating to increase your awareness of the present state. This moment is not your life, it’s just a moment in your life. Focus on what is in front of you, right now. Ignore what it represents or it means or why it happened to you.

8. Finding Opportunity and Preparing to act: After you have controlled your emotions, started observing obstacles objectively and standing steadily, you will be looking not at the obstacle but at the opportunity within it. It’s our preconceptions that are the problem. They tell us that things should or need to be a certain way. So, when they’re not, we naturally assume that we are at a disadvantage or that we’d be wasting our time to pursue an alternate course. When really, it’s all fair game and every situation is an opportunity for us to act. Decide to tackle what stands in your way-not because you’re a gambler defying the odds but because you’ve calculated them and boldly embraced the risk.

B. THE DISCIPLINE OF ACTION:

In life, it doesn’t matter what happens to you or where you came from. It matters what you do with what happens, what you’ve been given and the only way you’ll do something spectacular is by using it all to your advantage.

9. Persistence: You need to get moving, build momentum, practice persistence in your efforts and resistance in distraction, discouragement or disorder. Genius often is just persistence in disguise. There are times when you are going to feel discouraged and that’s ok. But it’s not ok to quit. When you feel like quitting, you have to find a persistence within you to keep moving forwards. Never backward. Being able to see and understand the world this way is part and parcel of overturning obstacles. Here, a negative becomes a positive. We turn what would otherwise be disappointment into opportunity. Failure shows us the way by showing us what isn't the way.

On the path to successful action, we will fail, possibly many times and that’s okay. It can be a good thing, even. Action and failure are two sides of the same coin. One doesn’t come without the other. What breaks this critical connection down is when people stop acting because they’ve taken failure the wrong way.

10. Follow the Process: In the race of life, process provides us a way and orientate us that we have 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. And do it well. And then move on to the next thing. Follow the process and not the prize. Whether it’s pursuing the pinnacle of success in your field or simply surviving some awful or trying ordeal, the same approach works. Don’t think about the end-think about surviving. And when you really get it right, even the hardest things become manageable because the process is relaxing. Under its influence, we needn’t panic. Even mammoth tasks become just a series of component parts.

When it comes to our actions, disorder and distraction are death. The un-ordered mind loses track of what’s in front of it, what matters and gets distracted by thoughts of the future. The process is order, it keeps our perceptions in check and our actions in sync. The process is about doing the right things, right now. Not worrying about what might happen later or the results or the whole picture.

Anything worth achieving is going to take practice, and patience. You’re not going to get it perfect on the first go, but the lessons you learn are all part of the growing process.

11. Do Your Job, Do It Right: To whatever we face, our job is to respond with hard work, honesty, helping ourselves and others as best as we can whether anyone notices, whether we’re paid for it, whether the project turns out successful or not. We can and always should act with those three traits, no matter the obstacle. Everything is a chance to do and be the best. If we do our best, we can be proud of our choices and confident they’re the right ones because we did our job whatever it is. That’s one way to find the meaning of life and how to turn every obstacle into an opportunity.

12. What’s Right Is What Works: We spend a lot of time thinking about how things are supposed to be or what the rules say we should do. Trying to get it all perfect. We tell ourselves that we’ll get started once the conditions are right, or once we’re sure we can trust this or that. When, really, it’d be better to focus on making due, with what we’ve got. On focusing on results instead of pretty methods. Don’t think small, but make the distinction between the critical and the extra. Think progress, not perfection.

You can search endlessly, but you’re never going to find perfection. Perfect doesn’t exist, you’ve got to work with what you’ve got.

13. In Praise Of The Flank Attack:  If we’re starting from scratch and the established players have had time to build up their defenses, there is just no way we are going to beat them on their strengths. So it’s smarter to not even try, but instead focus our limited resources elsewhere. You don’t convince people by challenging their longest and most firmly held opinions. You find common ground and work from there or you look for leverage to make them listen or you create an alternative with so much support from other people that the opposition voluntarily abandons its views and joins your camp.

14. Seize the Offensive: At certain moments in our life, you are faced with great trials which are often frustrating, unfortunate, or unfair. In such situation, instead of perceiving them an exclusively negative event, you need to get past whatever negativity or adversity it represents and mount an offensive. You need to see that problem presents an opportunity for a solution that you have long been waiting for. If you don’t take that, it’s on you. After all, it’s at the seemingly bad moments, when people least expect it, that you can act swiftly and unexpectedly to pull off a big victory. Life speeds on the bold and favors the brave.

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.

Nothing can actually prevent you from trying. You can always make an attempts. And you may try and try and try, but the obstacle you are currently facing may just be impossible to overcome. And that’s life, it’s not even a bad result. And even if the only outcome of the event is that you learn to accept that sometimes, bad things happen, and you learn a little bit of humility.

You’re most likely going to do many different things in your life, and you may not love them all. Some may be beneath you, and others will be so prestigious that you’ll feel out of your depth. But it’s your duty to approach every job with the same attitude, to give it your absolute best.

C. THE DISCIPLINE OF THE WILL

15. Will:  Will is the discipline of the heart and the soul. It is our internal power, which can never be affected by the outside world. Placed in some situation that seems unchangeable and undeniably negative, we can turn it into a learning experience, a humbling experience, a chance to provide comfort to others. That’s will power. To think of others, to make the best of a terrible situation that we tried to prevent but could not, to deal with fate with cheerfulness and compassion; all are parts of will. But will needs to be cultivated. We must prepare for adversity and turmoil, practice cheerfulness even in dark times, manage our expectations, persevere, submit to a greater, larger cause and remind ourselves of our own mortality.

