The Obstacle is the Way Quotes

“Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.”

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

“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.”

“Like any good school, learning from failure isn’t free. The tuition is paid in discomfort or loss and having to start over.”

“Failure shows us the way—by showing us what isn’t the way.”

“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.”

“For all species other than us humans, things just are what they are. 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. Don’t waste time on false constructs.”

“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.”

“Blessings and burdens are not mutually exclusive.”

“First, see clearly. Next, act correctly. Finally, endure and accept the world as it is.”

“Focus on the moment, not the monsters that may or may not be up ahead.”

“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.”

“Death doesn’t make life pointless, but rather purposeful.”

“Each time, you’ll learn something. Each time, you’ll develop strength, wisdom, and perspective. Each time, a little more of the competition falls away. Until all that is left is you: the best version of you.”

“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.”

“Think progress, not perfection.”

“Failure really can be an asset if what you’re trying to do is improve, learn, or do something new.”

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

“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. But it’s what I feel. Right, no one said anything about not feeling it.”

“No one said you can’t ever cry. Forget ‘manliness.’ If you need to take a moment, by all means, go ahead. 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.”