The Obstacle Is the Way
#1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller The Obstacle is the Way has become a cult classic, beloved by men and women around the world who apply its wisdom to become more successful at whatever they do. Its many fans include a former governor and movie star (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a hip hop icon (LL Cool J), an Irish tennis pro (James McGee), an NBC sportscaster (Michele Tafoya), and the coaches and players of winning teams like the New England Patriots, Seattle Seahawks, Chicago Cubs, and University of Texas men’s basketball team. The book draws its inspiration from stoicism, the ancient Greek philosophy of enduring pain or adversity with perseverance and resilience. Stoics focus on the things they can control, let go of everything else, and turn every new obstacle into an opportunity to get better, stronger, tougher. As Marcus Aurelius put it nearly 2000 years ago: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” Ryan Holiday shows us how some of the most successful people in history—from John D. Rockefeller to Amelia Earhart to Ulysses S. Grant to Steve Jobs—have applied stoicism to overcome difficult or even impossible situations. Their
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Working from one line in the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Ryan Holiday lays out the Stoic discipline of treating each obstacle as the path forward. He runs the move through chapters on perception, action, and will, with case studies from Demosthenes and Lincoln to Amelia Earhart.
The Obstacle Is the Way (2014) was Ryan Holiday's first major Stoicism book. It started his loose Stoic life trilogy with Ego Is the Enemy (2016) and Stillness Is the Key (2019).
The Obstacle Is the Way is closer to applied philosophy than traditional self-help, drawing on Stoic principles and historical case studies. Readers familiar with Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus will recognize the underlying ideas.
The Obstacle Is the Way was written by Ryan Holiday, published in 2014 by Portfolio/Penguin.
The Obstacle Is the Way is 201 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Obstacle Is the Way takes most readers 3 to 4 hours to finish.
The Obstacle Is the Way is a standalone novel by Ryan Holiday, not part of a series.
The Obstacle Is the Way is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
