Our actions may be impeded . . . but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting.


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


In Marcus we find a man who held the highest and most powerful station in the world—and the universal verdict of the people around him was that he proved himself worthy of it.


We are the rightful heirs to this tradition. It's our birthright. Whatever we face, we have a choice: Will we be blocked by obstacles, or will we advance through and over them?


That the challenge makes them better than if they'd never faced the adversity at all.


We will see things simply and straightforwardly, as they truly are—neither good nor bad. This will be an incredible advantage for us in the fight against obstacles.


To perceive what others see as negative, as something to be approached rationally, clearly, and, most important, as an opportunity—not as something to fear or bemoan.


Rockefeller is more than just an analogy. We live in our own Gilded Age. In less than a decade, we've experienced two major economic bubbles, entire industries are crumbling, lives have been disrupted. What feels like unfairness abounds. Financial downturns, civil unrest, adversity. People are afraid and discouraged,


Too often we react emotionally, get despondent, and lose our perspective. All that does is turn bad things into really bad things. Unhelpful perceptions can invade our minds—that sacred place of reason, action and will—and throw off our compass.


We can see disaster rationally. Or rather, like Rockefeller, we can see *opportunity* in every disaster, and transform that negative situation into an education, a skill set, or a fortune. Seen properly, everything that happens—be it an economic crash or a personal tragedy—is a chance to move forward.


Carter did not have much power, but he understood that that was not the same thing as being powerless. Many great figures, from Nelson Mandela to Malcolm X, have come to understand this fundamental distinction.


We decide what we will make of each and every situation. We decide whether we'll break or whether we'll resist. We decide whether we'll assent or reject. No one can force us to give up or to believe something that is untrue (such as, that a situation is absolutely hopeless or impossible to improve). Our perceptions are the thing that we're in complete control of.


Regardless of how much actual danger we're in, stress puts us at the potential whim of our baser—fearful—instinctual reactions.


When people panic, they make mistakes. They override systems. They disregard procedures, ignore rules. They deviate from the plan. They become unresponsive and stop thinking clearly. They just react—not to what they need to react to, but to the survival hormones that are coursing through their veins.


In space, the difference between life and death lies in emotional regulation.


Thus, the question for astronauts was not How skilled a pilot are you, but Can you keep an even strain? Can you fight the urge to panic and instead focus only on what you can change? On the task at hand?


Life is really no different. Obstacles make us emotional, but the only way we'll survive or overcome them is by keeping those emotions in check—if we can keep steady no matter what happens, no matter how much external events may fluctuate.


The Greeks had a word for this: *apatheia*. It's the kind of calm equanimity that comes with the absence of irrational or extreme emotions. Not the loss of feeling altogether, just the loss of the harmful, unhelpful kind. Don't let the negativity in, don't let those emotions even get started. Just say: No, thank *you.* I can't afford to *panic.*


This is the skill that must be cultivated—freedom from disturbance and perturbation—so you can focus your energy exclusively on solving problems, rather than reacting to them.


As Gavin de Becker writes in The Gift of *Fear,* "When you worry, ask yourself, 'What am I choosing to not see right now?' What important things are you missing because you chose worry over introspection, alertness or wisdom?"


Another way of putting it: Does getting upset provide you with more options?


Sometimes it does. But in *this* instance? No, I suppose not. Well, then. If an emotion can't change the condition or the situation you're dealing with, it is likely an unhelpful emotion. Or, quite possibly, a destructive one.


Real strength lies in the *control* or, as Nassim Taleb put it, the *domestication* of one's emotions, not in pretending they don't exist.


You can always remind yourself: I am in control, not my **emotions.** I see what's really going on here. I'm not going to get **excited** or upset.


Try having that conversation with yourself and see how those extreme emotions hold up. They won't last long, trust that.


After all, you're probably not going to die from any of this. It might help to say it over and over again whenever you feel the anxiety begin to come on: I am not going to die from this. I am not going to die from this. I am not going to die from *this.*


Or try Marcus's question: Does what happened keep you from acting with **justice,** generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, **humility,** straightforwardness?


And the answer—like it is for astronauts, for soldiers, for doctors, and for so many other professionals—must be: No, **because** I practiced for this situation and I can control *myself.* Or, No, *because* I caught myself and I'm able to realize that that doesn't add **anything** constructive.


In our own lives, how many problems seem to come from applying judgments to things we don't control, as though there were a way they were *supposed* to be? How often do we see what we think is there or should be there, instead of what actually is there?


Having steadied ourselves and held back our emotions, we can see things as they really are. We can do that using our observing eye.


"When you worry, ask yourself, 'What am I choosing to not see right now?' What important things are you missing because you chose worry over introspection, alertness or wisdom?"


Our understanding of the world of business is all mixed up with storytelling and mythology. Which is funny because we're missing the real story by focusing on individuals.


To harness the same power, recovering addicts learn the Serenity Prayer. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference.


This is our playing field, so to speak. Everything there is fair game. What is not up to us? Well, you know, everything else. The weather, the economy, circumstances, other people's emotions or judgments, trends, disasters, et cetera.


To argue, to complain, or worse, to just give up, these are choices. Choices that more often than not, do *nothing* to get us across the finish line.


Focusing exclusively on what is in our power magnifies and enhances our power. But every ounce of energy directed at things we can't actually influence is wasted—self-indulgent and selfdestructive. So much power—ours, and other people's—is frittered away in this manner.


A good person dyes events with his own color . . . and turns whatever happens to his own benefit.


That which doesn't kill me makes me stronger.


Then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood.


We forget: In life, it doesn't matter what happens to you or where you came from. It matters what you do with what happens and what you've been given. And the only way you'll do something spectacular is by using it all to your advantage.


People turn shit into sugar all the time—shit that's a lot worse than whatever we're dealing with. I'm talking physical disabilities, racial discrimination, battles against overwhelmingly superior armies. But those people didn't quit. They didn't feel sorry for themselves. They didn't delude themselves with fantasies about easy solutions. They focused on the one thing that mattered: applying themselves with gusto and creativity.


No one wants to be born weak or to be victimized. No one wants to be down to their last dollar. No one wants to be stuck behind an obstacle, blocked from where they need to go. Such circumstances are not impressed by perception, but they are not indifferent—or rather immune—from action. In fact, that's the only thing these situations will respond to.


Grant's story is not the exception to the rule. It is the rule. This is how innovation works.


As we butt up against obstacles, it is helpful to picture Grant and Edison. Grant with a cigar clenched in his mouth. Edison on his hands and knees in the laboratory for days straight. Both unceasing, embodying cool persistence and the spirit of the line from the Alfred Lord Tennyson poem about that other Ulysses, "to strive, to seek, to find." Both, refusing to give up. Turning over in their minds option after option, and trying each one with equal enthusiasm. Knowing that eventually—*inevitably*—one will work. Welcoming the opportunity to test and test and test, grateful for the priceless knowledge this reveals.


What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first steps to something better.


In the chaos of sport, as in life, process provides us a way.


We can take a breath, do the immediate, composite part in front of us—and follow its thread into the next action.


When action is our priority, vanity falls away.


Each project matters, and the only degrading part is giving less than one is capable of giving.


How you do anything is how you can do everything. We can always act right.


Duty is beautiful, and inspiring and empowering.


Every situation is different, obviously. We're not inventing the next iPad or iPhone, but we are making something for someone—even if it's just our own résumé.


In every situation, life is asking us a question, and our actions are the answer. Our job is simply to answer well.


Right action—unselfish, dedicated, masterful, creative—that is the answer to that question. That's one way to find the meaning of life. And how to turn every obstacle into an opportunity.


If you see any of this as a burden, you're looking at it the wrong way.


Because all we need to do is those three little duties—to try hard, to be honest, and to help others and ourselves. That's all that's been asked of us. No more and no less.


What mattered was that you got it done and it *worked*.


Think progress, not perfection.


Gandhi's extensive satyagraha campaign and civil disobedience show that action has many definitions. It's not always moving forward or even obliquely. It can also be a matter of positions. It can be a matter of taking a stand.


Martin Luther King Jr., taking Gandhi's lead, told his followers that they would meet "physical force with soul force." In other words, they would use the power of opposites. In the face of violence they would be peaceful, to hate they would answer with love—and in the process, they would expose those attributes as indefensible and evil.


The great philosopher Søren Kierkegaard rarely sought to convince people directly from a position of authority. Instead of lecturing, he practiced a method he called "indirect communication."


You don't convince people by challenging their longest and most firmly held opinions. You find common ground and work from there. Or you look for leverage to make them listen.


What you must do is learn how to press forward precisely when everyone around you sees disaster.


We must prepare for adversity and turmoil, we must learn the art of acquiescence and practice cheerfulness even in dark times.


True will is quiet humility, resilience, and flexibility; the other kind of will is weakness disguised by bluster and ambition.


Lincoln's personal challenges had been so intense that he came to believe they were destined for him in some way, and that the depression, especially, was a unique experience that prepared him for greater things.


The nation called for a leader of magnanimity and force of purpose—it found one in Lincoln, a political novice who was nevertheless a seasoned expert on matters of will and patience.


We are prepared for failure and ready for success.


The Fates guide the person who accepts them and hinder the person who resists them.


You know you're not the only one who has to accept things you don't necessarily like, right? It's part of the human condition.


