What's on Your Bookshelf?
“What’s On Your Bookshelf” is a personal and professional growth podcast exploring the intersections of passion, potential, and purpose - featuring multi-certified coach and leadership development consultant Denise R. Russo alongside Sam Powell, Zach Elliott, Tom Schweizer, Dennis LaRue, and Michelle King.
What's on Your Bookshelf?
108 - The Obstacle Is The Way: Transforming Trials into Triumphs
Denise was stuck. Sam was frustrated. Different stories, same feeling—an obstacle so big it seemed impossible to move. But what if the struggle wasn’t a dead end? What if it was the path forward?
In this episode, Denise and Sam dive into The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday, exploring its powerful lessons through personal stories and the experiences of those who have turned setbacks into success.
You’ll meet a leader who faced disaster but found a way through, a dreamer whose failure became fuel, and the historical figures who proved that obstacles aren’t barriers—they’re invitations to greatness.
Denise and Sam take you on a journey filled with stakes, transformation, and hard-earned wisdom. It’s about the moment you hit the wall, the choice you make next, and the unexpected doors that open when you lean into the challenge.
Because, as Marcus Aurelius once said, “What stands in the way becomes the way.”
This isn’t just a book discussion—it’s a call to action. Tune in, shift your mindset, and start seeing your biggest obstacles as your greatest opportunities.
Resources mentioned:
The Obstacle is the Way: https://a.co/d/cvDTJ2c
Sometimes You Win Sometimes You Learn: https://a.co/d/dF6Czuj
Solve for Happy: https://a.co/d/dCU6ghu
The How of Happiness: https://a.co/d/2PweTq6
Coach Wooden: https://a.co/d/7sTFLVm
Atomic Habits: https://a.co/d/9siYKsD
Connect with us on our LinkedIn page School of Thoughts . We also value your reviews, subscribing, and sharing our podcast "What's On Your Bookshelf?" on Apple and Spotify.
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Welcome to what's on your Bookshelf, a life and leadership podcast where we live out loud the pages of the books that are on our shelves with your host, denise Russo, and Sam Powell.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone, welcome back. It's another episode of what's on your Bookshelf. This is our Life and Leadership podcast, where we are living out loud the pages of the books that are on our bookshelves. My name is Denise Russo, I'm here with our co-host, sam Powell, and together we are excited to announce that we are having the beginnings of book number two for 2025. Sam, how are you doing today?
Speaker 1:I'm doing great.
Speaker 1:I'm doing great, yeah, for I think we've talked about this as we've been recording things, but for a peek behind the curtain for everybody, it's actually been months between you and I sitting down recording episodes, because I had a baby in October and so we pre-recorded to get us to this point.
Speaker 1:And now here we are on the other side of it doing it, which is crazy, and I laughed as I was picking up this book today to sit down and record this because I was. It's, you know, titled the Obstacle is the Way, which is our second book by Ryan Holiday, and I just laughed because, man, do I have a lot of obstacles in the way to just sit down with you, do these podcasts right now? And even this morning we had planned to of obstacles in the way to just sit down with you and do these podcasts right now, and even this morning we had planned to meet earlier in the day and things popped up. So I feel like this book, like a lot of the books we've done, is coming at a very good time for me and I'm really excited to get going and talking about it with you.
Speaker 2:I'm excited to talk about it as well with you. I'm excited to talk about it as well. I'm even more excited that you're back and that we can be together again, because I selfishly missed you all these weeks that you've been away.
Speaker 1:So I missed a dull conversation.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Well, this book is really going to be a really good one because it's really around turning your trials into triumphs. That's the tagline of the book, but it really got me to thinking about. I share this on other episodes. I try to live my life by having a faith, and there is this great quote, or verse, if you will, that really sums up this book that I saw just this morning Like it's all weird coincidence. That's not really coincidence, and it popped up on my feed that I get in my social media and it was talking about this verse in Philippians 4, 6, that says focus on your blessings, not your struggles, and let gratitude fill your heart for all God has done for you.
