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?
124-The Obstacle Is The Way: Part 3-Final Episode; The Art of Beginning Again
We explore the final chapter of Ryan Holiday's "The Obstacle is the Way," focusing on how life requires us to continuously begin again and view obstacles as opportunities rather than barriers.
• The cycle of obstacles never ends - when we navigate one, another emerges
• Mountains behind mountains - life presents continuous challenges requiring perpetual readiness
• Obstacles become opportunities when we change our perspective and approach
• Success comes from seeing clearly, acting correctly, and enduring what we must
• Growth doesn't mean obstacles shrink, but that we develop greater capacity to hold them
• What once blocked our path can become the path itself
• The three disciplines: perception (see clearly), action (act correctly), will (endure and accept)
• Personal stories of transforming job loss into new opportunities through mindset shifts
If you're getting value from our episodes, we'd love it if you would share them with others. Send us a note about what's resonated for you and how you've applied these principles to overcome obstacles in your own life.
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.
Subscribe to our new YouTube channel.
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 1:Hello friends, welcome back to another episode of what's on your Bookshelf. This is our life and leadership podcast, where we're living out loud the pages of the books that are on our bookshelves. My name is Denise Russo, my co-host is Sam Powell, and today we are together to talk about the last part of the book that we are in. The Obstacle is the Way the Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph by Ryan Holiday. Sam, how are you doing today?
Speaker 2:I'm good Bittersweet. I'm feeling a little sad that this is the end of this, but also just excited to reflect back on this book and some of what we've learned, because this has been, I think, one of my favorite ones.
Speaker 1:I think so too, and it's funny because it's the end of the book. But the end of the book talks about how to have a new beginning, so I'm really looking forward to our chat today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not going to lie, when I read the title of this last chapter with prepare to start again, and I just thought I just, I like, I like to set, like, set it and forget it type of thing. Right, like, if I do it right and it's good, then I don't have to do it again. But the reality of life is we are always beginning again, doing something. You know we're doing meal planning every single day, every single week. We are, you know, constantly going through cycles of change and growth and setbacks, and you know loss and you know new things coming, and you always just have to be ready to start again.
Speaker 2:He starts the chapter out with and this chapter is just, I mean, a page at the end of the day, really, but he says the great law of nature is that it never stops, there's no end. Just when you think you've successfully navigated one obstacle, another emerges and yep, that's exactly it. Right, like this, this journey is never over, and I think that's why this book is so powerful, because it's yeah, I don't know, it's a little life manual of constant things that you need to be doing, because you're always going to hit probably multiple obstacles all the time, all day, every day, sort of what it is, and I think changing you know this book has taught us is just changing that relationship, I think, with obstacles themselves is, you know, is one of the keys and and understanding that you have to be ready to start over and over again is is one of the biggest and most important parts of it.
Speaker 1:I think if you can focus your mindset on obstacles being opportunities in our life for something different and better than where you are today, you can get around those obstacles better. Last week we were talking about how Livia and I had watched the closing of a Muppet show at Disney, because it's making way to build a section in the park about Monsters Inc. And have you ever seen this movie, pixar, monsters Inc? Yeah, it's a great one. So the whole movie premise is based on a really big obstacle. So what happens is, without giving it away, I would definitely tell you, even if you're an adult, go watch this movie.
Speaker 1:There's so many life leadership lessons in Pixar movies. And so the movie starts out with a really big obstacle because there's these monsters, and the monster's objective in the beginning of the movie is that they had to scare little children to create energy, and the energy was what fueled the city that they had to scare little children to create energy, and the energy was what fueled the city that they lived in called Monstropolis. And so the obstacle became that a little girl entered into their world and that was a problem for them because they had to get her back to where she came from. And so throughout the movie, just like in the book, it says there's a Haitian proverb that says behind mountains are more mountains. In the movie, it's doors. There's doors that they have to open to find out where this little girl lives so that they can send her back to where she came from.
Speaker 1:What happens throughout the movie is there's door after door after door, and these doors could be viewed as obstacles, like one was in the Himalayan mountains with snow, and another one was the wrong kid's house and another one was some other area where they didn't really want to be, and they kept trying.
