Choose to see obstacles as your teachers, not your enemies
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
~ Marcus Aurelius
Every fairy tale for the past century has sold us on the idea that once we achieve some great goal — like finding “true love” — we will live happily ever after.
And it’s a nice sentiment, isn’t it? The idea that you could live happily ever after until the end of your days?
Rationally, I think we all know this is an impossible dream. We know that struggle is ahead.
Yet, in some strange way, we still desire the happily ever after — that moment in life where we have achieved enough to finally be at peace, to finally enjoy the fruits of our labor, to leave our troubles and hardships behind us.
If you’ve ever thought, if I just get through this next thing then I’ll be happy, you know what I mean.
Maybe you thought you’d finally be able to relax once you finished university and landed your first job?
Maybe you thought you’d finally be happy once you found a great partner and got married?
Maybe you thought you’d finally be content once you got that promotion you were striving for?
Have you ever had thoughts like these?
I certainly have. Because all I wanted was for the struggle, the adversity, the pain to end.
So, I screamed and kicked whenever obstacles entered my life. Then I promptly ignored or avoided them. Or, worst of all, I denied their very existence.
The trouble, it turns out, is that obstacles are always with us.
The trouble, it turns out, is that obstacles are our best teachers.
Obstacles are always with us
You may have noticed by now that no matter what, problems never go away.
Single and looking for a romantic partner? That poses all sorts of problems, like choosing which dating app to use, deciding what you’re looking for in a match, and figuring out whether you actually like the person you’re chatting with or if you’re just desperate.
In a long-term relationship? That poses all sorts of problems, too, like figuring out how to spend time together, how best to communicate, and how to prevent your sex life from shriveling up like the apple you forgot about in the cupboard that one time.
Newly single after being in a long-term relationship? You guessed it! More problems. Like, figuring out whether you’re ready to be in another relationship, what you’d do differently this time around, and how to navigate in a world where “sexting” is a thing.
But this doesn’t just apply to the romantic side of life. It applies to your career, to the sports or musical instruments you play, to writing and art, to your other relationships… to everything you care about.
Once an obstacle has been overcome, another simply slides in to fill its place.
The mere fact that you are alive guarantees that you will struggle, no matter what.
No one escapes this never-ending cycle. Everyone encounters obstacles at the edges of their knowledge and experience — outside their comfort zone.
Whether we like it or not, it’s in that direction that life is constantly pushing us.
And, somewhat confusingly, it’s also at these edges where the magic happens.
Our obstacles show us the way
Marcus Aurelius, the great Stoic philosopher, expressed the idea that the obstacles we face in life are the guiding stars in the journeys of our lives.
Just like failure, obstacles have something to teach us, something important to say.
Obstacles represent a challenge in your life that you haven’t figured out how to solve just yet. A challenge, I would add, that has meaning to you.
When you don’t perceive something as an “obstacle”, it doesn’t mean that you haven’t overcome something that someone else would consider an obstacle. It just wasn’t an obstacle for you. And vice versa.
Which is exactly why it’s so important to pay attention to obstacles. They are signposts made specifically for you. They are the mind’s way of telling you that there is a problem.
But, just perceiving obstacles isn’t enough. Just noticing them doesn’t do them justice.
The reason why Marcus Aurelius believed obstacles are the way is because they illuminate areas of your life that need change or improvement.
Our obstacles are flashing signs trying to let us know that there is a problem that we need to resolve.
Our frustration, stress, anxiety, anger, worry… these are examples of how the obstacles in our lives communicate with us. These are the indications that something needs to change, that we need to act.
Do you have a constant fear of failure?
Do you get angry every time you drive?
Do you feel like something is missing in your romantic relationship?
Don’t ignore these signposts. Don’t shy away from them.
Go directly at them.
But don’t just blindly flail your arms to try to knock them away.
Be inquisitive and investigate the nature of the obstacles in your life, and your relationship to them. It’s in this investigation that you will learn what you need to do to overcome them.
And don’t get discouraged. Obstacles can be overcome.
Overcoming your obstacles
Obstacles suck. Their very nature demands that we confront something uncomfortable inside ourselves to resolve them.
But we often make obstacles more difficult than they need to be by desiring that they don’t exist in the first place.
When we wish for obstacles not to exist, and then they smack us in the face (as they always do), our preference for reality not to be how it is causes us suffering above and beyond the obstacle itself.
So, stop wishing for obstacles not to exist. Try to accept that they are a natural part of life. And remember that denying this only makes your life more difficult.
Then, stop running away from the obstacles in your life.
Stop running away from your fear of public speaking, the conflict with your co-worker, the rift in your marriage.
These obstacles can be overcome, but not without effort and courage because the things that cause us to struggle are often related to unresolved issues deep within our psyches.
Which is why we usually run from obstacles. We’re not running away from them — we are running away from ourselves, from a part of us we’d rather ignore. But it is only by looking within that we will ever find the answers we seek.
Now, I’m not saying that things can be resolved in a happily ever after sort of way, either. Fear never leaves us. Conflict will always exist. Relationships are never easy.
But what I am saying is that there is hope.
Because the obstacles in our lives can change. They can become better.
As Mark Manson said in The Subtle Art of not Giving a F*ck, “Warren Buffett’s got money problems; the drunk hobo down at the Kwik-E Mart’s got money problems. Buffett’s just got better money problems than the hobo. All of life is like this.”
The problems in our lives — the obstacles — they change because we change. If you think back on your life, you will realize that you have confronted and overcome many obstacles. And once you overcame an obstacle, it was never the same. And as you moved forward, the obstacle morphed into something else, something you hadn’t quite figured out yet.
But some of the obstacles in your life will seem insurmountable.
And when something seems too big for me to fix, I’m reminded of this beauty of an idea commonly attributed to Confucius: the man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.
Little actions taken over time amount to monumental changes in your life.
I overcame my terror of speaking up at business meetings by taking the most ridiculously small steps imaginable. But that’s what I needed.
And once you have intentionally faced and overcome an obstacle, the second is easier.
As you overcome more obstacles, you reinforce in your mind that obstacles are just the path that life has laid out before you. You become used to the idea that obstacles are the way.
A simple fact of life is that it demands we face our fears, our insecurities, our pain, not because life is cruel, but because it is by courageously facing them that we grow into something better, something more whole. Something, perhaps, we’ve always wanted but never knew how to achieve.
And once you realize this, once you see that this is just life, you will be able to meet your obstacles with more grace, positivity, and perseverance than you ever thought possible.
Choose to see obstacles as your teachers, not your enemies
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