How to Overcome Challenges in Life

In our life, we face many different situations every day. Sometimes these problems paralyze us and make us so weak that instead of fighting back, we try to avoid it or start procrastinating.

People think obstacle means either giving up or changing the course of direction.

But what if these obstacles become a way for your victory? What if these difficulties become a way for new opportunities? The book "The obstacle is the way" by Ryan Holiday discusses on how to turn obstacles into turning point of your life.

In this book, he tells stories about some of the great individuals and popular leaders of history to show how they preserved through tough times and faced many obstacles that later made them successful.

Ryan shows three ways to overcome obstacles in his book: Perception, Action, and Will.

1. Perception

Perception means how you see and understand different situations? How do you define good or bad situations? The way you see it can either become your source of strength or weakness.

If you become emotional in any bad situation or highly negative about it, you’ll most likely perceive the situation negatively.

You’ll not be able to see that situation as you would being open-minded. In such a case, you focus less on facts and more on your personal feelings.

That is the reason why you have a solution to others problems rather than your own. Because in others’ problems, you are not emotional, you understand their problem more clearly and come up with a good solution.

Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so.

- William Shakespeare

So in a challenging situation, if you detach yourself from your emotions and see it as some outsider, you’ll realize that your problem is not so big and could be handled easily.

The perceiving eye sees more than is there, but the observing eye, sees only what is there.

- Ryan Holiday

The author tells us to be a good observer and tells us to see the situation exactly the way it is rather than making the problem even bigger through negative thinking or overthinking.

To control your emotions, Ryan introduced an ancient roman philosophy called Apatheia.

Apatheia is a state of calmness that can only be achieved if you detach yourself from extreme emotions. It doesn’t mean you need to numb your feelings. You only need to detach yourself from the emotional state that is unhelpful or harmful.

Don’t let negative thoughts enter you in the first place say, “No, thank you, I can’t afford to panic.”

There is also a practical technique mentioned in the book: Defeating negative emotions with logic.

For example: If you incur a loss in business instead of getting depressed, you need to think isn’t a loss part of the business. If it is part of the business rather than getting depressed, you need to think positively and try harder next time to get better results.

So if you use logic, you’ll clearly understand your problem and also find a proper solution for it.

Along with making the right perspective, you also need to take action.

2. Action

With action, I mean continuous effort. You need to have the discipline to make a continuous effort until you achieve your goal or you overcome the obstacle in your way.

There are many stories in the book from which I’ll talk about Demosthenes.

"Demosthenes had a dream of becoming a powerful orator despite having an inarticulate and stammering pronunciation.

When he was 7 years old, his parents died, and his guardians took over all the property. Instead of having all these problems, he never quit. He created a plan of action for himself which he followed with absolute discipline.

He locked himself in his room and started studying law so one day he could win the case against his guardians and get what was rightfully his. He also started practicing his speech through various weird exercises like speaking while putting pebbles in his mouth or trying to speak very fast.

Through his persistence, he achieved his goals. He not only won the case against his ex-guardians but also became the greatest orator of Athens."

With this story, you need to understand that no matter how big the problem is, you can overcome and win in any situation with the right plan of action and discipline to follow it.

Now imagine you’re a part of some long-term project, where you face many difficulties every day.

Every time there is an obstacle, you feel discouraged and demotivated.

What would you do in such a situation? In such a situation, rather than focusing on the outcome, focus on the present.

Focus on each day, each moment, and enjoy the overall process. With this mentality you’ll feel less stressed and also you’ll improve every single day.

Ryan Holiday says we are A-Z thinkers. We think about A, we obsess about Z and completely ignore B-Y.

So follow the process, enjoy the moment and be consistent.

3. Will

Will is your internal power, which is not affected by external factors.

Ancient stoics like Epictetus, Seneca, and emperor Marcus Aurelius says make your inner citadel strong. So you focus on only those things which are under your control and ignore the ones that are not under your control.

There are two kinds of obstacles in our life internal and external.

External obstacles like a natural disaster, economy, other’s opinions, and death which are not in our control. But internal obstacles like our opinions, judgments, decisions, and actions are in our control and can be changed.

So we need to make your inner citadel so strong that instead of being affected by challenges and difficulties in life, you learn from them and you can ultimately achieve the greater purpose of your life.

For strong WILL author references AMOR FATI, which means love of fate.

Whatever situation you’re in, accept it and love it. Love everything that happens, good or bad.

To follow the first two steps, Perception and Action, discipline of mind and body is essential. But for the third step Will, the discipline of heart and soul is important.

The impediments to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

- Marcus Aurelius

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