Speaker 1:They could have stopped at the first door. They could have stopped at the first obstacle and just said well, there's nothing, we're going to be able to do. What ends up happening as you can imagine, because now there's multiple versions of this movie that have come out and there's now big rides getting ready to be built at Disney World is that the obstacles really became the opportunity, and this biggest obstacle was this little girl who entered their life at a time when they didn't think that there could be anything good about. It. Turned out to be the best thing that could have ever happened in their life, and I think that this chapter, for me, talks about how you can flip around your obstacle and do things in spite of them, not because of them, which is a quote from the book and you could take that obstacle and it might end up being the very best thing that could have ever happened to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that I think things only become the best thing that ever happened to you, cause I heard that a lot. When you know our jobs were eliminated. I don't know how many people came out of the woodwork and told me stories about somebody that had also been laid oversimplification right. Nothing is ever the best thing that happens to you unless you, you grow to let it become ingrained, like that lesson, to become ingrained in who you are, ingrained in your DNA, so that you become the best version of yourself, so that you become the person who allows that to have been the best thing that ever happened to you.
Speaker 2:And you know, and I think it's like when we say that saying it's always one of those ones that jars me, because it's it makes it feel like the ownership of it is external right. This thing happened and it became wonderful when that couldn't be further from the truth. I don't think it's really what you do with it. It can be your downfall or it could be your salvation, depending on how you react, how you show up, how you grow and incorporate that.
Speaker 1:And I, and I think that's really what this book is right Like at the end of the day this book is such a great partner book to solve for happy by Mo Gaudet right, because he his entire book was about this part of starting over after deep loss, of losing his 21 year old son, and you're right, like he didn't imagine that losing his son was ever going to be the best thing ever. It wasn't and it still isn't, and I imagine he still suffers with some grief, but he had to learn through that experience how to use his life, his son's life, to move him forward into living his life, because he still had a lot of life or has a lot of life left to live. And so I think that for me, preparing to start again, you're right, sam, it isn't about the thing that happens to you. And you're right, sam, it isn't about the thing that happens to you, it's the process of what happens through you, not because of the thing, but in spite of or around that thing. Because, you're right, nothing about us losing our jobs in March of 2023 feels good even today, in the summer of 2025.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of things that I still feel about that day and that experience that were not good, and there's still things along these last two years, two and a half years now that have come out of that experience that have been amazing. Right, we've had over 110 something more than 110 episodes of what's on your bookshelf. You started a growing, thriving coaching business. I've had an opportunity to travel to more places in the world than I ever did while I was still at work, experiencing things with our families that we had never experienced before both of us and so the obstacles can trap us both of us and and so the obstacles can trap us, or we can change the way we look at the obstacle and try to find our ways around them.
Speaker 1:And so when the author ends this, he's talking about how there was a choice to be made, even by the person he started talking about in the beginning of the book. He ends talking about at the end of the book, aurelius, and so I actually you know how, whenever you say something out loud and then suddenly it pops up on your phone. So all of a sudden, of course, while we're going through this book for the last couple of weeks, I keep getting people who are training on Marcus Aurelius or quotes from Marcus Aurelius, and I'm sure after today, since I've said his name three times, a bunch more stuff will pop up. Once we hang up this recording I think our phones might be Beetlejuice.
Speaker 2:I think that's what.
Speaker 1:I just learned.
Speaker 2:You say it three times and you start getting the ads.
Speaker 1:So what he talks about here at the end, which was, I think, a really interesting story, which was this guy had a nemesis.
Speaker 1:You know, it could be a David versus Goliath, it could be one side versus another, red versus blue, or black versus white, or up versus down, or this versus that, whatever it is.
Speaker 1:And in this case he was near the end of his life, the end of his reign, the end of his journey, and he had an opportunity to sort of stick it to the man, the guy that was his nemesis, and he decided that when he was telling his troops that they were going to win a war against this enemy, if you will, that the troops had no idea that what he really meant was they were going to win the war by winning over their mind and that they were going to actually need to take what they thought was the intention, which was to destroy the other person. But Marcus Aurelius knew that by destroying another person he was going to destroy himself, and so he decided to take the upper road, I guess you could say, and that he was going to win the war by offering grace, forgiveness, the absence of destruction. And I thought, man, that is a lesson that everyone in a government position should be learning right now. I don't know what is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely, and I, and I think that that's it right, like there's this obstacle and it's what you decide to do with it. The obvious thing could have been go defeat the uprising, go defeat the person who's trying to wrong you and all this sort of stuff. But there are other ways, right, and I love that he says in here fate doesn't have to be fatalistic, it can be destiny and freedom just as easily, and it really comes down to how we choose to respond. Right, we control our destiny. Right, like we control whether fate is fatalistic or whether it is the meant to be, like oh, this was meant to be, and all of those things we choose, those paths in our actions, in mindsets and our will. Right, like all the things like in the perceptions that we we create and those actions that we take and then that will that we fortify. Right, as the three sections of this book have really taught us that you know, it's it's really up to us, and how we respond, more than anything.
