"Our actions may be impeded by [others], but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. Ryan Holiday's bestselling The Obstacle Is the Way brought"
"Marcus wrote his Meditations in Greek, not Latin, and his original phrasing is instructive: to empodon ergo synergei to ergo, kai to en te hodo hodopoiei-"what impedes the work cooperates with the work, and what is in the path makes the path." The verb synergei-root of our "synergy"-suggests the obstacle cooperates with the work rather than merely stepping aside. And"
Obstacles transform at three nested levels: practical redirection, conversion of circumstances into usable material, and inward change of character. The mind does not simply bypass impediments but adapts and turns them into cooperative elements of action, generating new paths from given conditions. Converting obstacles into advantages is a cultivated skill that requires practice rather than an automatic cognitive trick. Defenses against difficulty often prevent deeper conversion by blocking adaptation. The process moves from changing routes to repurposing external constraints to reshaping dispositions and virtues, each level progressively more inward and durable.
Read at Psychology Today
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