Speaker 2:And as I was reading that and I started to think about the book before I saw that everything going started to think about the book, before I saw that everything going on in my mind was like I have a lot of laundry to do. It's raining outside today. We had to reschedule this call. There was all this stuff going on from stuff that's been happening for weeks for me personally as well, and I wasn't focusing on blessings and gratitude. I was really focusing on how am I just going to get through today.
Speaker 2:And then I started to refresh myself, because we also already read these books before we meet together, and it was almost like as if I was reading it again for the very first time and thinking to myself wow, you know, it's easy to have a book on your shelf and read it and totally forget everything. You know it's easy to have a book on your shelf and read it and totally forget everything you read about it. Maybe you don't apply it, maybe you don't live it out loud, maybe you don't think about what Coach Wooden said, that his father taught him about drinking deeply from good books, and yet we find ourselves having these books. That, sam, serendipitously. Somehow we have organized these books in such a way that they really are coming at good timing and in the right order yeah, I agree with you.
Speaker 1:It's one of those things that, like, I'm always sort of in awe of that, a bit of just what are we talking about, or maybe it's some innate ability that we have to find the meaning and the things we're reading to, and maybe that's part of the the beauty of, too, which I like.
Speaker 2:I think it actually could be that, because when we get to the next the way this book is laid out it actually talks about some people that have been very successful in life despite obstacles, and it all was about their perception. In fact, the whole first part of this book really is about that. So maybe before we deep dive into here, we talk a little bit about how this book is set up. How does that sound?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that sounds great. That sounds great and I think it's important to understand the context. And I like, on the very top of this book is a quote by Robert Green, who's the author of the 48 Laws of Power and Mastery. But he says this is a book for the bedside of every leader in the world.
Speaker 1:And I really, as I'm reading this, really do think so. And it's broken down into like these little, just few pages worth of like it's like a story and the thought behind it type of a thing. So it's one of those things that, like, you could easily pick up, read a few pages, get through like a little section and then sort of move on up, read a few pages, get through like a little section and then sort of move on. So it really is. It feels like a bedside type book where it's, you know, pick it up, read it a little tiny bit, think on that thing and then move through. So if anybody's reading through this with us, it definitely is one that you can kind of just I don't know like think on as you do it. It's one, I think, that's set up easily to live out loud.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's actually really short. It's 200 pages, but the book is small. The design of the book is small.
Speaker 1:It's like the size of my hand and I'm very small, which is interesting.
Speaker 2:So you have the 10th anniversary edition. Is that what you have? The blue one? I think so.
Speaker 2:yeah, okay and you have the blue one, I think. So, yeah, okay, and I have the old one, the old original one, so we'll have to see if they're the same or different or what, what changes. That'll be fun to do together as well. So one of the things that I liked about the book that we see in a lot of the books that we've shared is that the way the table of contents is sorted out is in chunks of chapters, not just, you know, a free flowing fiction book, and so the way that this one is set up is that the whole first part of the book is about perception, which is really what we think and what we believe about things. We talk about this a lot. That that's the starting point. Then it moves into part two of the book, which is actions, which we also talk about in the model that we share together. You think, then you believe, then you act and then you get your results in life. And so the third part of this book, their third part, the author's third part, is about the will, which I think is really around. How do you sustain the results and the outcomes that you're getting by having done actions that came from changing your thinking, yeah, so I really like how that was laid out.
Speaker 2:Another thing that was I really appreciated from the author. As he says, this book is not gushy optimism. It won't tell you to deny when stuff sucks or to turn the other cheek when you've been completely screwed over when stuff sucks, or to turn the other cheek when you've been completely screwed over. There's no folksy sayings or intellectual ineffectual proverbs. It will help you, though, to overcome mental, physical, emotional and perceived obstacles, so it's, yet again, a very practical book that isn't just going to tell you how one person did it and that it's not going to be able to fit for you as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, and it's very. It's funny. I bought this book a while ago and it sat on my shelf for a while. I hadn't read it and then you and I realized we both had it on our shelves and so became part of this year's book list, and I was surprised at how easy it really is to pick up and read in little chunks, which is great for me with the baby around because I'm interrupted all the time. But it really is a practical thing, like very practical things that you can really think about and turn around and act on, which is which is really nice. So it's a good.
