You might be one mindset change away from overcoming the impediments and obstacles standing in your way.
As physicians, we face obstacles daily. Whether you’re dealing with difficult patient interactions, navigating complex healthcare systems, managing the emotional toll of the job, struggling to find work-life balance, a new residency, adjusting to your specialization, or starting your own practice, obstacles are an inevitable part of your role.
I’ve experienced these types of obstacles, too. And conceptually, we understand that obstacles are an inevitable part of life. But then I found a game-changing book, The Obstacle Is the Way by. By New York Times bestselling author Ryan Holiday, it’s about changing your mindset in the face of obstacles. It helps clarify the most productive way to approach our perceived struggles.
Today I want to share the key insights from Holiday’s book that can be crucial to overcoming the perceived obstacles in your life.
Chief among them, we’ll explore how obstacles can actually be opportunities for growth. But the book is also guided by Stoic principles of perception, action, and will. In the end, you’ll learn how to control your reactions and use challenges as pathways to thrive. Let’s dig in!
The following are life-changing takeaways from The Obstacle Is the Way that will help you overcome any challenge.
Every Obstacle is an Opportunity for Personal Growth
James Russell Lowell once wrote, “One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.” This is a profound statement. If every obstacle we faced stopped us, we’d have quit a long time ago. Instead, we need to realize that the sting of a challenging situation can actually help us come out the other side a stronger individual. So we need to change our mindset when it comes to obstacles. Let’s look at some mindset strategies from Holiday’s book.
Reframe Challenges: It’s important to rethink the nature of challenges. Rather than something keeping you down, change your mindset. Instead, think of them as opportunities for personal growth. As a physician, difficult cases or setbacks are not just obstacles—they are chances for you to learn and improve. “The things which hurt, instruct,” as Benjamin Franklin once said.
Build Resilience: Challenges shouldn’t wear you down, little by little. In fact, just the opposite. Embrace the idea that obstacles help build resilience. Use them to help you expand your capacity and skills. This mindset shift is crucial in the medical profession, one where challenges are constant. Use each obstacle as a stepping stone to becoming a more capable physician.
Ask the Right Questions: When faced with a challenge, ask yourself these questions.
- “What can I learn from this?”
- “How can this situation make me better?”
Do more than ask. Try to thoughtfully explore the answers. This approach will reduce your stress because you’ll be in conversation, so to speak, with the part of you that is stressed, worried, and everything else. But more than that, it will also enhance your ability to solve problems effectively. This is because answering these questions will trigger a strategic, learning mentality for similar obstacles moving forward.
The Stoic Principles: Perception, Action, and Will
As I mentioned, The Obstacle Is the Way is rooted heavily in Stoic principles. For those unfamiliar, let’s quickly summarize these principles and how Holiday’s book encourages us to implement them in our lives.
Perception: This principle suggests that how you perceive a situation determines how you respond to it. In medicine, this requires shifting your mindset about how you view obstacles. Anything you see as a threat or challenge should instead be viewed as a window for growth.
And hitting that window of growth—and becoming a better physician—has the power to change everything for you, especially when those moments of growth start stacking. As philosopher Marcus Aurelius said, “Our actions may be impeded, but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions.” In other words, obstacles can only stop us if we let them.
Action: It’s important to take decisive and effective action after shifting your mindset. Once you realize that challenges are actually opportunities, it’s time to act. In your medical practice, that might mean trying a new approach or persevering through a tough situation. The key is to keep moving forward with purpose.
Will: Never lose your motivation and purpose by focusing on what you can control and accepting what you cannot. As a physician, you may not be able to change every outcome, but you can control your effort and attitude. Or as Holiday himself wrote, “We can control what we can control and that’s it.”
Controlling Your Reactions
So much of our ability to overcome obstacles depends on our initial reaction. If we shut down or run away in fear, it’s unlikely we’ll be able to regenerate enough momentum to overcome those challenges. So, how can we control our reactions to challenging situations to optimize our growth?
Master Your Emotions: In high-stress environments like healthcare, how you react to challenges is crucial. Life’s obstacles can make us emotional, but the only way to overcome them is by keeping those emotions in check. In one passage, Holiday explains that, “Our perceptions are the thing that we’re in complete control of.” This is an important revelation. If we aren’t careful and cognizant with our own reactions, we are giving away control of our lives to other forces. So take back control now.