After you've distinguished between the things that are up to you and the things that aren't (ta eph'hemin, ta ouk eph'hemin), and the break comes down to something you don't control . . . you've got only one option: acceptance.


My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it . . . but love it.


To do great things, we need to be able to endure tragedy and setbacks. We've got to love what we do and all that it entails, good and bad. We have to learn to find joy in every single thing that happens.


As the Stoics commanded themselves: Cheerfulness in all situations, especially the bad ones. Who knows where Edison and Johnson learned this epithet, but they clearly did.


Learning not to kick and scream about matters we can't control is one thing. Indifference and acceptance are certainly better than disappointment or rage. Very few understand or practice that art. But it is only a first step. Better than all of that is love for all that happens to us, for every situation.


And we can find it and be cheerful because of it.


A man's job is to make the world a better place to live in, so far as he is able—always remembering the results will be infinitesimal—and to attend to his own soul.


Shared purpose gives us strength.


The desire to quit or compromise on principles suddenly feels rather selfish when we consider the people who would be affected by that decision.


Help your fellow humans thrive and survive, contribute your little bit to the universe before it swallows you up, and be happy with that. Lend a hand to others. Be strong for them, and it will make you stronger.


Memento mori, the Romans would remind themselves. Remember you are mortal.


Reminding ourselves each day that we will die helps us treat our time as a gift. Someone on a deadline doesn't indulge himself with attempts at the impossible, he doesn't waste time complaining about how he'd like things to be.


Knowing that life is a marathon and not a sprint is important. Conserve your energy. Understand that each battle is only one of many and that you can use it to make the next one easier. More important, you must keep them all in real perspective.


The obstacle becomes the way, becomes the way. Forever and ever and ever. Yes, it's unlikely that anyone is going to make an armed run at our throne anytime soon. But people will make pointed remarks. They will cut us off in traffic. Our rivals will steal our business. We will be hurt. Forces will try to hold us back. Bad stuff will happen.


The essence of philosophy is action—in making good on the ability to turn the obstacle upside down with our minds. Understanding our problems for what's within them and their greater context. To see things *philosophically* and act accordingly.


Philosophy was never what happened in the classroom. It was a set of lessons from the battlefield of life.


Man's Search for *Meaning*. New York: Touchstone, 1984.


Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises *from* Socrates to *Foucault.* Translated by Arnold Davidson. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 1995.


What Is Ancient *Philosophy?* Translated by Michael Chase. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004.


The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers: The Complete Extant Writings of Epicurus, Epictetus, Lucretius, Marcus *Aurelius*. New York: Random House, 1940.


Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters. Translated by Moses Hadas. New York: W. W. Norton, 1968.


His book Philosophy as a Way of *Life* explains how philosophy has been wrongly interpreted as a thing people *talk* about rather than something that people do.


In Marcus's words is the secret to an art known as turning obstacles upside down. To act with "a reverse clause," so there is always a way out or another route to get to where you need to go. So that setbacks or problems are always expected and never permanent. Making certain that what impedes us can empower us.


Great individuals, like great companies, find a way to transform weakness into strength. It's a rather amazing and even touching feat. They took what should have held them back—what in fact might be holding you back right this very second—and used it to move forward.


What blocks us is clear. Systemic: decaying institutions, rising unemployment, skyrocketing costs of education, and technological disruption. Individual: too short, too old, too scared, too poor, too stressed, no access, no backers, no confidence. How skilled we are at cataloging what holds us back!


An entrepreneur is someone with faith in their ability to make something where there was nothing before. To them, the idea that no one has ever done this or that is a good thing. When given an unfair task, some rightly see it as a chance to test what they're made of—to give it all they've got, knowing full well how difficult it will be to win. They see it as an opportunity because it is often in that desperate nothing-to-lose state that we are our most creative.


The Blitzkrieg strategy was designed to exploit the flinch of the enemy—he must collapse at the sight of what appears to be overwhelming force. Its success depends completely on this response. This military strategy works because the set-upon troops see the offensive force as an enormous obstacle bearing down on them.


Psychologists call it adversarial growth and post-traumatic growth. "That which doesn't kill me makes me stronger" is not a cliché but fact.


So focus on that—on the poorly wrapped and initially repulsive present you've been handed in every seemingly disadvantageous situation. Because beneath the packaging is what we need—often something of real value. A gift of great benefit.


He could see through bullies and stare down fear. In struggling with his unfortunate fate, Demosthenes found his true calling: He would be the voice of Athens, its great speaker and conscience. He would be successful precisely because of what he'd been through and how he'd reacted to it. He had channeled his rage and pain into his training, and then later into his speeches, fueling it all with a kind of fierceness and power that could be neither matched nor resisted.


We must be willing to roll with the punches and respond to life's challenges with strength and flexibility.


We will be tested by life's adversity, but we can choose to respond with courage and composure.


We must accept that there are some things in life that we cannot control, but we can control our own thoughts and actions.


We must be willing to take action in the face of life's obstacles, no matter how daunting they may seem.


The event is in the hand of God.


Everything we could think of have been done, the troops are fit everybody is doing his best. The answer is in the lap of the gods.


Man proposes but God disposes.


Amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it . . . but love it.


He learned how to assert himself without ever being overbearing the way he'd been in the past.


Nature, in order to be commanded, must be obeyed.


You're robust and resilient enough to handle whatever occurs, (b) you can't do anything about it anyway, and (c) you're looking at a big-enough picture and long-enough time line that whatever you have to accept is still only a negligible blip on the way to your goal.


Cheerfulness in all situations, especially the bad ones.


In Marcus's words is the secret to an art known as turning obstacles upside down. To act with "a reverse clause," so there is always a way out or another route to get to where you need to go. So that setbacks or problems are always expected and never permanent. Making certain that what impedes us can empower us.


They had the ability to see obstacles for what they were, the ingenuity to tackle them, and the will to endure a world mostly beyond their comprehension and control.


Well, far too many gave up. But a few didn't. They took "twice as good" as a challenge. They practiced harder. Looked for shortcuts and weak spots. Discerned allies among strange faces. Got kicked around a bit. Everything was an obstacle they had to flip.


Problems become opportunities.


On the path to successful action, we will fail—possibly many times. And that's okay. It can be a good thing, even. Action and failure are two sides of the same coin. One doesn't come without the other. What breaks this critical connection down is when people stop acting—because they've taken failure the wrong way.


When failure does come, ask: What went wrong here? What can be improved? What am I missing? This helps birth alternative ways of doing what needs to be done, ways that are often much better than what we started with. Failure puts you in corners you have to think your way out of. It is a source of breakthroughs.


An artist is given many different canvases and commissions in their lifetime, and what matters is that they treat each one as a priority. Whether it's the most glamorous or highest paying is irrelevant. Each project matters, and the only degrading part is giving less than one is capable of giving.


But a desire to help? No harshness, no deprivation, no toil should interfere with our empathy toward others. Compassion is always an option. Camaraderie as well. That's a power of the will that can never be taken away, only relinquished.


And so, if even our own mortality can have some benefit, how dare you say that you can't derive value from each and every other kind of obstacle you encounter?


It is so much better to be this way, isn't it? There is a lightness and a flexibility to this approach that seem very different from how weand most people—choose to live. With our disappointments and resentments and frustrations.


We can see the "bad" things that happen in our lives with gratitude and not with regret because we turn them from disaster to real benefit—from defeat to victory.


Fate doesn't have to be fatalistic. It can be destiny and freedom just as easily.


To be sure, no one is saying you've got to do it all at once.


In mastering these three disciplines we have the tools to flip any obstacle upside down. We are worthy of any and every challenge.


Of course, it is not enough to simply read this or say it. We must practice these maxims, rolling them over and over in our minds and acting on them until they become muscle memory.


So that under pressure and trial we get better—become better people, leaders, and thinkers. Because those trials and pressures will inevitably come. And they won't ever stop coming.


But don't worry, you're prepared for this now, this life of obstacles and adversity. You know how to handle them, how to brush aside obstacles and even benefit from them. You understand the process.


You are a person of action. And the thread of Stoicism runs through your life just as it did through theirs—just as it has for all of history, sometimes explicitly, sometimes not.


The essence of philosophy is action—in making good on the ability to turn the obstacle upside down with our minds. Understanding our problems for what's within them and their greater context. To see things *philosophically* and act accordingly.


Philosophy was never what happened in the classroom. It was a set of lessons from the battlefield of life.


The Latin translation for the title of *Enchiridion*—Epictetus's famous work—means "close at hand," or as some have said, "in your hands." That's what the philosophy was meant for: to be in your hands, to be an extension of you. Not something you read once and put up on a shelf. It was meant, as Marcus once wrote, to make us boxers instead of fencers—to wield our weaponry, we simply need to close our fists.


Now you are a philosopher and a person of action. And that is not a contradiction.Ryan brings philosophy out from the classroom and thrusts it back where it belongs, in our daily lives, helping anyone approaching any problem address it with equanimity and poise.


Ryan Holiday's The Obstacle is the Way decants in concentrated form the timeless techniques for self-mastery as employed to world-conquering effect by philosophers and men of action from Alexander the Great to Marcus Aurelius to Steve Jobs.


Inspired by Marcus Aurelius and concepts of Stoicism, Ryan Holiday has written a brilliant and engaging book, well beyond his years, teaching us how to deal with life's adversities and to turn negatives into positives.