Speaker 1:It's definitely a good structure, and the beginning starts with a preface, which is just I don't know four pages in total really, and it's uh. It gives you really the background of where this is coming from and what this is about. And there's this on the very back of the version of the book I have. There is just I think it's pulled out of the text itself, but it says the great men and women of this world didn't have exceptional luck or talent or experience. All they did was live by a single maxim what stands in the way becomes the way, and that's really what this book is about and that's how this preface starts out is really giving us the background on where that came from and what that's all about, and it's the title of the book. The obstacle is the way what stands in the way becomes the way, what becomes the path. So, yeah, what did you think of this?
Speaker 1:So he starts this out talking about Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, what I don't know like. Have you have you? Have you read much of his work? Have you studied a whole lot of him? I've watched a lot of TikToks about people that talk about him, but I don't know that I've read anything. This is the first. You know words on paper, experience I have with him.
Speaker 2:I've watched a couple YouTube videos and it really only came from a different class that I was in that talked about him, because I didn't have any real frame of reference around him. But I guess suffice to say that here was a guy who had enormous obstacles and there was something about him that he was able to take it, and the book talks about how he took those and turned them upside down. And what I really love about that is that's the basis for the first coaching certification that I got in business, which came from a company called Erickson Solution Based Coased Coaching. It's in the title of the coaching certification. It's about solutions. You have obstacles, you have opportunities and you need a solution to get to whatever that success thing is that you're looking for, and it's not always easy.
Speaker 2:And so if I think back, sam, to just finishing Five Bold Choices last week, we all have the ability to make these really challenging sometimes choices, but you have to take action on the choices, and the book even talked about the last book how this would be great if life was perfect and smooth and there were no obstacles, because then you don't need to take bold choices in life, you just make choices. And so what I loved about the beginning of this part of the book, when they're talking about Marcus Aurelius and some other storylines, is that the author says that you're going to come across obstacles in your life, fair or unfair, and you will discover time and again that what matters most is not what the obstacles are, but how you see them and whether we keep our composure. And so when I was thinking about this original story about Marcus Aurelius, it was really around the idea of you can respond to life or you can react to life, and the difference lies in how successful you are in not just overcoming an obstacle, but thriving amidst it or past it, and so I really find it interesting when you look at really successful business people, successful government people or military people, successful historical leaders what is that secret thing that helped them get past things that were likely, in their roles, very challenging? And it seems to me that the reality is obstacles became opportunities, whether it was talking about and I think we'll get into this in later chapters but, like rockefeller, taking opportunity when other people looked at them as completely the opposite. And so, when you think about that, it's about living and leading well, which is the whole point of why we do this podcast about how we can live and lead in our personal and professional lives at the maximum potential and purpose and passions that we have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And one of the lines I had highlighted was just something he says that setbacks or problems are always expected and never permanent, which is, you know, a lot of what you were saying there, and it just reminded me back to solve for happy and how you know, really, like his whole thing about unlocking happiness was to bring our expectations into the fact that, like this life is what it is, like, it's really grounding yourself in this problems happen.
Speaker 1:Expectation, like in your expectation should be that and when you don't expect those things, that you end up sitting in this place, like you said, like you're reacting instead of responding.
Speaker 1:If I expect something to happen, then I can be ready to respond. If I'm not expecting something to happen, I'm blindsided and I react right, and that's where I'm doing the things I don't want to do. That's where I'm living a life that I don't want to live. It's where I'm being a person I don't want to be and I, just, like it was when I was reading through just sort of the him setting the stage here, I just kept thinking back to that book. But this is really kind of a different way of thinking about that part of it, except this is more, you know, focusing on taking those problems and making them. You know part of it, but it's that expectation setting at the beginning and I just I think about how powerful that really is and I think about you know just the world at large and how you know, like we just came out of an election season things are.
