Everything (And I Really Mean Everything) Is A Chance To Do This​

I think people get it wrong.

I know I did.

When the Stoics say that the obstacle is the way, that there’s an opportunity in every obstacle, most of us take that to mean there’s some way to turn adversity into advantage.

We think of entrepreneurs pivoting during a downturn and building a billion-dollar business. We think of an investor buying back their own stock or taking advantage of being underestimated by their competitors. We think of a general using the bad weather as cover. We think of an athlete coming back stronger after an injury. We think of some rejected artist going independent and building their own label.

That’s how I was thinking about obstacles and opportunities when I wrote ​The Obstacle is the Way​ in my twenties. The simplest idea at the center of the book is that there are hidden advantages in every problem, that businesses and teams and people can take seemingly impossible situations and triumph over them. “Hard times can be softened,” Seneca writes in one of his essays, “tight squeezes widened, and heavy loads made lighter for those who can apply the right pressure.”

But what I’ve come to understand in the intervening years is that the Stoics were getting at something more profound than the fact that every…