Ryan Holiday teaches us how to summon our best selves. Most of us spend our lives dodging the hard stuff. Holiday exposes the tragic fallacy of this approach to living and offers us instead the philosophy of the Stoics, whose timeless lessons lead us out of fear, difficulty, and paralysis to triumph.


Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture.


You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.


Love everything that happens: *AMOR FATI*


Meditate on your mortality


And from what we know, he truly saw each and every one of these obstacles as an opportunity to practice some virtue: patience, courage, humility, resourcefulness, reason, justice, and creativity.


He rarely rose to excess or anger, and never to hatred or bitterness.


It turns out that the wisdom of that short passage from Marcus Aurelius can be found in others as well, men and women who followed it like he did.


That struggle is the one constant in all of their lives.


Whatever we face, we have a choice: Will we be blocked by obstacles, or will we advance through and over them?


It asks: Are you worthy? Can you get past the things that inevitably fall in your way? Will you stand up and show us what you're made of?


And a rarer breed still has shown that they not only have what it takes, but they thrive and rally at every such challenge.


We're dissatisfied with our jobs, our relationships, our place in the world. We're trying to get somewhere, but something stands in the way.


So we do nothing. We blame our bosses, the economy, our politicians, other people, or we write ourselves off as failures or our goals as impossible. When really only one thing is at fault: our attitude and approach.


There have been countless lessons (and books) about achieving success, but no one ever taught us how to overcome failure, how to think about obstacles, how to treat and triumph over them, and so we are stuck.


What do these figures have that we lack? What are we missing?


John D. Rockefeller had it—for him it was cool headedness and self-discipline. Demosthenes, the great Athenian orator, had it—for him it was a relentless drive to improve himself through action and practice. Abraham Lincoln had it—for him it was humility, endurance, and compassionate will.


As it turns out, this is one thing all great men and women of history have in common. Like oxygen to a fire, obstacles became fuel for the blaze that was their ambition. Nothing could stop them, they were (and continue to be) impossible to discourage or contain. Every impediment only served to make the inferno within them burn with greater ferocity.


These were people who flipped their obstacles upside down. Who lived the words of Marcus Aurelius and followed a group which Cicero called the only "real philosophers"—the ancient Stoics—even if they'd never read them.* They had the ability to see obstacles for what they were, the ingenuity to tackle them, and the will to endure a world mostly beyond their comprehension and control.


The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never *forget,* within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.


They took "twice as good" as a challenge. They practiced harder. Looked for shortcuts and weak spots.


Whether we're having trouble getting a job, fighting against discrimination, running low on funds, stuck in a bad relationship, locking horns with some aggressive opponent, have an employee or student we just can't seem to reach, or are in the middle of a creative block, we need to know that there is a way. When we meet with adversity, we can turn it to advantage, based on their example.


All great victories, be they in politics, business, art, or seduction, involved resolving vexing problems with a potent cocktail of creativity, focus, and daring. When you have a goal, obstacles are actually teaching you how to get where you want to go—carving you a path.


Today, most of our obstacles are internal, not external. Since World War II we have lived in some of the most prosperous times in history. There are fewer armies to face, fewer fatal diseases and far more safety nets. But the world still rarely does exactly what we want.


Our generation needs an approach for overcoming obstacles and thriving amid chaos more than ever. One that will help turn our problems on their heads, using them as canvases on which to paint master works.


Overcoming obstacles is a discipline of three critical steps.


It begins with how we look at our specific problems, our attitude or approach; then the energy and creativity with which we actively break them down and turn them into opportunities; finally, the cultivation and maintenance of an inner will that allows us to handle defeat and difficulty.


It's three interdependent, interconnected, and fluidly contingent disciplines: Perception, Action, and the Will.


WHAT IS PERCEPTION? It's how we see and understand what occurs around us—and what we decide those events will mean. Our perceptions can be a source of strength or of great weakness. If we are emotional, subjective and shortsighted, we only add to our troubles.


To prevent becoming overwhelmed by the world around us, we must, as the ancients practiced, learn how to limit our passions and their control over our lives.


It takes skill and discipline to bat away the pests of bad perceptions, to separate reliable signals from deceptive ones, to filter out prejudice, expectation, and fear.


Rockefeller immediately put those insights to use. At twenty-five, a group of investors offered to invest approximately $500,000 at his direction if he could find the right oil wells in which to deploy the money. Grateful for the opportunity, Rockefeller set out to tour the nearby oil fields. A few days later, he shocked his backers by returning to Cleveland empty-handed, not having spent or invested a dollar of the funds. The opportunity didn't feel right to him at the time, no matter how excited the rest of the market was—so he refunded the money and stayed away from drilling.


It was this intense self-discipline and objectivity that allowed Rockefeller to seize advantage from obstacle after obstacle in his life, during the Civil War, and the panics of 1873, 1907, and 1929. As he once put it: He was inclined to see the opportunity in every disaster. To that we could add: He had the strength to resist temptation or excitement, no matter how seductive, no matter the situation.


Within twenty years of that first crisis, Rockefeller would alone control 90 percent of the oil market. His greedy competitors had perished. His nervous colleagues had sold their shares and left the business. His weak-hearted doubters had missed out.


For the rest of his life, the greater the chaos, the calmer Rockefeller would become, particularly when others around him were either panicked or mad with greed. He would make much of his fortune during these market fluctuations—because he could see while others could not.


Oh, how blessed young men are who have to struggle for a foundation and beginning in life.


I shall never cease to be grateful for the three and half years of apprenticeship and the difficulties to be overcome, all along the way.


You will come across obstacles in life—fair and unfair. And you will discover, time and time again, that what matters most is not what these obstacles are but how we see them, how we react to them, and whether we keep our composure.


Where one person sees a crisis, another can see opportunity.


Where one is blinded by success, another sees reality with ruthless objectivity. Where one loses control of emotions, another can remain calm.


Desperation, despair, fear, powerlessness—these reactions are functions of our perceptions. You must realize: Nothing *makes* us feel this way; we *choose* to give in to such feelings.


And it is precisely at this divergence—between how Rockefeller perceived his environment and how the rest of the world typically does—that his nearly incomprehensible success was born.


We can learn to perceive things differently, to cut through the illusions that others believe or fear. We can stop seeing the "problems" in front of us as problems. We can learn to focus on what things really are.


Our brains evolved for an environment very different from the one we currently inhabit. As a result, we carry all kinds of biological baggage. Humans are still primed to detect threats and dangers that no longer exist—think of the cold sweat when you're stressed about money, or the fight-or-flight response that kicks in when your boss yells at you. Our safety is not truly at risk here—there is little danger that we will starve or that violence will break out—though it certainly feels that way sometimes.


We have a choice about how we respond to this situation (or any situation, for that matter). We can be blindly led by these primal feelings or we can understand them and learn to filter them. Discipline in perception lets you clearly see the advantage and the proper course of action in every situation—without the pestilence of panic or fear.


There are a few things to keep in mind when faced with a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. We must try: To be objective To control emotions and keep an even keel To choose to see the good in a situation To steady our nerves To ignore what disturbs or limits others To place things in perspective To revert to the present moment To focus on what can be controlled This is how you see the opportunity within the obstacle. It does not happen on its own. It is a process—one that results from selfdiscipline and logic.


Choose not to be harmed—and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed—and you haven't been.


In his remarkable declaration, he told them, in so many words, "I know you had nothing to do with the injustice that brought me to this jail, so I'm willing to stay here until I get out. But I will not, under any circumstances, be treated like a prisoner—because I am not and never will be *powerless.*"


Instead of breaking down—as many would have done in such a bleak situation—Carter declined to surrender the freedoms that were innately his: his attitude, his beliefs, his choices.


Was he angry about what happened? Of course. He was furious. But understanding that anger was not constructive, he refused to rage. He refused to break or grovel or despair.


He would learn and read and make the most of the time he had on his hands. He would leave prison not only a free and innocent man, but a better and improved one.


No one can force us to give up or to believe something that is untrue (such as, that a situation is absolutely hopeless or impossible to improve). Our perceptions are the thing that we're in complete control of.


They can throw us in jail, label us, deprive us of our possessions, but they'll never control our thoughts, our beliefs, our *reactions*.


Carter did not have much power, but he understood that that was not the same thing as being powerless. Many great figures, from Nelson Mandela to Malcolm X, have come to understand this fundamental distinction. It's how they turned prison into the workshop where they transformed themselves and the schoolhouse where they began to transform others.


In fact, if we have our wits fully about us, we can step back and remember that situations, by themselves, cannot be good or bad. This is something—a judgment—that we, as human beings, bring to them with our perceptions.


"Nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so," as Shakespeare put it.


There is no good or bad without us, there is only perception.


There is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means.


Just because your mind tells you that something is awful or evil or unplanned or otherwise negative doesn't mean you have to agree.


Just because other people say that something is hopeless or crazy or broken to pieces doesn't mean it is. We decide what story to tell ourselves. Or whether we will tell one at all.


That's a man who has steadied himself properly. That's a man who has a job to do and would bear anything to get it done. That's nerve.


There is always a countermove, always an escape or a way through, so there is no reason to get worked up.


If your nerve holds, then nothing really did 'happen'—our perception made sure it was nothing of consequence.


When people panic, they make mistakes. They override systems. They disregard procedures, ignore rules. They deviate from the plan.