Speaker 1:you know we're world at large and how you know, like we just came out of an election season, things are, you know, we're going through big transition periods and things like that, and I think about just the emotional reactions of everybody, right, if I'm sitting back as, like a third party observer, like there's just a lot of emotions going on in the world and it's, I think, if we sat and expected change, we expected that progress isn't linear.
Speaker 1:If we expected, you know, things in a different way, it would feel maybe less reactionary, right, it would feel like some of those emotions might curb quite a bit and some of the things that maybe feel like obstacles to people or feel like something may, like we just may look at the world a little differently.
Speaker 1:So I think, like not only does this book and even just thinking about just this little beginning part of it, I think, resonate with me, because I'm going through personal transitions and lots of little things that come as obstacles with babies, um, I think the other world at large is going through a lot too, especially if you're, you know, from the United States, and even if you're not, I think the US and all we do has a lot of effect on the world, and so it's. I think that this is there's such a, there's so many interesting concepts we'll get into here as we talk about this book that are just so relevant, I think in a just a broad scale too. I like that's one of the things that just keeps resonating with me and I keep thinking about as as I'm re-looking at my notes and, you know, rereading through things.
Speaker 2:I love that you brought up the Mo Goddard book Solve for Happy, because what it reminds me is that you, as a listener out there, may or may not have gone through that series with us last year, uh, but you can always go back and it's a perfect book example for what you're talking about, sam, because this book the three parts we just talked about the perception of something, your action and something in your will for something really resonates with the storyline of that book. Because the perception was about what's true, your thoughts or beliefs, and in the story here was a guy who had a super successful, very senior level job and his son suddenly passes away. And his son was over 20 years old. The action was the change that he had to have in his life, which was how to adapt to losing his best friend, how to adapt to changing what it was he was going to do for his career and his future and how he was going to experience loss and grief and somehow still find happiness inside of that. And then for the will part, it's about sustaining those results and outcomes and, as it so turned out for him, he's been able to impact millions of people through his own personal journey of walking through the experience, and so I think when you read this book, friends, you're going to find some of the same things, because it's really in any of our challenges that we have, no matter what they might be, that we learn what matters most, kind of like Sam and I when we went through the program with John Maxwell to get certified. In our other coaching program. There's a book that John wrote called Sometimes you Win, sometimes you Learn, and I have a feeling we'll probably reference that book frequently in this one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in the end, as it, as this first part of the book just really starts talking around the idea of whatever you face, you have a choice. The reality is you have a choice and you can be blocked by obstacles or you could jump over them, and it got me to really thinking about some of the things that you do with your business, with lead the game. It all came from looking at stories that maybe came from athletes, and so if you think about the best athletes in the in the olympics that run obstacle courses or that jump hurdles like they do it for fun, but probably the first time they did it as a kid, they fell or they even got hurt, but they kept getting back up and trying again until they got stronger and stronger and found their own system and their own process for being able to find that the obstacle became the way for them to create, perhaps, a career yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And, as you're saying, all of that the the image that flashed through my mind was actually from the how of Happiness, so before the Mogul Dad book. So, going back even one further, so, like this time last year, there was this graph. She was talking about research that had been done about people who'd gone through a significant loss or setback or obstacle, right, and it is one of those images and graphs that like lives rent-free in my head all of the time and it also is something that for me, like really unlocked an understanding in my own grief journey. That really helped me understand what I would like. It helped me put a feeling into words in a way that I didn't understand. But there there was research that was done and essentially, like, if you can think of a graph like your life's going along on like a happiness trajectory, like I'm happy, it's relative, it's fine, like here's a point in the map and then something happens and your happiness drops down significantly, right, like big setback, big loss, whatever, like something drops you way down and the research found that, based on the choices that you made, on how high you aimed, you could get yourself not only back to that original point of happiness that you were at, but people who actually put some like effort into it actually went above that and hit a thriving right. It wasn't just back to the surviving of like I'm happy and like that's. You know, I'm back to like kind of that level of happiness it was up to I'm actually a better version of me. Like my happiness is actually deeper, wider, better than it was before, and I hadn't thought of that until you were just talking through that of like that's really.
