Marcus Aurelius wrote something that has stayed with me for years: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
He didn’t mean that obstacles are secretly good. He meant that how you respond to an obstacle determines whether it stops you or becomes part of how you move forward.
I’ve had periods in my life — business collapses, health crises, partnerships that ended badly — where the obstacle was real and the damage was real. I’m not interested in telling you it was all a gift. Some of it wasn’t.
But in every case, the way through turned out to run through the obstacle itself. Not around it. Not over it. Through it — which meant dealing with it directly, learning what it was actually made of, finding what it required of me.
The mind that avoids the obstacle stays stuck. Not always visibly — sometimes you can reroute successfully. But the pattern of avoidance compounds. And eventually you run out of reroutes.
The practice is simple and not easy: when you hit resistance this week, face it directly before you look for a way around it. Not masochism — information gathering. What exactly is this? What does it actually require? What’s available if I engage with it honestly?
The obstacle usually looks worse from a distance than it does up close.
The Takeaway
The path through friction runs through it, not around it — engaging directly is almost always faster than rerouting.
Keep Moving Forward!
Not-So-Guru
If this one landed — The Not-So-Guru Manifesto is waiting.