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How to See Problems as Opportunities (The Obstacle is the Way)

2020-09-29 · Book summary (Book Club) · Ali · recording, 8:40 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Mindset, motivation and happiness · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: Lesson from a book, Sponsor segment present

In a Book Club episode on Ryan Holiday's The Obstacle Is the Way, Ali presents the book's three Stoic disciplines for turning obstacles to advantage: perception, action and will, and adds his own habits of defeating negative emotions with logic and focusing on the process rather than the outcome.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — The Obstacle Is the Way: turning adversity to advantage in three steps

  • ★★ This Book Club episode, in Ali's series distilling highlights from his favourite books, is on The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday. — 00:00:00 · Book Club
  • ★★★ Ryan Holiday (quoted): Ryan Holiday's The Obstacle Is the Way argues that we meet obstacles at every stage of life and, instead of avoiding them, must learn to tackle them and use them to our advantage. — 00:00:29 · stoicism
  • ★★ Ryan Holiday (quoted): In The Obstacle Is the Way, overcoming obstacles to live a happier, healthier, more productive life involves three interdependent steps: perception, action and will. — 00:00:29
  • ★ Ali says Stoicism, the school of Greek philosophy The Obstacle Is the Way draws on, really resonates with him. — 00:00:29 · stoicism

00:00:58 — Perception: controlling how we interpret events, apatheia, defeating emotions with logic

  • ★★ Ryan Holiday (quoted): In Ryan Holiday's account, perception is how we judge and interpret events: by controlling our emotions, putting things in perspective and examining them objectively, we see obstacles more clearly. — 00:00:58 · stoicism
  • ★★ Ali finds that when he looks at his problems objectively, from an outsider's perspective, most of them are not really that bad. — 00:01:57
  • ★★ Ryan Holiday (quoted): Ryan Holiday writes that anyone can cultivate the skill of controlling emotions, which the Greeks called apatheia: calm equanimity without irrational or extreme emotions, not the loss of feeling altogether. — 00:01:57
  • ★ Ali highlighted the chapter Controlling Your Emotions of The Obstacle Is the Way on his Kindle when he read the book years ago, because it resonated with him. — 00:01:57 · Kindle
  • ★★★ Ali says that whenever he feels a negative emotion he defeats it with logic, now almost by second nature, so that he almost never experiences a strong negative emotion. — 00:02:38
  • ★★ Ryan Holiday (quoted): The message of the action part of The Obstacle Is the Way: whatever the game, the people who take action and act decisively end up winning it. — 00:02:38

00:03:00 — Action: focus on the process, journey before destination, Edison's persistence

  • ★★ Nick Saban (quoted): Nick Saban, coach of the University of Alabama American football team, has the mantra "focus on the process": think not about winning the championship but about this drill, this play, this moment. — 00:03:10

  • ★★★ Ali calls "journey before destination", an ideal of the Knights Radiant in Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive, focusing on the process rather than the outcome, one of the fundamental pieces of life advice that all self-help converges on. — 00:03:10 · Brandon Sanderson

    “focus on the process rather than the outcome”

  • ★★★ Ali says most overthinking, anxiety and worry come from being too fixated on the outcome; focusing on the process makes everything more fun, because we are present, and makes us less anxious. — 00:03:51

  • ★ Ali calls consistency and persistence another of the spiels he always gives. — 00:03:51
  • ★★ Ryan Holiday (quoted): Ryan Holiday writes that Thomas Edison did over 6,000 experiments to find the missing element of his filament bulb; of the many people then trying to invent a working light bulb, it was Edison who persisted through many iterations and overcame the obstacles most successfully. — 00:04:20

  • ★★ Ryan Holiday (quoted): Ryan Holiday writes that we are "A to Z thinkers", fretting about A and obsessing over Z while forgetting the steps in between; action means consistency and focus on the process. — 00:04:20

    “we are A to Z thinkers fretting about A, obsessing over Z, yet forgetting all about B through Y.”

00:04:50 — Sponsor read for Blinkist

00:06:10 — Will: the inner citadel, premeditating adversity, what is in our control, amor fati

  • ★★ Ryan Holiday (quoted): Ryan Holiday describes will as the discipline of heart and soul: inner fortitude and wisdom that lets us put events in context, endure hardship and draw meaning from obstacles, the Stoics' inner citadel. — 00:06:17 · stoicism
  • ★★ Ryan Holiday (quoted): One Stoic way of strengthening the will that Ryan Holiday describes is premeditating adversity: imagining something bad happening to us so that we are more prepared if it does. — 00:06:46 · stoicism
  • ★★ Ryan Holiday (quoted): The Obstacle Is the Way teaches accepting what we cannot control, by the Stoics' question of what is and is not in my control: not natural events, others' actions or opinions, but our own emotions, judgments, attitudes and decisions. — 00:06:46 · stoicism
  • ★★ Ali calls amor fati, Nietzsche's "love of fate", great: an ideal state of loving whatever happens to us, first accepting it and then learning to love it. — 00:07:16
  • ★★ Ali sums up that with perception, action and will we can see clearly, act clearly and accept the world as it is, as in Marcus Aurelius's Meditations: objective judgment, unselfish action, willing acceptance. — 00:07:16

00:08:05 — Marcus Aurelius's summary and pointer to the Stoicism video with Sam

Threads in this video

  • milestone · Book Club, Ali's series of book-summary videos (2020) — This Book Club episode, in Ali's series distilling highlights from his favourite books, is on The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday. (00:00:00)
  • refine · How do you reduce stress? — Ali finds that when he looks at his problems objectively, from an outsider's perspective, most of them are not really that bad. (00:01:57)
  • refine · How do you become happier? — Ali says that whenever he feels a negative emotion he defeats it with logic, now almost by second nature, so that he almost never experiences a strong negative emotion. (00:02:38)
  • first on record · How do you stop overthinking decisions? — Ali says most overthinking, anxiety and worry come from being too fixated on the outcome; focusing on the process makes everything more fun, because we are present, and makes us less anxious. (00:03:51)

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: journey before destination · Ryan Holiday · stoicism · The Obstacle Is the Way

Also: People: Brandon Sanderson · Friedrich Nietzsche · Marcus Aurelius · Nick Saban · Thomas Edison

Projects: Book Club

Works: Meditations · The Stormlight Archive

Concepts: amor fati

Characters: Albus Dumbledore

Products: Kindle

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