Speaker 1:I think, when we think about the obstacle being the way and as the quote from actual Marcus Aurelius says, is the impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. And when I think about how that relates back to that graph, it's okay if I accept reality, right. I pull from the how of happiness and think about I am where I am and I accept that right. Like I've had this big loss.
Speaker 1:But I know I don't want to stay in this loss. I don't want to stay in this deep, dark place. I don't want to stay in this negative place that doesn't serve me. I actually want something better than even when I started. Right, it's like, is it the Girl Scouts or the Boy Scouts who leave things better than how they found it. I feel like maybe it's both of them, but you know, like there's that sentiment of like right, I leave a space better than when I found it. If there was trash there when I came, I pick up that trash too when I'm picking up my own right, that kind of a thing. And it's that same sort of concept of I actually can use this obstacle, I can use this space, I can use this loss to become something even better. Right, it becomes the real path that I'm on, and I find that I don't know, if I just think through my life experience, I find that very, very true, like it resonates deeply with me.
Speaker 2:I agree. So I think one thing we can do is make this really relevant and relatable for you as listeners as you walk through this book with us, which is think about it, maybe even write this down while you're listening to this podcast, or come back to these last five minutes that we have in the show again at another time and think about what obstacles are in front of you right now. Everybody right now likely has at least one thing that's either frustrating, unfortunate, problematic or unexpected that's preventing you from doing something you really want to do. That's the very first line in the introduction of this book that everyone has something. So what is your something? And then, do you really believe? If we go from the thought to the belief is do you believe you can do something about that thing? And what might be stopping you? Is there something stopping you, like fear, or paralyzing you from moving? Like maybe some of you are listening and you just lost your job. Or maybe you lost your job months ago and you still haven't found a new one. Or maybe you go to work every day wondering if it's going to be your last, or maybe you are someone that's paralyzed a little bit about what's happening on one side of an aisle or another from things happening in a city that perhaps you don't even live in. And so what are those things and how is it making you feel?
Speaker 2:The book talks about how responses to these things sometimes are fear, frustration, confusion, hopelessness, helplessness, depression, anger. But whether you're dissatisfied in something, nothing is new about that. Everyone experiences that. And so, for between now and next next week, think about those things, because we can easily do what the book says blame others. You can blame your bosses, blame the economy, blame politicians, blame other people, or even write your own self off as a failure to goals that you have that you thought were impossible. But the book says that when only one thing really is at fault your attitude and your approach.
Speaker 2:And so that's the part I'm excited about diving into here, because when it starts talking about the good leaders that get past this, it defined it by something called sangfroid, which I had never heard of. I don't know, sam, if you've ever heard that word, but it's basically a definition of being unflappable and coolness under pressure, and I can think of I had a couple of bosses that were really great at this, and so I want to share a story when we get to the next episode around one in particular that helped me see a way of leading my life personally and leading in business professionally. That was because he was a sang-froid leader. So if you were to say anything else, sam, as we wrap up this first episode, which is literally only the preface of the book, what would you like to leave the listeners with today before we end?
Speaker 1:I love how you left it, I love the questions that you ask people, and so I want people to think about that what are the obstacles in your way? Think about that, what are the obstacles in your way, and like just begin to think about them as not the obstacle but as the path that you're on, and just like kind of open your mind a little bit, because I think as we get to the next episode, we're going to start to, you know, really expand on that and really think on what that, what that means. So I, I like that, I like your, I like your questions to the audience here. I think sit in those people.
Speaker 2:That sounds good. There are going to be questions for me and questions for you too, so I look forward to talking with you next week about what we came up with and, if you're just joining us, there will be some show notes for ways you can get in touch with us If you have thoughts, questions or suggestions. We'll also have links to the books and other things in there. But for today, my name is Denise Russo and, on behalf of my friend, sam Powell, this has been another episode of what's On your Bookshelf.