Welcome to the source of most of our problems down here on Earth. Everything is planned down to the letter, then something goes wrong and the first thing we do is trade in our plan for a good ol' emotional freak-out.


Uncertainty and fear are relieved by authority. Training is authority.


It's a release valve. With enough exposure, you can adapt out those perfectly ordinary, even innate, fears that are bred mostly from unfamiliarity.


We defeat emotions with logic, or at least that's the idea. Logic is q


No, because I practiced for this situation and I can control myself. Or, No, because I caught myself and I'm able to realize that that doesn't add anything constructive.


The phrase "This happened and it is bad" is actually two impressions. The first—"This happened"—is objective. The second—"it is bad"—is subjective.


Musashi understood that the observing eye sees simply what is there. The perceiving eye sees more than what is there.


To paraphrase Nietzsche, sometimes being superficial—taking things only at first glance—is the most profound approach.


In the writings of the Stoics we see an exercise that might well be described as Contemptuous Expressions. The Stoics use contempt as an agent to lay things bare and "to strip away the legend **that** encrusts *them.*"


Epictetus told his students, when they'd quote some great thinker, to picture themselves observing the person having sex. It's funny, you should try it the next time someone intimidates you or makes you feel insecure.


That promotion that means so much, what is it really? Our critics and naysayers who make us feel small, let's put them in their proper place. It's so much better to see things as they truly, actually are, not as we've made them in our minds.


Objectivity means removing "you"—the subjective part—from the equation.


Take your situation and pretend it is not happening to you. Pretend it is not important, that it doesn't matter. How much easier would it be for you to know what to do? How much more quickly and dispassionately could you size up the scenario and its options? You could write it off, greet it calmly.


Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.


Perspective is everything. That is, when you can break apart something, or look at it from some new angle, it loses its power over you.


We choose how we'll look at things. We retain the ability to inject perspective into a situation. We can't change the obstacles themselves—that part of the equation is set—but the power of perspective can change how the obstacles appear.


It's your choice whether you want to put I in front of something (I hate public speaking. I screwed up. I am harmed by *this*). These add an extra element: you in relation to that obstacle, rather than just the obstacle itself.


The way we look out at the world changes how we see these things. Is our perspective truly giving us *perspective* or is it what's actually causing the problem? That's the question.


What we can do is limit and expand our perspective to whatever will keep us calmest and most ready for the task at hand.


Small tweaks can change what once felt like impossible tasks. Suddenly, where we felt weak, we realize we are strong. With perspective, we discover leverage we didn't know we had.


George Clooney spent his first years in Hollywood getting rejected at auditions. He wanted the producers and directors to like him, but they didn't and it hurt and he blamed the system for not seeing how good he was.


Everything changed for Clooney when he tried a new perspective. He realized that casting is an obstacle for producers, too...


In life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control. Where will I find good and bad? In me, in my choices.


The difference between the right and the wrong perspective is everything.


How we interpret the events in our lives, our perspective, is the framework for our forthcoming response—whether there will even be one or whether we'll just lie there and take it.


Where the head goes, the body follows. Perception precedes action. Right action follows the right perspective.


It's an almost superhuman accomplishment. But he was able to do it because he got really good at asking himself and others, in various forms, one question over and over again: Is there a chance? Do I have a shot? Is there something I can do?


All he ever looked for was a yes, no matter how slight or tentative or provisional the chance. If there was a chance, he was ready to take it and make good use of it—ready to give every ounce of effort and energy he had to make it happen. If effort would affect the outcome, he would die on the field before he let that chance go to waste.


Even in the chaos of the emergency room, with doctors convinced that the boy probably wouldn't survive, John reminded his family that whether it took one year or ten years, they wouldn't give up until there was absolutely nothing left that they could do.


He used to tell coaches that he would die on the field before he quit.


God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference.


Behind the Serenity Prayer is a two-thousand-year-old Stoic phrase: "ta eph'hemin, ta ouk *eph'hemin."* What is up to us, what is not up to us.


And what is up to us? Our emotions Our judgments Our creativity Our attitude Our perspective Our desires Our decisions Our determination This is our playing field, so to speak.


If what's up to us is the playing field, then what is not up to us are the rules and conditions of the game. Factors that winning athletes make the best of and don't spend time arguing against (because there is no point).


rucial distinction to make: the difference between the things that are in our power and the things that aren't. That's the difference between the people who can accomplish great things, and the people who find it impossible to stay sober—to avoid not just drugs or alcohol but all addictions.


In its own way, the most harmful dragon we chase is the one that makes us think we can change things that are simply not ours to change. That someone decided not to fund your company, this isn't up to you. But the decision to refine and improve your pitch? That is. That someone stole your idea or got to it first? No. To pivot, improve it, or fight for what's yours? Yes.


To see an obstacle as a challenge, to make the best of it anyway, that is also a choice—a choice that is up to us.


They had a job they wanted to do, a great idea they believed in or a product they thought they could sell. They knew they had payroll to meet.


Yet in our own lives, we aren't content to deal with things as they happen.


We have to dive endlessly into what everything "means," whether something is "fair" or not, what's "behind" this or that, and what everyone else is doing.


Then we wonder why we don't have the energy to actually deal with our problems.


Or we get ourselves so worked up and intimidated because of the overthinking, that if we'd just gotten to work we'd probably be done already.


Our problem is that we're always trying to figure out what things mean—why things are the way they are. As though the why matters. Emerson put it best: "We cannot spend the day in explanation." Don't waste time on false constructs.


It doesn't matter whether this is the worst time to be alive or the best, whether you're in a good job market or a bad one, or that the obstacle you face is intimidating or burdensome. What matters is that right now is right now.


The implications of our obstacle are theoretical—they exist in the past and the future. We live in the *moment.* And the more we embrace that, the easier the obstacle will be to face and move.


Genius is the ability to put into effect what is in your mind. There's no other definition of it.


F. SCOTT FITZGERALD


Steve Jobs was famous for what observers called his "reality distortion field." Part motivational tactic, part sheer drive and ambition, this field made him notoriously dismissive of phrases such as "It can't be done" or "We need more time."


Having learned early in life that reality was falsely hemmed in by rules and compromises that people ha


Our perceptions determine, to an incredibly large degree, what we are and are not capable of. In many ways, they determine reality itself.


He knew that to aim low meant to accept mediocre accomplishment. But a high aim could, if things went right, create something extraordinary.


So many people in our lives have preached the need to be realistic or conservative or worse—to not rock the boat.


For instance, think of artists. It's their unique vision and voice that push the definition of "art" forward. What was possible for an artist before Caravaggio and after he stunned us with his dark masterpieces were two very different things. Plug in any other thinker or writer or painter in their own time, and the same applies.


This is why we shouldn't listen too closely to what other people say (or to what the voice in our head says, either). We'll find ourselves erring on the side of accomplishing nothing.


Be open. Question. Though of course we don't *control* reality, our perceptions do influence it.


Jobs refused to tolerate people who didn't believe in their own abilities to succeed. Even if his demands were unfair, uncomfortable, or ambitious.


Jobs learned to reject the first judgments and the objections that spring out of them because those objections are almost always rooted in fear.


Well, what if the "other" party is wrong? What if conventional wisdom is too conservative?


An entrepreneur is someone with faith in their ability to make something where there was nothing before.


A great leader answered that question. Striding into the conference room at headquarters in Malta, General Dwight D. Eisenhower made an announcement: He'd have no more of this quivering timidity from his deflated generals. 'The present situation is to be regarded as opportunity for us and not disaster,' he commanded. 'There will be only cheerful faces at this conference table.'


Only then were the Allies able to see the opportunity *inside* the obstacle rather than simply the obstacle that threatened them.


It's our preconceptions that are the problem. They tell us that things should or need to be a certain way, so when they're not, we naturally assume that we are at a disadvantage or that we'd be wasting our time to pursue an alternate course. When really, it's all fair game, and every situation is an opportunity for us to act.


As Laura Ingalls Wilder put it: "There is good in everything, if only we look for it." Yet we are so bad at looking. We close our eyes to the gift.


If you mean it when you say you're at the end of your rope and would rather quit, you actually have a unique chance to grow and improve yourself.


A unique opportunity to experiment with different solutions, to try different tactics, or to take on new projects to add to your skill set.


You can study this bad boss and learn from him—while you fill out your résumé and hit up contacts for a better job elsewhere.


With this new attitude and fearlessness, who knows, you might be able to extract concessions and find that you like the job again.


Note the fact that they also keep you alert, raise the stakes, motivate you to prove them wrong, harden you, help you to appreciate true friends, provide an instructive antilog—an example of whom you don't want to become.


Blessings and burdens are not mutually exclusive. It's a lot more complicated. Socrates had a mean, nagging wife; he always said that being married to her was good practice for philosophy.


The struggle against an obstacle inevitably propels the fighter to a new level of functioning. The extent of the struggle determines the extent of the growth. The obstacle is an advantage, not adversity. The enemy is any perception that prevents us from seeing this.


We can fight it the entire way. The result is the same. The obstacle still exists. One just hurts less. The benefit is still there below the surface. What kind of idiot decides not to take it?


When people are: —rude or disrespectful: They underestimate us. A huge advantage.


—critical or question our abilities: Lower expectations are easier to exceed.


—lazy: Makes whatever we accomplish seem all the more admirable.


It's a huge step forward to realize that the worst thing to happen is never the event, but the event and losing your head.


