I've been reading Ryan Holiday's blog for about 7 years now. He's the Director of Marketing for American Apparel, and has worked with authors like Tim Ferriss, Robert Greene and Tucker Max. He's also a staunch advocate of stoicism as a personal operating system.
His new book is called The Obstacle is the Way: The Ancient Art of Turning Adversity to Advantage. It's the best book I've read in a long time, and it's a book I will undoubtedly turn to again and again over the next 50 years. Ryan teaches you how to deal with anything in your life, and turn it to your advantage.
There are three aspects to this.
Controlling your perception is key - you have to flip the obstacle around to see how it can work for you. Think: tight deadlines give you the opportunity to practice working under pressure and focus on what really matters. Failing at a business venture gives you more intel about what does and doesn't work in a particular marketplace. If your computer crashes and you lose all your work: now you have a chance to do it over, even better than before.
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...this reaction determines how successful we will be in overcoming - or possibly thriving because of - them.
Every single thing we do is a reflection of who we are as a person. We owe it to ourselves to do our best work, to keep going, to strive and to what it is we were meant to do. And we always have a choice to keep working and to put in the effort and the work required of us.
The great psychologist Victor Frankl, survivor of three concentration camps, found presumptuousness in the age-old question: "What is the meaning of life?" As though it is someone else's responsibility to tell you. Instead, he said, the world is asking you that question. And it's your job to answer with your actions.
Finally, there is the idea of will, which is what you hold deep inside of you.
True will is quiet humility, resilience, and flexibility...[not] weakness disguised by bluster and ambition. See which lasts longer under the hardest obstacles.
This is what we should all strive to be:
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. So what will be revealed when you're sliced open by tension and pressure? Iron? Or air? Or bullshit?
Ryan is also clearly influenced by both Robert Greene and Marcus Aurelius in terms of his writing style for this book - it is simple, clear, direct and practical. I found myself highlighting and marking numerous passages which I will turn to again and again in the future.