Practice Mindfulness: Mindfulness helps you develop the ability to pause and reflect before reacting. Holiday writes, “Becoming too emotional can cloud our judgment and disrupt our ability to focus.” Whether it’s through experience, meditation, or a walk, staying grounded helps you respond to challenges calmly and effectively.
Empowerment Through Choice: Understand that you have the power to choose your response to any situation. The choice is yours. By mastering your reactions, you can navigate challenges more effectively and provide better care for your patients.
Persistence and Preparation
With a mindset shift and more control of your reactions, you may find that you are naturally more persistent. The more you can wade into challenges, the more you learn and, in turn, the more you know how to prepare. But how can you sharpen your persistence and preparation to overcome obstacles?
Toughen Up: Most things are outside of our control. Focus on building your resilience rather than expecting the world to change for you. As Holiday pointed out, “You’ll have far better luck toughening yourself up than you ever will trying to take the teeth out of a world that is—at best—indifferent to your existence.” It’s a tough realization to make, but once made, it helps you refocus. Challenges can build your resistance and resilience with this attitude.
Learn From Setbacks: You need to view defeats as steps toward something greater. It’s all part of your larger education process. Think of every setback as a learning opportunity that can make you a stronger and more capable person. The catch here is that you actually need to take the actionable steps of mapping out and internalizing what you’ve learned.
Practice Right Action: Once you learn what to do, lead with that right action. Holiday argues that, “How you do anything is how you can do everything. We can always act right.” Consistent practice of right actions leads to habits. Habits lead to muscle memory. And soon you’ll have an unseen support system inside you, helping you approach any challenging situation with greater resilience.
Obstacles as the Way Forward
As you start to understand the importance of obstacles to your own success, you might not spend so much time trying to avoid them. Seek them out as the way forward toward achieving your goals. So how can you leverage the challenges in your life to live the life of your dreams?
Shift Your Perspective: Embrace the Stoic idea that, “What blocked the path now is a path.” In other words, every obstacle presents a new way forward. And by embracing that new path, you can turn challenges into opportunities for advancement.
Apply the Principles: Begin applying the principles of perception, action, and will to your daily life. Over time, these practices will become second nature. They’ll help you handle challenges with greater ease and effectiveness.
Stay Present: Practice living in the present moment. Whether through mindfulness or simple activities like walking, staying present helps you face obstacles with clarity and calm. But that’s easier said than done. How you find presence will be unique to you, but you have to do the work to find that method. And it requires actionable steps. As Holiday warns, “It’s not simply a matter of saying: Oh, I’ll live in the present.”
Leverage Your Opportunities
Not everything will break your way; obstacles are here to stay. When you understand that, it can open up new paths to success. When I made that realization, that’s when I created other income streams outside of medicine to take back control of my life in medicine.
By viewing obstacles as opportunities, applying Stoic principles, and mastering our reactions, we can transform obstacles into growth opportunities. What’s more, we can stack growth opportunities so that, someday soon, we achieve the life of our dreams.
Reflect on a current challenge you’re facing and apply these ideas. Shift your perception, take purposeful action, and control your response. Remember, every obstacle is a new way forward. Holiday concludes that we should “See things for what they are. Do what we can. Endure and bear what we must.” By embracing obstacles in our path, we can turn them into powerful opportunities for growth—not just as physicians, but as individuals.
We were lucky enough to have author Ryan Holiday speak at this year’s PIMDCON 2024, where we met and spoke with our conference attendees. If you’re not familiar with PIMDCON or our conferences, check them out here. It’s our sincere hope that we see you at one soon, joining and engaging with a community of like-minded people ready to achieve their financial and entrepreneurial goals.
Thank you for taking your time to explore Holiday’s work with us today. Stay inspired and keep taking the actionable steps required for you to thrive on your journey. We here at Passive Income MD are glad to bear witness.
Peter Kim, MD is the founder of Passive Income MD, the creator of Passive Real Estate Academy, and offers weekly education through his Monday podcast, the Passive Income MD Podcast. Join our community at the Passive Income Doc Facebook Group.