The proper perception—objective, rational, ambitious, clean—isolates the obstacle and exposes it for what it is.


A clearer head makes for steadier hands.


But *boldness* is acting anyway, even though you understand the negative and the reality of your obstacle.


We must be sure to act with deliberation, boldness, and persistence. Those are the attributes of right and effective action. Nothing else—not thinking or evasion or aid from others.


None of it was fair, none of it was right. Most of us, were we in his position, would have given up right then and there. But Demosthenes did not.


It inspired and challenged Demosthenes, weak, beaten on, powerless, and ignored; for in many ways, this strong, confident speaker was the opposite of him.


So he did something about it. To conquer his speech impediment, he devised his own strange exercises.


To ensure he wouldn't indulge in outside distractions, he shaved half his head so he'd be too embarrassed to go outside.


In struggling with his unfortunate fate, Demosthenes found his true calling: He would be the voice of Athens, its great speaker and conscience.


He had channeled his rage and pain into his training, and then later into his speeches, fueling it all with a kind of fierceness and power that could be neither matched nor resisted.


Character says everything about us. And it's sad that so many of us fail—opting away from action.


We don't act like Demosthenes, we act frail and are powerless to make ourselves better.


We forget: In life, it doesn't matter what happens to you or where you came from. It matters what you do with what happens and what you've been given.


No one wants to be born weak or to be victimized. No one wants to be down to their last dollar. No one wants to be stuck behind an obstacle, blocked from where they need to go.


Because each obstacle we overcome makes us stronger for the next one.


No one is coming to save you. And if we'd like to go where we claim we want to go—to accomplish what we claim are our goals—there is only one way. And that's to meet our problems with the right action.


Therefore, we can always (and only) greet our obstacles with energy, with persistence, with a coherent and deliberate process, with iteration and resilience, with pragmatism, with strategic vision, with craftiness and savvy and an eye for opportunity and pivotal moments


We must all either wear out or rust out, every one of us. My choice is to wear out.


But none of that would have happened had she turned up her nose at that offensive offer or sat around feeling sorry for herself.


Life can be frustrating. Oftentimes we know what our problems are. We may even know what to do about them.


And you know what happens as a result? Nothing. We do nothing. Tell yourself: The time for that has passed. The wind is rising. The bell's been rung. Get started, get moving.


For some reason, these days we tend to downplay the importance of aggression, of taking risks, of barreling forward. It's probably because it's been negatively associated with certain notions of violence or masculinity.


We talk a lot about courage as a society, but we forget that at its most basic level it's really just taking action—whether that's approaching someone you're intimidated by or deciding to finally crack a book on a subject you need to learn.


He knew there was a weak spot somewhere. He'd find it or he'd make one.


We will not be stopped by failure, we will not be rushed or distracted by external noise.


At Vicksburg, Grant learned two things. First, persistence and pertinacity were incredible assets and probably his main assets as a leader.


In persistence, he'd not only broken through: In trying it all the wrong ways, Grant discovered a totally new way—the way that would eventually win the war.


And, of course, he eventually found it—proving that genius often really is just persistence in disguise.


As we butt up against obstacles, it is helpful to picture Grant and Edison. Grant with a cigar clenched in his mouth. Edison on his hands and knees in the laboratory for days straight. Both unceasing, embodying cool persistence and the spirit of the line from the Alfred Lord Tennyson poem about that other Ulysses, "to strive, to seek, to find."


The thing standing in your way isn't going anywhere. You're not going to outthink it or outcreate it with some world-changing epiphany. You've got to look at it and the people around you, who have begun their inevitable chorus of doubts and excuses, and say, as Margaret Thatcher famously did: "You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning."


Once you start attacking an obstacle, quitting is not an option. It cannot enter your head. Abandoning one path for another that might be more promising? Sure, but that's a far cry from giving up. Once you can envision yourself quitting altogether, you might as well ring the bell. It's done.


Consider this mind-set. never in a hurry never worried never desperate never stopping short Remember and remind yourself of a phrase favored by Epictetus: "persist and resist." Persist in your efforts. Resist giving in to distraction, discouragement, or disorder.


Because when you play all the way to the whistle, there's no reason to worry about the clock. You know you won't stop until it's over—that every second available is yours to use. So temporary setbacks aren't discouraging. They are just bumps along a long road that you intend to travel all the way down.


It's okay to be discouraged. It's not okay to quit. To know you want to quit but to plant your feet and keep inching closer until you take the impenetrable fortress you've decided to lay siege to in your own life—that's persistence.


In other words: It's supposed to be hard. Your first attempts aren't going to work. It's goings to take a lot out of you—but energy is an asset we can always find more of. It's a renewable resource. Stop looking for an epiphany, and start looking for weak points. Stop looking for angels, and start looking for angles.


When people ask where we are, what we're doing, how that "situation" is coming along, the answer should be clear: We're working on it. We're getting closer. When setbacks come, we respond by working twice as hard.


But it's no joke. Failure really can be an asset if what you're trying to do is improve, learn, or do something new. It's the preceding feature of nearly all successes. There's nothing shameful about being wrong, about changing course. Each time it happens we have new options. Problems become opportunities.


In a world where we increasingly work for ourselves, are responsible for ourselves, it makes sense to view ourselves like a start-up—a start-up of one.


This is why stories of great success are often preceded by epic failure—because the people in them went back to the drawing board. They weren't ashamed to fail, but spurred on, piqued by it.


Even though we know that there are great lessons from failurelessons we've seen with our own two eyes—we repeatedly shrink from it. We do everything we can to avoid it, thinking it's embarrassing or shameful.


Be glad to pay the cost. There will be no better teacher for your career, for your book, for your new venture.


The process is about finishing. Finishing games. Finishing workouts. Finishing film sessions. Finishing drives. Finishing reps. Finishing plays. Finishing blocks. Finishing the smallest task you hav


Don't think about the end—think about surviving. Making it from meal to meal, break to break, checkpoint to checkpoint, paycheck to paycheck, one day at a time.


And when you really get it right, even the hardest things become manageable. Because the process is relaxing. Under its influence, we needn't panic. Even mammoth tasks become just a series of component parts.


Envision, for a second, a master practicing an exceedingly difficult craft and making it look effortless. There's no strain, no struggling. So relaxed. No exertion or worry. Just one clean movement after another. That's a result of the process.


When it comes to our actions, disorder and distraction are death. The unordered mind loses track of what's in front of it—what matters —and gets distracted by thoughts of the future.


The process is order, it keeps our perceptions in check and our actions in sync.


Being trapped is just a position, not a fate. You get out of it by addressing and eliminating each part of that position through small, deliberate actions—not by trying (and failing) to push it away with superhuman strength.


How often do we compromise or settle because we feel that the real solution is too ambitious or outside our grasp? How often do we assume that change is impossible because it's too big?


They're brilliant, sure, but they rarely execute. They rarely get where they want and need to go.


We want to have goals, yes, so everything we do can be in the service of something purposeful. When we know what we're really setting out to do, the obstacles that arise tend to seem smaller, more manageable. When we don't, each one looms larger and seems impossible. Goals help put the blips and bumps in proper proportion.


The process is the voice that demands we take responsibility and ownership. That prompts us to act even if only in a small way.


Subordinate strength to the process. Replace fear with the process. Depend on it. Lean on it. Trust in it.


The process is about doing the right things, right now. Not worrying about what might happen later, or the results, or the whole picture.


Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble.


Within just one year of starting at the school he was a professor teaching a full course load in addition to his studies. By his twenty sixth birthday he was the dean.


These men went from humble poverty to power by always doing what they were asked to do—and doing it right and with real pride. And doing it better than anyone else. In fact, doing it well because no one else wanted to do it.


Everything we do matters—whether it's making smoothies while you save up money or studying for the bar—even after you already achieved the success you sought.


Only self-absorbed assholes think they are too good for whatever their current station requires.


Wherever we are, whatever we're doing and wherever we are going, we owe it to ourselves, to our art, to the world to do it well.


An artist is given many different canvases and commissions in their lifetime, and what matters is that they treat each one as a priority.


Some are prestigious, some are onerous, none are beneath us.


How they each responded to this problem was defined by their company's organization and ethos.


This is *pragmatism* embodied. Don't worry about the "right" way, worry about the *right* way.


We spend a lot of time thinking about how things are supposed to be, or what the rules say we should do. Trying to get it all perfect. We tell ourselves that we'll get started once the conditions are right, or once we're sure we can trust this or that. When, really, it'd be better to focus on making due with what we've got. On focusing on results instead of pretty methods.


You've got your mission, whatever it is. To accomplish it, like the rest of us you're in the pinch between the way you wish things were and the way they actually are (which always seem to be a disaster). How far are you willing to go? What are you willing to do about it?


Scratch the complaining. No waffling. No submitting to powerlessness or fear. You can't just run home to Mommy. How are you going to solve this problem? How are you going


Sometimes that requires ignoring some outdated regulations or asking for forgiveness from management later rather than for permission (which would be denied) right now.


But if you've got an important mission, all that matters is that you accomplish it.


With the stakes this high, you better be willing to bend the rules or do something desperate or crazy.


Pragmatism is not so much realism as flexibility.


Think progress, not perfection. Under this kind of force, obstacles break apart. They have no choice. Since you're going around them or making them irrelevant, there is nothing for them to resist.