Speaker 1:I think that's why we call it willpower right. Willpower is the power of your will. The will is inside of you. The will is something nobody can take from you, but you have to sort of put energy into it. And so the author says that you can turn everything into an advantage. There's always an opportunity. And then he says twice in this part of the book, he says the sentence and then, after the sentence, he says always period, always period. There's always an opportunity, always. And so then he said there will always be something in your life that's standing in the way of something else.
Speaker 1:But the best leaders, whether you're leading yourself or leading others, is your ability to look at the obstacle and not become intimidated by it, and to lean into it, not walk away from it, and to figure the way around it. Really, really the best story in this book was the very first one. This guy had the opportunity to walk away, just like the other villagers, when there was the big obstacle in the road, the boulder in the road. But he looked at it long enough to figure out how he could move it. He saw everybody else try. They tried to climb over it, they tried to walk around it, they tried to push it, they tried to shove it, they went forwards, they went backwards. They couldn't solve the problem. But he knew that the problem wasn't right in front of him. He still had to walk to the side of it to get the stick to be able to use as a lever, to give him leverage around the obstacle.
Speaker 1:And when he did, it often makes me think about Sam, about the villagers that got mad at him for doing it, like, oh, who did he think he was to move the obstacle? Why was he better? He thinks he's better than everybody else. Now, and that's what happens a lot of times in business, when you're innovative or you're creative, is that people get jealous because they didn't come up with the answer themselves. But everyone has the opportunity to sit with their mind and shift it if they need to. The best innovators don't stop at the first iteration of an invention right, yeah.
Speaker 2:And he says tested in the crucible of adversity and forged in the furnace of trial, like you're saying right, like you don't give up, you keep, you keep going, you keep persevering. And they realize that in the they realize these latent powers, the powers of perception, action and the will. With this triad, they first see clearly, next act correctly and finally endure and accept the world as it is. And I think, like if you I don't know I should probably write that down, put on my wall where I can see it right like first see clearly, get your perspective right, as we learned through the whole first section of this book, and then act accordingly. When you see right, when you get your mind right, then you take the right actions and do all the things that help you do that. You know work through the blockers, figure out how to get, get into it.
Speaker 2:I I help clients with this all the time of like they're just waiting for something to help them take the action. And it's like you're who you're waiting for, you are, you are the one who goes and decides and does this. You're in it right now, you're in life and you said you wanted this, so go do it, go get on the path, go, make the things happen. I just told somebody this literally last week, like this isn't you're not in the someday I'll figure this out moment. You're in the. I already did the work and now I have to take the action.
Speaker 2:You have very clearly saw what to do and now it's making it happen and then accepting the world for what it is right. It's, um, there's that. I forget what the exact quote is, but it's like you've got to like let go of the results of the end. It was in one of the books that we read and I just like cannot pull it out of my head. But it's like you. You do your absolute best, right, but then you have to remove yourself from the result. Sometimes they're just things are out of your control, right. They're just life is what it is, things are what they are, and so you have to have that inner fortitude to carry on, begin again like this.
Speaker 1:You know this said I like what you're saying. I actually highlighted this part in the book also because this goes to what we talk about frequently, which is you do need to look at your results, or your well, your results or the lack of what you want. And if you want something different in life than you have, but you do nothing different about it, then you shouldn't expect something different to happen. Right? The definition of insanity doing the same things over and over again, expecting a different result. So, if you want a different result, you have to look at what you did or didn't do to get that result, and if you want a different result, what do you need to do to get that result? That's the last part of this formula, which is it takes sustenance, it takes endurance, it takes resilience, it takes trying, sometimes more than once, to get to the end. You don't just come up with a new idea and suddenly you have it Like people that lost their jobs don't, tomorrow, just get a new job.
Speaker 1:There might not be a new job available, but what can you do to get yourself into a new situation? Do you need to update your LinkedIn? Do you need to fix your resume? Do you need to get with a career coach. Do you need to maybe shift where you work in the industry you work in and go learn something new and try something different? So what is it that you need to endure to get to where you want to be?
