What made this book such a wonderful read for me-what makes it so useful to someone who already knows all these principles and strives to live by them every day-is that the stories it tells offer what is perhaps the most effective kind of help that anyone who's going through a difficult time needs: encouragement. Holiday's book acknowledges all of this and does one more crucial thing: it includes examples of people from history who've turned obstacles in front of them into the way forward. But if we ask ourselves what such failures have to offer us and look inward, we may discover that only the pain of experiencing such failures has the power to motivate us to challenge our shortcomings and change in such a way that makes our goal possible. If we want to establish and maintain a successful long-term romantic relationship, for example, but we're too full of anger-or fear, or insecurity-to manage it, a string of failed relationships might seem like nothing but obstacles in the way of our goal.

Perhaps it’s our inflexibility, our arrogance, or our fear, but when victory over external barriers is contingent upon victory over internal ones, the greatest benefit a situation has to offer us is training-by which I mean a challenge that forces us to grow in a way that makes achieving our goal possible. At other times, the true obstacle isn’t the obstacle in front of us but the obstacle inside of us. Sometimes, for example, failure itself is a benefit-failure that forces us to pursue an alternative path we wouldn’t have otherwise considered but that turns out to be the best way, if not sometimes the only way, to achieve a goal.

The answer may be different depending on the obstacle itself. If an obstacle lies in our way, how can it possibly be used to achieve our goal? This notion that the obstacles that prevent us from achieving our goals can be used-and in some cases may even be necessary-to achieve those very goals seems not just Pollyanna-like but also paradoxical.

The obstacle is the way stoicism