Instead, do the best with what you've got. Not that pragmatism is inherently at odds with idealism or pushing the ball forward.


Start thinking like a radical pragmatist: still ambitious, aggressive, and rooted in ideals, but also imminently practical and guided by the possible.


In a study of some 30 conflicts comprising more than 280 campaigns from ancient to modern history, the brilliant strategist and historian B. H. Liddell Hart came to a stunning conclusion: In only 6 of the 280 campaigns was the decisive victory a result of a direct attack on the enemy's main army.


From the psychological. From drawing opponents out from their defenses. From the untraditional. From anything but . . .


When you're at your wit's end, straining and straining with all your might, when people tell you you might pop a vein . . .


If we're starting from scratch and the established players have had time to build up their defenses, there is just no way we are going to beat them on their strengths. So it's smarter to not even try, but instead focus our limited resources elsewhere.


Being outnumbered, coming from behind, being low on funds, these don't have to be disadvantages. They can be gifts. Assets that make us less likely to commit suicide with a head-to-head attack.


Kierkegaard would write under pseudonyms, where each fake personality would embody a different platform or perspectivewriting multiple times on the same subject from multiple angles to convey his point emotionally and dramatically.


He would rarely tell the reader "do this" or "think that." Instead he would *show* new ways of looking at or understanding the world.


You aren't just throwing your weight around and hoping it works. You're not wasting your energy in battles driven by ego and pride rather than tactical advantage.


Sometimes you overcome obstacles not by attacking them but by withdrawing and letting them attack you. You can use the actions of others against thems


Weak compared to the forces he hoped to change, Gandhi leaned into that weakness, exaggerated it, exposed himself.


He was provoking them—What are you going to do about it? *There* is nothing wrong with what we're *doing*—knowing that it placed authorities in an impossible dilemma: Enforce a bankrupt policy or abdicate.


Martin Luther King Jr., taking Gandhi's lead, told his followers that they would meet "physical force with soul force."


In the face of violence they would be peaceful, to hate they would answer with love—and in the process, they would expose those attributes as indefensible and evil.


It is, however, time to acknowledge that some adversity might be impossible for you to defeat—no matter how hard you try. Instead, you must find some way to use the adversity, its *energy,* to help yourself.


So instead of fighting obstacles, find a means of making **them** defeat *themselves.*


When we want things too badly we can be our own worst enemy.


In our eagerness, we strip the very screw we want to turn and make it impossible to ever get what we want.


We get so consumed with moving forward that we forget that there are other ways to get where we are heading.


When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstance revert at once to yourself and don't lose the rhythm more than you can help. You'll have a better grasp of harmony if you keep going back to it.


As a tennis player, Arthur Ashe was a beautiful contradiction. To survive segregation in the 1950s and 1960s, he learned from his father to mask his emotions and feelings on the court.


All the energy and emotion he had to suppress was channeled into a bold and graceful playing form. While his face was controlled, his body was alive—fluid, brilliant, and all over the court.


And yet we feel like going to pieces when the PowerPoint projector won't work (instead of throwing it aside and delivering an exciting talk without notes). We stir up gossip with our coworkers (instead of pounding something productive out on our keyboards). We act out, instead of *act.*


But think of an athlete "in the pocket," "in the zone," "on a streak," and the seemingly insurmountable obstacles that fall in the face of that effortless state. Enormous deficits collapse, every pass or shot hits its intended target, fatigue melts away. Those athletes might be stopped from carrying out this or that action, but not from their goal. External factors influence the path, but not the direction: forward.


To be physically and mentally tight? That's called anxiety. It doesn't work, either. Eventually we snap. But physical looseness combined with mental restraint? That is powerful.


It's a power that drives our opponents and competitors nuts. They think we're toying with them. It's maddening—like we aren't even trying, like we've tuned out the world.


The best men are not those who have waited for chances but who have taken them; besieged chance, conquered the chance, and made chance the servitor.


If you think it's simply enough to take advantage of the opportunities that arise in your life, you will fall short of greatness. Anyone sentient can do that. What you must do is learn how to press forward precisely when everyone around you sees disaster.


It's at the seemingly bad moments, when people least expect it, that we can act swiftly and unexpectedly to pull off a big victory. While others are arrested by discouragement, we are not. We see the moment differently, and act accordingly.


Ignore the politics and focus on the brilliant strategic advice that Obama's adviser Rahm Emanuel, once gave him. "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. [A] crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."


You always planned to do something. Write a screenplay. Travel. Start a business. Approach a possible mentor. Launch a movement.


Ordinary people shy away from negative situations, just as they do with failure. They do their best to avoid trouble. What great people do is the opposite. They are their best in these situations. They turn personal tragedy or misfortune—really anything, everything—to their advantage.


Life speeds on the bold and favors the brave.


At certain moments in our brief existences we are faced with great trials. Often those trials are frustrating, unfortunate, or unfair. They seem to come exactly when we think we need them the least.


If you don't *take* that, it's on you. Napoleon described war in simple terms: Two armies are two bodies that clash and attempt to frighten each other. At impact, there is a moment of panic and it is that *moment* that the superior commander turns to his advantage.


Great commanders look for decision points. For it is bursts of energy directed at decisive points that break things wide open. They press and press and press and then, exactly when the situation seems hopeless—or, more likely, hopelessly deadlocked—they press once more.


In the meantime, cling tooth and nail to the following rule: not to give in to adversity, not to trust prosperity, and always take full note of fortune's habit of behaving just as she pleases.


What we can't do is control the world around us—not as much as we'd like to, anyway. We might perceive things well, then act rightly, and fail anyway.


All creativity and dedication aside, after we've tried, *some* obstacles may turn out to be impossible to overcome. Some actions are rendered impossible, some paths impassable. Some things are bigger than us.


He learned to endure all this, articulate it, and find benefit and meaning from it.


His own experience with suffering drove his compassion to allay it in others.


He found purpose and relief in a cause bigger than himself and his personal struggles.


As crafty and ambitious and smart as he was, Lincoln's real strength was his will: the way he was able to resign himself to an onerous task without giving in to hopelessness, the way he could contain both humor and deadly seriousness, the way he could use his own private turmoil to teach and help others, the way he was able to rise above the din and see politics philosophically.


"This too shall pass" was Lincoln's favorite saying, one he once said was applicable in any and every situation one could encounter.


To live with his depression, Lincoln had developed a strong inner fortress that girded him.


Over four years, the war was to become nearly incomprehensibly violent, and Lincoln, who'd attepted at first to prevent it, would fight to win justly, and finally try to end it with "malice towards none."


Clearheadedness and action are not always enough, in politics or in life. Some obstacles are beyond a snap of the fingers or novel solution. It is not always possible for one man to rid the world of a great evil or stop a country bent toward conflict. Of course, we trybecause it can happen. But we should be ready for it not to. And we need to be able to find a greater purpose in this suffering and handle it with firmness and forbearance.


This was Lincoln: always ready with a new idea or innovative approach (whether it was sending a supply boat instead of reinforcements to the troops besieged at Fort Sumter, or timing the Emancipation Proclamation with a Union victory at Antietam to back it with the appearance of strength) but equally prepared for the worst. And then prepared to make the best of the worst.


Leadership requires determination and energy. And certain situations, at times, call on leaders to marshal that determined energy simply to endure. To provide strength in terrible times. Because of what Lincoln had gone through, because of what he'd struggled with and learned to cope with in his own life, he was able to lead. To hold a nation, a cause, an effort, together.


Will is fortitude and wisdom—not just about specific obstacles but about life itself and where the obstacles we are facing fit within it. It gives us ultimate strength.


Schooled in suffering, to quote Virgil, Lincoln learned "to comfort those who suffer too."


Lincoln's words went to the people's hearts because they came from his, because he had access to a part of the human experience that many had walled themselves off from.


Acknowledge the pain but trod onward in your task. Had the war gone on even longer, Lincoln would have lead his people through it. Had the Union lost the Civil War, he'd have known that he'd done everything he could in pursuit of victory.


Providing an example for others, in victory or in defeat—whichever occurred.


One needs only to look at history to see how random and vicious and awful the world can be. The incomprehensible happens all the time.


Certain things in life will cut you open like a knife. When that happens—at that exposing moment—the world gets a glimpse of what's truly inside you.


The will is what prepares us for this, protects us against it, and allows us to thrive and be happy in spite of it. It is also the most difficult of all the disciplines.


It's what allows us to stand undisturbed while others wilt and give in to disorder.


It's much easier to control our perceptions and emotions than it is to give up our desire to control other people and events. It's easier to persist in our efforts and actions than to endure the uncomfortable or the painful. It's easier to think and act than it is to practice wisdom.


These lessons come harder but are, in the end, the most critical to wresting advantage from adversity. In every situation, we can Always prepare ourselves for more difficult times. Always accept what we're unable to change. Always manage our expectations. Always persevere. Always learn to love our fate and what happens to us. Always protect our inner self, retreat into ourselves. Always submit to a greater, larger cause. Always remind ourselves of our own mortality. And, of course, prepare to start the cycle once more.


It's going to be hard drudgery and I think you have the determination to go through with it.


His response, using what would become his trademark cheerful grit, was to look at his father and say with determination: "I'll make my *body.*"


That gym work prepared a physically weak but smart young boy for the uniquely challenging course on which the nation and the world were about to embark. It was the beginning of his preparation for and fulfillment of what he would call "the Strenuous Life."