Speaker 1:So that's the action part, but then most of the time people stop there. They stop at the actions or the inactions that give them the results in their life and they don't go into their headspace, which is what the whole first part of this book was about was getting into your thinking. And so, if you can get into your thinking, he says right here what Sam just pointed out you need to first see the obstacle clearly. You need to see it, which means you need to visually see it, mentally process it. What is in front of you right now? What do you see? And then you need to act correctly.
Speaker 1:Now, the correctly piece of it is the belief system, because you could see something and act, but you can be acting in a way that is outside of your belief system, your core values. You know you could do something that is outside of who you are, and so I love that. He says here you perceive things as they are, but leave no option unexplored, and then you need to stand strong and transform whatever can't be changed. Now I don't necessarily agree with that part, because I think that the things that are outside of our control we can only have some influence over, not all the influence. So I was curious what you thought about him saying that you can transform what can't be changed I think it's.
Speaker 2:I always say you can either change the situation or change your relationship with the situation. And so to me, like that's what I thought of when I thought of this it's like I can't control other people and what they do. I can't control the world and what happens around me, but I can control me and what I do. Right, I can control my reaction to the situation. I had a client who came to me and was like Sam, I gotta get out of this job. My boss is bleep and bleep and bleep, bleep, bleep, but I can't do it one more second.
Speaker 2:And we realized that if we made a few pivots and I said the same thing to him, I was like listen, you either get out or you've got to change your relationship here somehow, right, and he couldn't get out at the moment for a number of reasons. And so he changed the way he showed up and it changed everything. And so the last time I talked to them, so like he and I worked together for a few months and then it's been a little while, and he was like it's, it's a whole, it's a whole different place, right, it's a whole different. Like there's none of that urgency, like I've had a thousand wins that have happened. You know things are good because changed the relationship. Like you couldn't change the environment or the people like you could influence but like not change, and so he changed how he showed up and I think that's to me what that? That's what I think of when I think of what the author is saying here.
Speaker 1:I love that. I have a mentor that said to me one time you can if you can't. He said if you can't change the people around you, then change the people around you. But the missing part to that might be that the person needs to change is you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe, yeah yeah, I definitely think so, and I love like I see, you know we're kind of rounding out this book. He talks about that we gather strength as we go, the virus acquired in inuda I really should work on my latin, I guess. But we gather strength as we go and I think that, like, all said and done with these obstacles, right, all said and done, we've given it our best, we've tried to change the situation, we've changed ourselves, we've worked on, you know, our perception and we've gotten in the game with the action and we've, you know, fortified ourself with a will. And it's this to me, it's like the snowball effect of like we gather every obstacle, if you face it correctly, you take the lessons of it, and it says, like people think, and it's like in the middle is a little ball, and it's like the little ball represents grief and the jar represents you.
Speaker 2:And it says, you know, what people think about grief is that the ball shrinks over time, but the reality is is the ball stays the same and you grow around it, so it doesn't, you know, trigger the button as much, it doesn't hit the sides as often because you've grown around it. And I think that that's true of all obstacles, right Like, if you really put into play, right If you take this book off of your shelf and in, like integrated into who you are and how you approach life. That's really what happens is that it's not that your problems get smaller, it's that you get larger. You are able to contain and hold more in all of that, and I think that that is beautiful, like at the end of the day, right Like. That is that feels tangible, that feels doable, right Like, and I think that that's more true to what life, how life really works.
Speaker 1:A couple of years ago I met one of the founders of the company Life is Good, you know, the one that makes the t-shirts with a little stick figure people on them. And he was speaking at a conference and I had a chance to talk with him afterward about things like my flood and just how inspired I was by their company and their motto and vision and all that stuff. And he said you know, denise, life isn't always easy, but life is good. That's the name of their company, life is good. And they, he said, not every day for us has been an easy day. Not everything about life is is happy. Every day we run into obstacles in our lives.
Speaker 1:It's natural this book talks about how you will run into the mountain behind the mountain behind the mountain.
Speaker 1:But if you can go at it with the approach that life is good and what you can do to untangle the mess in your mind about all of it, that you can live each day to the maximum, whether it's your passions in life, whether it's your potential for doing something that you were destined to do in life, whether it's you fulfilling out your purpose in your life and so there's a little bit more in the book that ends that, that if you haven't gotten a copy of this book, friends, you need to get the book, because it's another really easy read, and we're going to segue here in a moment into what we're going to do for our next book.
