The Obstacle Is The Way: The Timeless Art Of Turning Trials Into Triumph Quotes
"Our actions may be impeded... but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting."
"The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."
"We are the rightful heirs to this tradition. It’s our birthright. Whatever we face, we have a choice: Will we be blocked by obstacles, or will we advance through and over them?"
"Plenty of people have answered this question in the affirmative. And a rarer breed still has shown that they not only have what it takes, but they thrive and rally at every such challenge. That the challenge makes them better than if they’d never faced the adversity at all."
"Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been."
"The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition."
"What blocks us is clear. Systemic: decaying institutions, rising unemployment, skyrocketing costs of education, and technological disruption. Individual: too short, too old, too scared, too poor, too stressed, no access, no backers, no confidence."
"Great individuals, like great companies, find a way to transform weakness into strength. It’s a rather amazing and even touching feat."
"Every impediment only served to make the inferno within them burn with greater ferocity."
"Turn it around. Find some benefit. Use it as fuel."
"We must possess, as Voltaire once explained about the secret to the great military success of the first Duke of Marlborough, that 'tranquil courage in the midst of tumult and serenity of soul in danger, which the English call a cool head.'"
"We decide what we will make of each and every situation. We decide whether we’ll break or whether we’ll resist."
"Just because your mind tells you that something is awful or evil or unplanned or otherwise negative doesn’t mean you have to agree."
"If an emotion can’t change the condition or the situation you’re dealing with, it is likely an unhelpful emotion. Or, quite possibly, a destructive one."
"Don’t let the force of an impression when it first hit 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."
"Roasted meat is a dead animal and vintage wine is old, fermented grapes."
"Objectivity means removing 'you'—the subjective part—from the equation."
"Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment."
"Fear is debilitating, distracting, tiring, and often irrational."
"The Greeks understood that we often choose the ominous explanation over the simple one, to our detriment."
"Remember: We choose how we’ll look at things."
"Our critics and naysayers who make us feel small, let’s put them in their proper place."
"Take your situation and pretend it is not happening to you."
"Think of all the ways that someone could solve a specific problem."
"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."
"We will not be stopped by failure, we will not be rushed or distracted by external noise. We will chisel and peg away at the obstacle until it is gone. Resistance is futile."
"In persistence, he’d not only broken through: In trying it all the wrong ways, Grant discovered a totally new way—the way that would eventually win the war."
"Genius often really is just persistence in disguise."
"It’s okay to be discouraged. It’s not okay to quit."
"It’s supposed to be hard. Your first attempts aren’t going to work."
"What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first steps to something better."
"Persistence and resilience only come from having been given the chance to work through difficult problems."
"Under the comb, the tangle and the straight path are the same."
"Sometimes the longest way around is the shortest way home."
"Being able to see and understand the world this way is part and parcel of overturning obstacles."
"When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstance revert at once to yourself and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help."
"Adversity can harden you. Or it can loosen you up and make you better—if you let it."
"Think about it too much and it can start to feel oppressive, even suffocating."
"To be physically and mentally loose takes no talent. That’s just recklessness. To be physically and mentally tight? That’s called anxiety."
"The best men are not those who have waited for chances but who have taken them; besieged chance, conquered the chance, and made chance the servitor."
"Anyone sentient can take advantage of opportunities that arise. What you must do is learn how to press forward precisely when everyone around you sees disaster."
"You always planned to do something. Now something has happened—some disruptive event like a failure or an accident or a tragedy. Use it."
"Life speeds on the bold and favors the brave."
"The obstacle is not only turned upside down but used as a catapult."
"To live with depression, Lincoln developed a strong inner fortress that girded him."
"Leadership requires determination and energy. And certain situations, at times, call on leaders to marshal that determined energy simply to endure."
"We can think, act, and finally adjust to a world that is inherently unpredictable."
"Always prepare ourselves for more difficult times."
"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."
"The Fates guide the person who accepts them and hinder the person who resists them."
"We don’t get to choose what happens to us, but we can always choose how we feel about it."
"It’s important to look at Johnson and Edison because they weren’t passive. They didn’t simply roll over and tolerate adversity. They accepted what happened to them. They liked it."
"There is little reason to delay these feelings. To begrudgingly acknowledge later that it was for the best, when we could have felt that in advance because it was inevitable."
"You love it because it’s all fuel. And you don’t just want fuel. You need it."
"But there is always some good—even if only barely perceptible at first—contained within the bad."
"Creativity, of course. And craftiness and leadership and discipline and courage."
"But perseverance is something larger. It’s the long game."
"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."
"Perseverance. Force of purpose. Indomitable will."
"The secret to his success, Pigafetta said, was Magellan’s ability to endure hunger better than the other men."
"Determination, if you think about it, is invincible."
"A man’s job is to make the world a better place to live in, so far as he is able—always remembering the results will be infinitesimal—and to attend to his own soul."
"With fear or heartache no longer our primary concern, we don’t have time for it. Shared purpose gives us strength."
"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."
"Death doesn’t make life pointless, but rather purposeful."
"What stood in the way became the way. What impeded action in some way advanced it."
"See things for what they are. Do what we can. Endure and bear what we must."