We craft our spiritual strength through physical exercise, and our physical hardiness through mental practice (mens sana in corpore sano—sound mind in a strong body).


This approach goes back to the ancient philosophers. Every bit of the philosophy they developed was intended to reshape, prepare, and fortify them for the challenges to come.


Many saw themselves as mental athletes—after all, the brain is a muscle like any other active tissue. It can be built up and toned through the right exercises.


This is strikingly similar to what the Stoics called the Inner Citadel, that fortress inside of us that no external adversity can ever break down. An important caveat is that we are not born with such a structure; it must be built and actively reinforced. During the good times, we strengthen ourselves and our bodies so that during the difficult times, we can depend on it. We protect our inner fortress so it may protect us.


You'll have far better luck toughening yourself up than you ever will trying to take the teeth out of a world that is—at best—indifferent to your existence. Whether we were born weak like Roosevelt or we are currently experiencing good times, we should always prepare for things to get tough.


No one is born a gladiator. No one is born with an Inner Citadel. If we're going to succeed in achieving our goals despite the obstacles that may come, this strength in will must be built.


To be great at something takes practice. Obstacles and adversity are no different.


The path of least resistance is a terrible teacher. We can't afford to shy away from the things that intimidate us. We don't need to take our weaknesses for granted.


Because these things *will* happen to you. No one knows when or how, but their appearance is certain. And life will demand an answer. You chose this for yourself, a life of doing things. Now you better be prepared for what it entails.


Far too many ambitious undertakings fail for preventable reasons. Far too many people don't have a backup plan because they refuse to consider that something might not go exactly as they wish.


Your plan and the way things turn out rarely resemble each other.


What you think you deserve is also rarely what you'll get. Yet we constantly deny this fact and are repeatedly shocked by the events of the world as they unfold.


A writer like Seneca would begin by reviewing or rehearsing his plans, say, to take a trip. And then he would go over, in his head (or in writing), the things that could go wrong or prevent it from happening: a storm could arise, the captain could fall ill, the ship could be attacked by pirates.


"Nothing happens to the wise man against his expectation," he wrote to a friend. ". . . nor do all things turn out for him as he wished but as he reckoned—and above all he reckoned that something could block his plans."


Always prepared for disruption, always working that disruption into our plans. Fitted, as they say, for defeat or victory. And let's be honest, a pleasant surprise is a lot better than an unpleasant one.


What if . . . Then I *will* . . . What if . . . Instead I'll *just* . . . What if . . . No problem, we can always . . . And in the case where nothing could be done, the Stoics would use it as an important practice to d


You have to make concessions for the world around you. We are dependent on other people. Not everyone can be counted on like you can (though, let's be honest, we're all our own worst enemy sometimes).


The only guarantee, ever, is that things **will** go wrong. The only thing we can use to mitigate this is anticipation. Because the only variable we control completely is ourselves.


Common wisdom provides us with the maxims: Beware the calm before the storm. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. The worst is yet to come. It gets worse before it gets better.


The world might call you a pessimist. Who cares? It's far better to seem like a downer than to be blindsided or caught off guard.


Then, the real reason we won't have any problem thinking about bad luck is because we're not afraid of what it portends. We're prepared in advance for adversity—it's other people who are not.


You know what's better than building things up in your imagination? Building things up in real life.


With anticipation, we have time to raise defenses, or even avoid them entirely. We're ready to be driven off course because we've plotted a way back. We can resist going to pieces if things didn't go as planned. With anticipation, we can endure.


Jefferson just wasn't a public speaker—that doesn't make him less of a man for acknowledging it and acting accordingly.


It doesn't always feel that way but constraints in life are a good thing. Especially if we can accept them and let them direct us. They push us to places and to develop skills that we'd otherwise never have pursued.


That channeling requires consent. It requires acceptance. We have to allow some accidents to happen to us.


Yet this is exactly what life is doing to us. It tells us to come to a stop here. Or that some intersection is blocked or that a particular road has been rerouted through an inconvenient detour. We can't argue or yell this problem away. We simply accept it.


When the cause of our problem lies outside of us, we are better for accepting it and moving on. For ceasing to kick and fight against it, and coming to terms with it. The Stoics have a beautiful name for this attitude. They call it the Art of Acquiescence.


It takes toughness, humility, and will to accept them for what they actually are. It takes a real man or woman to face necessity.


All external events can be equally beneficial to us because we can turn them all upside down and make use of them. They can teach us a lesson we were reluctant to otherwise learn.


Think of George Washington, putting everything he had into the American Revolution, and then saying, "The event is in the hand of God." Or Eisenhower, writing to his wife on the eve of the Allied invasion at Sicily: "Everything we could think of have been done, the troops are fit everybody is doing his best. The answer is in the lap of the gods." These were not guys prone to settling or leaving the details up to other people—but they understood ultimately that what happened would happen. And they'd go from there.


It's time to be humble and flexible enough to acknowledge the same in our own lives. That there is always someone or something that could change the plan. And that person is not us. As the saying goes, "Man proposes but God disposes."


Look: If we want to use the metaphor that life is a game, it means playing the dice or the chips or the cards where they fall. Play it where it lies, a golfer would say.


The way life is gives you plenty to work with, plenty to leave your imprint on. Taking people and events as they are is quite enough material already. Follow where the events take you, like water rolling down a hill—it always gets to the bottom eventually, doesn't it?


Because (a) you're robust and resilient enough to handle whatever occurs, (b) you can't do anything about it anyway, and (c


We're indifferent and that's not a weakness. As Francis Bacon once said, nature, in order to be commanded, must be obeyed.


As he told a reporter the next day, he wasn't too old to make a fresh start. "I've been through a lot of things like this. It prevents a man from being afflicted with ennui."


Loving whatever happens to us and facing it with unfailing cheerfulness.


We put our energies and emotions and exertions where they will have real impact.


Should he hate them for hating him? Bitterness was their burden and Johnson refused to pick it up.


As the Stoics commanded themselves: Cheerfulness in all situations, especially the bad ones.


Learning not to kick and scream about matters we can't control is one thing.


Indifference and acceptance are certainly better than disappointment or rage.


Better than all of that is love for all that happens to us


We don't get to choose what happens to us, but we can always choose how we feel about it. And why on earth would you *choose* to feel anything but good? We can choose to render a good account of ourselves. If the event must occur, Amor *fati* (a love of fate) is the response.


It's important to look at Johnson and Edison because they weren't passive. They didn't simply roll over and tolerate adversity. They accepted what happened to them. They *liked* it.


It's a little unnatural, I know, to feel gratitude for things we never wanted to happen in the first place. But we know, at this point, the opportunities and benefits that lie within adversities. We know that in overcoming them, we emerge stronger, sharper, empowered. There is little reason to delay these feelings. To begrudgingly acknowledge later that it was for the best, when we could have felt that in advance because it was inevitable.


How did he get through it? How did the hero make it home despite it all?


But a ten-year voyage of trials and tribulations. Of disappointment and mistakes without giving in.


Life is not about one obstacle, but *many*. What's required of us is not some shortsighted focus on a single facet of a problem, but simply a determination that we *will* get to where we need to go, somehow, someway, and nothing will stop us.


We will overcome every obstacle—and there will be many in lifeuntil we get there. Persistence is an action. Perseverance is a matter of will. One is energy. The other, *endurance*.


Perseverance. Force of purpose. Indomitable will. Those traits were once uniquely part of the American DNA. But they've been weakening for some time.


If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined.


If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life.


We're crushed when what we were "promised" is revoked—as if that's not allowed to happen.


And with it, Emerson said, "with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear."


To quote Beethoven: "The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and industry, Thus far and no farther."


Our actions can be constrained, but our will can't be.


But belief in ourselves? No matter how many times we are thrown back, we alone retain the power to decide to go once more.


Determination, if you think about it, is invincible. Nothing other than death can prevent us from following Churchill's old acronym: KBO. Keep Buggering On.


Despair? That's on you. No one else is to blame when you throw in the towel.


But we control ourselves—and that is sufficient.


The true threat to determination, then, is not what happens to us, but us ourselves. Why would you be your own worst enemy?


The first thing he did was throw out any idealistic notions about what happens to a soldier when asked to give up information under hours of torture.


He would not disgrace them or their sacrifice by allowing himself to be used as a tool against their common cause.


He could change *that* situation and not let history repeat itself—this would be his cause, and he would help his men and lead them.


We're in this *together,* he told them. He gave them a watchword to remind them: U.S.—Unity over Self.


But their cause was their men. They cared about their fellow prisoners and drew great strength by putting their well-being ahead of their own.


It is in this moment that we must show the true strength of will within us.


When we focus on others, on helping them or simply providing a good example, our own personal fears and troubles will diminish. With fear or heartache no longer our primary concern, we don't have time for it. Shared purpose gives us strength.


If I can't solve this for myself, how can I at least make this better for other people?


Stop making it harder on yourself by thinking about I, I, I. Stop putting that dangerous "I" in front of events. I did this. I was so smart. I had that. I deserve better than this. No wonder you take losses personally, no wonder you feel so alone. You've inflated your own role and importance.


Start thinking: Unity over Self. We're in this *together.* Even if we can't carry the load all the way, we're going to take our crack at picking up the heavy end. We're going to be of service to others. Help ourselves by helping them. Becoming better because of it, drawing purpose from it.


