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A review by waido
The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials Into Triumph by Ryan Holiday
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.25
The books does contain some useful bits of insight about Stoicism. The author brought up stories about well-known practitioners of Stoicism and the lessons we can learn from them. The book has a good key message - overcoming obstacles and try to use them to your advantage. However, some parts of the book exhibit that self-help "feelgood" tone that can gets a bit annoying. Furthermore, this sort of feelgood tone dilute the content of the book and distracts the reader from the actual insights.
Regarding the stories, most of them are quite inspiring, and fits to the overall theme of the book. However, some of them are just a bit cliché and follow the motif of "Person no rich, person do X, therefore you should do X (to be rich)". Although the author did not explicitly stated that you should do that to be successful, I think that is kind of implied from the way he tell the stories. For example, in the Rockefeller story (1st chapter of Part I: The discipline of perception), it is emphasized that "they (people) all attended the same school of bad times. But few reacted as he did. Not many had trained themselves to see opportunity inside this obstacle, that what befell them was not unsalvageable misfortune but the gift of education—a chance to learn from a rare moment in economic history." Well, and there are those who did reacted as he did as well, where are they now? To attribute Rockefeller riches to his action alone and say that people was not as rich just because they didn't "react the way he did" is a big inaccuracy. I think having these kind of success stories really undermine the key message of Stoicism, because Stoicism is not really about becoming rich or successful. The Stoics care more about living a good and "virtuous" life, aiming to achieve true self-fulfillment and happiness.
The book also contains some parts that are just plain wrong. An example would be in the 2nd Chapter of Part II, there is a part where he mention that "While you’re sleeping, traveling, attending meetings, or messing around online, the same thing is happening to you. You’re going soft." If sleeping is going soft then we are being "soft" for 1/3 of our life. Let's give the author the benefit of the doubt for a moment and assume that he doesn't mean the normal act of sleeping for 8 hours a night itself but rather the extra sleep that one gets throughout the day. In this case, sleep/napping still has its value. Power napping for example, can help improve focus, alertness, and make it easier to overcome that post-lunch slump (which is one big reason why some cultures take naps after lunch time). Same for traveling, I think that people doing "fun" things in life is not necessary them going soft, it's called enjoying life. Having a hobby or doing fun things boost creativity because it allows you to have a bit of child-like exploration here and there, which creates new and interesting perspectives that you can brought back to your work. It's not always about "pressing ahead" and "always moving" like the author suggested, sometime you need to move backward in order to move forward, and some other time, you need to stop to take a break, check your map, or just enjoy the scenery a bit before continuing your journey. You are not "going soft" by doing so, you're simply playing the long game.
TL;DR: Good introduction to Stoicism and how to apply Stoic practices in life to overcome difficulties. However, there are some inaccuracies here and there, and an ever-present self-help feelgood tone that can gets annoying at times.
Regarding the stories, most of them are quite inspiring, and fits to the overall theme of the book. However, some of them are just a bit cliché and follow the motif of "Person no rich, person do X, therefore you should do X (to be rich)". Although the author did not explicitly stated that you should do that to be successful, I think that is kind of implied from the way he tell the stories. For example, in the Rockefeller story (1st chapter of Part I: The discipline of perception), it is emphasized that "they (people) all attended the same school of bad times. But few reacted as he did. Not many had trained themselves to see opportunity inside this obstacle, that what befell them was not unsalvageable misfortune but the gift of education—a chance to learn from a rare moment in economic history." Well, and there are those who did reacted as he did as well, where are they now? To attribute Rockefeller riches to his action alone and say that people was not as rich just because they didn't "react the way he did" is a big inaccuracy. I think having these kind of success stories really undermine the key message of Stoicism, because Stoicism is not really about becoming rich or successful. The Stoics care more about living a good and "virtuous" life, aiming to achieve true self-fulfillment and happiness.
The book also contains some parts that are just plain wrong. An example would be in the 2nd Chapter of Part II, there is a part where he mention that "While you’re sleeping, traveling, attending meetings, or messing around online, the same thing is happening to you. You’re going soft." If sleeping is going soft then we are being "soft" for 1/3 of our life. Let's give the author the benefit of the doubt for a moment and assume that he doesn't mean the normal act of sleeping for 8 hours a night itself but rather the extra sleep that one gets throughout the day. In this case, sleep/napping still has its value. Power napping for example, can help improve focus, alertness, and make it easier to overcome that post-lunch slump (which is one big reason why some cultures take naps after lunch time). Same for traveling, I think that people doing "fun" things in life is not necessary them going soft, it's called enjoying life. Having a hobby or doing fun things boost creativity because it allows you to have a bit of child-like exploration here and there, which creates new and interesting perspectives that you can brought back to your work. It's not always about "pressing ahead" and "always moving" like the author suggested, sometime you need to move backward in order to move forward, and some other time, you need to stop to take a break, check your map, or just enjoy the scenery a bit before continuing your journey. You are not "going soft" by doing so, you're simply playing the long game.
TL;DR: Good introduction to Stoicism and how to apply Stoic practices in life to overcome difficulties. However, there are some inaccuracies here and there, and an ever-present self-help feelgood tone that can gets annoying at times.