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926 reviews for:
The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph
Ryan Holiday
3.86 AVERAGE
926 reviews for:
The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph
Ryan Holiday
3.86 AVERAGE
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
This is the first book in Holiday’s trilogy on practicing Stoic philosophy. While it aims to be quick and practical — distilling key Stoic tenets into actionable advice — the writing is too simplistic. It reads like a high-school essay on ethics and hard work: repetitive, lacking nuance, and overly straightforward. The book offers some useful insights, but most come from quotes or anecdotes about historical figures. Holiday adds little original value, instead padding key ideas with analogies, famous stories (sometimes tenuously linked), and restatements with added overly-intense emphasis. It’s a short read — I finished it in a few days while splitting time with another book — but it could have been distilled further, perhaps into a handful of quotes or a one-hour podcast.
fast-paced
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
I do believe there is an appropriate audience for this book, but it is simply not for everyone. The lessons and insights it provides is not universal.
I found the anecdotes to be interesting and I was sold early on about how we should see the "obstacle as the way". However, I was waiting for actionable insights and maybe a system for implementing the lessons given in the book, but it never came even as I read the last chapter.
Overall, I believe that this could have just been a blog post rather than a whole book.
There is also one advice that I disagree with wholeheartedly, and I am saying this because of experience. The ability to overcome adversity is a valuable asset for any person (being a skill I have been learning to develop as well), but Holiday's take saying that anything that happens to us provides value and we should be grateful for it is just not true.
In the Philippines, thousands of lives were taken simply because people were accused of being drug users. The key word here is accused. Thousands of people were imprisoned, tortured, and killed without being given due process, a chance to defend themselves in court to prove their innocence.
If an innocent man was a victim of this injustice, can you tell his child or his wife or his brothers and sisters that this challenge, this obstacle, will provide them value someday and they should embrace it with a smile? Even if there were notable personalities who overcame struggles with great success, there are also people who faced adversity with the mindset suggested by this book, but ended up being miserable or unsuccessful or dead. And their stories will never spring up in a book like this one or anywhere at all, but it is definitely worth thinking about.
I found the anecdotes to be interesting and I was sold early on about how we should see the "obstacle as the way". However, I was waiting for actionable insights and maybe a system for implementing the lessons given in the book, but it never came even as I read the last chapter.
Overall, I believe that this could have just been a blog post rather than a whole book.
There is also one advice that I disagree with wholeheartedly, and I am saying this because of experience. The ability to overcome adversity is a valuable asset for any person (being a skill I have been learning to develop as well), but Holiday's take saying that anything that happens to us provides value and we should be grateful for it is just not true.
In the Philippines, thousands of lives were taken simply because people were accused of being drug users. The key word here is accused. Thousands of people were imprisoned, tortured, and killed without being given due process, a chance to defend themselves in court to prove their innocence.
If an innocent man was a victim of this injustice, can you tell his child or his wife or his brothers and sisters that this challenge, this obstacle, will provide them value someday and they should embrace it with a smile? Even if there were notable personalities who overcame struggles with great success, there are also people who faced adversity with the mindset suggested by this book, but ended up being miserable or unsuccessful or dead. And their stories will never spring up in a book like this one or anywhere at all, but it is definitely worth thinking about.
I listened to this. I liked it a lot, even though Holliday inevitably lapses into disjointed aphorisms in some chapters. Generally I like his style—giving you the stoic history, explaining the concepts and applying to contemporary examples.
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
challenging
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
This was a great book. A great refresher on learning from difficulties in life. The examples in the book are good and some very interesting. I do think it was a bit dragged out, but, I really enjoyed it. I liked "Ego is the Enemy" much more, but this book is worth the read. The audiobook would be a great supplement to listen to later.
informative
reflective
slow-paced
eh, it's mass market nonfiction and not a very good one at that. all the examples are way too nitpicky and often contraditory, although i suppose i did understand the idea behind it regardless. it's just okay.