Whatever you're going through, whatever is holding you down or standing in your way, can be turned into a source of strength—by thinking of people other than yourself. You won't have time to think of your own suffering because there are other people suffering and you're too focused on them.


Death doesn't make life pointless, but rather purposeful.


In Montaigne's essays, we see proof of the fact that one can meditate on death—be well aware of our own mortality—without being morbid or a downer.


This is encouraging: It means that embracing the precariousness of our own existence can be exhilarating and empowe


Our fear of death is a looming obstacle in our lives. It shapes our decisions, our outlook, and our actions.


Part of the reason we have so much trouble with acceptance is because our relationship with our own existence is totally messed up.


We may not say it, but deep down we act and behave like we're invincible.


We forget how light our grip on life really is.


But thinking about and being aware of our mortality creates real perspective and urgency. It doesn't need to be depressing. Because it's invigorating.


Reminding ourselves each day that we will die helps us treat our time as a gift. Someone on a deadline doesn't indulge himself with


Life is a process of breaking through these impediments—a series of fortified lines that we must break through.


Each time, you'll learn something. Each time, you'll develop strength, wisdom, and perspective.


As the Haitian proverb puts it: Behind mountains are more mountains.


Elysium is a myth. One does not overcome an obstacle to enter the land of no obstacles.


Knowing that life is a marathon and not a sprint is important.


Passing one obstacle simply says you're worthy of more.


Late in his reign, sick and possibly near death, Marcus Aurelius received surprising news. His old friend and most trusted general, Avidius Cassius, had rebelled in Syria. Having heard the emperor was vulnerable or possibly dead, the ambitious general had decided to declare himself Caesar and forcibly seize the throne.


Marcus should have been angry. History would have forgiven him for wanting to avenge this enemy. To crush this man who had betrayed him, who threatened his life, his family, and his legacy. Instead, Marcus did nothing—going as far as to keep the news secret from his troops, who might have been enraged or provoked on his behalf—but waited to see if Cassius would come to his senses.


They would capture Cassius and endeavor not to kill him, but ". . . forgive a man who has wronged one, to remain a friend to one who has transgressed friendship, to continue faithful to one who has broken faith."


Marcus had controlled his perceptions. He wasn't angry, he didn't despise his enemy. He would not say an ill word against him. He would not take it personally. Then he acted—rightly and firmlyordering troops to Rome to calm the panicking crowds and then set out to do what must be done: protect the empire, put down a


As he told his men, if there was one profit they could derive from this awful situation that they had not wanted, it would be to "settle this affair well and show to all mankind that there is a right way to deal even with civil wars."


The Stoics liked to use the metaphor of fire. Writing in his journal, Marcus once reminded himself that "when the fire is strong, it soon appropriates to itself the matter which is heaped on it, and consumes it, and rises higher by means of this very material."


Marcus would now forgive essentially everyone involved. He wouldn't take any of it personally. He'd be a better person, a better leader for it.


I implore you, the senate, to keep my reign unstained by the blood of any senator. May it never happen.


We can turn even this to our advantage. Always. It is an opportunity. Always.


Something stands in someone's way. They stare it down, they aren't intimidated. Leaning into their problem or weakness or issue, they give everything they have, mentally and physically.


Not everyone looks at obstacles—often the same ones you and I face—and sees reason to despair. In fact, they see the opposite. They see a problem with a ready solution. They see a chance to test and improve themselves.


With this triad, they: First, see clearly. Next, act correctly. Finally, endure and accept the world as it is. Perceive things as they are, leave no option unexplored, then stand strong and transform whatever can't be changed.


The philosopher and writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb defined a Stoic as someone who "transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation and desire into undertaking."


You are schooled in the art of managing your perceptions and impressions. Like Rockefeller, you're cool under pressure, immune to insults and abuse. You see opportunity in the darkest of places.


You are able to direct your actions with energy and persistence.


Like Demosthenes, you assume responsibility for yourself—teaching yourself, compensating for disadvantages, and pursuing your rightful calling and place in the world.


You are iron-spined and possess a great and powerful will. Like Lincoln, you realize that life is a trial. It will not be easy, but you are prepared to give it everything you have regardless, ready to endure, persevere, and inspire others.


To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school . . . it is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.


They were nothing special, nothing that we are not just as capable of being.


See things for what they are. Do what we can. Endure and bear what we must.


The writer Ambrose Bierce, decorated Civil War veteran and contemporary of Mark Twain and H. L. Mencken, used to recommend Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus to aspiring writers who wrote to him, saying they'd teach them "how to be a worthy guest at the table of the gods."


The political thinker John Stuart Mill wrote of Marcus Aurelius and Stoicism in his famous treatise On Liberty, calling it "the highest ethical product of the ancient mind."


The Percys, the famous Southern political, writing, and planting dynasty (LeRoy Percy, United States senator; William Alexander Percy, Lanterns on the Levee; and Walker Percy, The *Moviegoer*) who saved thousands of lives during the flood of 1927, were well-known adherents to the works of the Stoics, because, as one of them wrote, "when all is lost, it stands fast."


Eighty or so years after Goddard's donation, the Soviet poet, dissident, and political prisoner Joseph Brodsky wrote in his famous essay on the original version of that same statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome that "if *Meditations* is antiquity, it is we who are the ruins."


And as he parachuted from his plane, Stockdale said to himself "I'm leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus."


The essence of philosophy is action—in making good on the ability to turn the obstacle upside down with our minds.


To see things *philosophically* and act accordingly.


I want to thank Samantha, my girlfriend, whom I love more than anyone.


Thank you for coming on the many walks with me where I thought out loud.


I want to thank my dog, Hanno—not that she is reading this—because she is a constant reminder of living in the present and of pure and honest joy.


Thanks to Aaron Ray and Tucker Max, who showed me that a philosophic life and a life of action were not incompatible.


Tucker, you're the one who encouraged me to read (and the one who told me to follow up Epictetus with Marcus Aurelius.


I very much see this book as a collection of the thoughts and actions of people better and smarter than me.


I hope you read it the same way and attribute any credit deserved accordingly.


Montaigne, Michel de. The Essays: A *Selection*. Translated by M. A. Screech. New York: Penguin, 1994.


Musashi, Miyamoto. The Book of Five *Rings*. Translated by Thomas Cleary. Boston: Shambhala, 2005.


Plutarch. On Sparta (Penguin *Classics).


Sellars, John. *Stoicism*. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.


Courage Under Fire: Testing Epictetus's Doctrines in a Laboratory of Human Behavior


The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms


Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder


Stoicism is perhaps the only "philosophy" where the original, primary texts are actually cleaner and easier to read than anything academics have written afterward.


Of the big three, Epictetus is the most preachy and least fun to read. But he will also from time to time express something so clearly and profoundly that it will shake you to your core.


His interpretation of Marcus Aurelius in the book The Inner Citadel—that Marcus was not writing some systemic explanation of the universe but creating a set of practical exercises the emperor was actually practicing himself—was a huge leap forward.


Heraclitus Plutarch Socrates Cicero Montaigne Arthur Schopenhauer Penguin Random House published this book, but even if it hadn't, I would recommend starting with the Penguin Classics.


Each month I distill what I read into a short e-mail of book recommendations, which I send to my network of friends and connections.


All in all, I've recommended, discussed and chatted more than a thousand books with these fellow readers in the last five years.


It was just your typical kind of life. I graduated from college, landed a job at a sort-of-big general contractor outfit, and with my older brother taking care of our parents for me, I was currently enjoying all the myriad benefits of the bachelor-pad life. Age thirty-seven. No significant other. I wasn't exactly short or frumpy or hideous or anything. But when it came to the opposite sex, apparently I had nothing to offer.


And I was a virgin. Imagine that. Floating off to meet my maker in completely unused condition… My manhood was probably crying its single eye out right then. Sorry I couldn't make you a real grown-up. If there's such a thing as reincarnation, I'm gonna go on the attack next time—I promise. I'll hit up everyone I see, stalking my prey before I go in for the kill… Okay, not like that, but…


I mean, here I was, lookin' at forty without ever losing my virginity. Like an old sage meditating in the mountains. Another few years, and I probably could've been the great sage of celibacy. Not the road I wanted to take in life, but there you go.


For the first time in a while, I was thrown. That sounded like kind of an incredible ability. Not exactly the kind of thing slimes were known for. At least not the ones I knew.


And here I thought that voice was just screwing with me. Now it was the best partner I had. Hope that keeps up. Hell, anything would have been fine at that point. As long as it helped smooth out the endless solitude I was preparing myself for.


For all I knew, this "voice" was something my mind had crafted to keep my marbles intact. It was fine by me. For the first time in ages, I could feel a burden lifting from my heart.


I suppose that had a lot to do with how for ninety days in a row, I never ran into any other creatures. No danger to my life whatsoever. But either way, I had let my guard down.


I was always like that. Getting cocky, then screwing it all up in the end. I'd proclaim to a customer, "Oh, absolutely! That won't be any problem at all!" and then have hell to pay. It had happened over and over. I still remember the spiteful looks the rest of my team gave me for it.


Too bad I didn't think to stop myself in time. What kind of idiot runs off into parts unknown when they can't even see? If I survived this, I was gonna give myself what for. Of course, given my personality, I doubted I'd learn anything from it.


It is the rare one, indeed, that ever leaves its habitat.


Some monsters do, and some do not, you see.