Speaker 1:But the point of this one is that life is in your hands. It's it is in your hands to do what you will with it. We try in our show to live this out loud together, but Sam lives in her house and I live in my house, and we try to live out what we're learning. We just so happen to be doing it week after week together as we learn from one another. I hope that you, listening, have been able to learn some things for yourself, for inside of your own house as well. So, sam, why don't you help us wrap up what we've?
Speaker 2:got here at the end of the book for the people and where we're headed next time. Yeah, I think I mean I highlighted the very last part of this book that I think sums it up so well. Right, he says see things for what they are, do what we can endure and bear what we must. What blocked the path is now the path, or what blocked the path now is a path. What once impeded action advances action.
Speaker 2:The obstacle is the way, and I think it's that line of what blocked the path now is a path. Blocked the path now is a path. And so it's that radical acceptance of whatever is in my way is now the path that I'm on right, like I I might have thought I was going left, but now right is the only thing available, and so right is what I will do and how I will move forward. And it's that just constant, like I move forward regardless of what comes in my way and I integrate it as I go, because the path is whatever is in front of me, not whatever I thought it might be. And I think that if you can get to that mindset and that kind of acceptance of obstacles, like you can unlock, like the next level of living really.
Speaker 1:Well, before we talk about the next book, I want to encourage all of you listening. Don't just put this book down. The book says almost on the last page this book is not something you read once and put on a shelf. It's meant for you to live it out loud. That's the whole point of our podcast, is the point of the books that we've chosen. I hope you've enjoyed this book. I'm really a little bit nervous and excited about the next book, sam, so maybe we'll give a sneak peek into what's coming next, because it's a book I haven't read yet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've started reading through it, but it's a book I haven't read yet. Yeah, I've, I've started reading through it, but it's going to be hard to talk about the book because it's censored, but it's. It's by Gary John Bishop and it's called F yourself, but it's not F yourself, so we'll put a picture of it so you can see it. So we will be talking about this with the edited version of doing it. But, um, it's about getting out of your head and into your life and I think that, like to me, as I'm starting this book on the heels of living, you know, accepting obstacles in different way and approaching obstacles in a different way.
Speaker 2:This is really about kind of like that wake up call, like okay, like now, what, right? Like now that I know that obstacles are the way, how, now, what do I do? And the back of the book says wake up, you are an effing miracle of being, and like that's sort of the tone of the book, like it's just, it's kind of irreverent. But in this, like, get in it now, right, like now that you know better, do better, and he really walks us through, um, you know how to do that and some like phrases that help you sort of become like center posts in moving forward in that way. So I'm I don't know like it's an interesting follow-on to like ancient stoic wisdom to un-f yourself. My son is 10 and saw this book. Um, I took it on vacation with us and he was like mom, your book says a bad word, like I know, and so it's uh, I don't know, it's a fun.
Speaker 2:It's got a totally different tone, but it's I. I think it follows along really nicely awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, we've just been very serendipitous in the way our books line up. So just as a summary so we started out with five bold choices. So we have these five big choices in life, but nothing matters if you take no action. And five bold choices works great if life has no obstacles. And so the obstacle is the way talks around, how you may know what the choices are but have a hard time figuring out how to navigate around things. Obstacle is, the Way was about navigating and to be able to see obstacles as opportunities. And, like Sam said, next week we're going to dive into how to untangle the mess that happens first in our thoughts and in our mind and help us to be able to move forward into whatever it is that we want in life. And then we still have some, I think, some cool books to round out the end of the year that are coming next as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very excited, all right, Well, that's it.
Speaker 1:That's a wrap. So the obstacle is away. Friends, thanks for listening. If you're getting value from our episodes, we sure would love it if you would share them with others. Send us a note about what's resonated for you, Maybe even if you've changed something in your life and removed obstacles or gotten new opportunities by listening along and applying some of the principles. We sure would love to hear from you. Special thanks to our producer, Zach Elliott, to lead the game in School of Thoughts, as well as our sponsors, Insignia Training Partners. It's been wonderful having you along the journey with us. Friends, and on behalf of my friend Sam Powell, my name's Denise Russo and this has been another episode of what's on your bookshelf. Okay, Thank you.