16. Build Your Inner Citadel: No one is born with an Inner Citadel or will strength. If you are going to succeed in achieving your goals despite the obstacles that may come, this strength in will must be built. You should always prepare for things to get tough and challenging because that will happen to you in some form or other at some time in life. However, it doesn’t make you invincible, but it helps prepare you for when fortune shifts… and it always does.

17. Anticipation (Thinking Negatively):

It’s impossible to have complete control of your life, there are always going to be external factors that greatly affect you and things aren’t always fair, you may not always get what you earned or what is rightfully yours.

If you let yourself be consistently surprised and taken aback when things don’t quite go to plan, you’re going to open yourself up to a lot of heartache and suffering. Every time something unexpected happens, you are going to feel beaten and weaker. The only thing you can truly guarantee is that things are going to go wrong and the best way to combat this is to anticipate them and prepare yourselves. We are the only variable in the events that we have control of.

Allow yourself to understand the different scenarios and outcomes that could occur, there’s always going to be more than one potential outcome, some good and some bad. Understand all the angles and be prepared for any of the outcomes. This helps us to accommodate ourselves to any of them and get back to the task at hand. We are prepared for failure and ready for success. With anticipation, we can endure.

18. The Art of Acquiescence: It doesn’t always feel that way but constraints in life are good thing, especially if we can accept them and let them direct us. They push us to places and to develop skills that we’d otherwise never have pursued. When the cause of our problem lies outside of us, we should be better at accepting it rather than fight against it and coming to terms with it. That’s the Art of Acquiescence. All external events can be equally beneficial to us because we can turn them all upside down and make use of them. They can teach us a lesson we were reluctant to otherwise learn.

19. Love Everything That Happens: The next step after we defer our expectations and accept what happens to us, after understanding that certain things, particularly bad things, are outside our control, is loving whatever happens to us and facing it with unfailing cheerfulness. After all, to do great things, we need to be able to endure tragedy and setbacks. We’ve got to love what we do and all that it entails, good and bad. We have to learn to find joy in every single thing that happens.

20. Perseverance: 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. That’s the perseverance. So, perseverance is all about will and it can’t be stopped by anything besides death. It’s endurance rather than pure energy and obviously, when used in conjunction with persistence or action, the results will always be positive.

Our actions can be constrained, but our will can’t be. Our plans, even our bodies can be broken. But no matter how many times we are thrown back, we can tend to retain the power to decide to go once more, to try another route or at the very least, to accept this reality and decide upon a new aim. We don’t control the barriers or the people who put them there. But we control ourselves and that is sufficient.

21. Something Bigger than Yourself: What doesn’t help anyone is making this-all about you, all the time. Why did this happen to me? What am I going to do about this? Whatever you’re going through, whatever is holding you down or standing in your way, can be turned into a source of strength by thinking of people other than yourself.  So, shifting your thinking from-If I can’t solve this for myself, how can I at least make this better for other people- can help create opportunities or new avenues for movement when we are personally stuck with some intractable or impossible problem.

We’re all, at varying points in our lives, the subject of random and often incomprehensible events. Reminding ourselves of this is another way of being a bit more selfless. Contribute your little bit to the universe before it swallows you up, be happy with that, help others and it will make you stronger. We’re all just humans, doing the best we can. We’re all just trying to survive, and in the process, inch the world forward a little bit.

22. Prepare to Start Again: We live in a constant cycle of facing obstacles and overcoming them only to be faced with the next one. But if life didn’t continue on this way, it would be boring, mundane and stagnant. It’s these events that create opportunities. Each time you navigate an obstacle, you learn a little bit about yourself and others. You can take your new-found knowledge and use it the next time. The more obstacles you face and overcome, the more you develop strength, wisdom and perspective. And you’ll continue improving yourself. There are always more obstacles, bigger challenges. You’re always fighting uphill. Get used to it and train accordingly.

Knowing that life is a marathon and not a sprint is important. Conserve your energy. Understand that each battle is only one of many and that you can use it to make the next one easier. More importantly, you must keep them all in real perspective.

23. The Obstacle Becomes the Way: Not everyone looks at obstacles as the reason to despair. They may also perceive obstacles as a chance to test and improve themselves. They are the people who have acknowledged the powers of perception, action, and will. With this triad, they first, see clearly; next, act correctly and finally, endure and accept the world as it is.

Perceive things as they are, leave no option unexplored, then stand strong, transform whatever can’t be changed and they all feed into one another. Our actions give us confidence to ignore or control our perceptions. We prove and support our will with our actions. We gather strength as we go.

Of course, it is not enough to simply read this or say it. We must practice these maxims, rolling them over and over in our minds and acting on them until they become muscle memory.

See things for what they are.

Do what you can.

Endure and bear what you must.

What blocked the path now is a path.

What once impeded action advances action?

The Obstacle is the Way.

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Disclaimer: Takeaway is the series of article in which I am making humble effort to offer actionable interpretations, perspectives and agendas from worthy books by some of the eminent authors and thought leaders. The views expressed herein is just the personal perspective of writer and doesn’t reflect opinion of whatsoever organization he is currently engaged with.