Stoicism and "The Obstacle is the Way"

Ryan Holiday, the author of the phenomenal book “Trust Me I’m Lying,” recently released his new book “The Obstacle is the Way.” It’s a rather small book filled with advice and anecdotes on Stoicism and life related advice.

I liked the book, I’m not overly thrilled with it, but I found that it had a few high points. Unlike his sophomore book, this book appears to be motivated to convince the reader of his ideas.

Some of the things I took away from it:

• Stoicism encourages the person to become less reactionary. Tim Ferris frequently promotes this idea as well.

• Don’t let situations that you can’t control zap your emotional and mental energy.

•   Let the situation pass and realize that it may not be as bad as you think, or how that it could be a good way to learn something new. Think of this mindset as an Null object pattern, this removes branching

•   When you let a situation stay on your mind, this is a branch prediction failure. That will prevent you from finding a solution to the issue.