“In the meantime, cling tooth and nail to the following rule: not to give in to adversity, not to trust prosperity, and always take full note of fortune’s habit of behaving just as she pleases.” -Seneca

1: “Because he has become more myth than man, most people are unaware that Abraham Lincoln battled crippling depression his entire life,” writes Ryan Holiday in The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art … continue reading

“Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.”  -Marcus Aurelius

1: The year was 1966.  Rubin “Hurricane” Carter was a contender for the middleweight boxing title.  

Then, he experienced a bewildering fall.  At the height of his career, he was “wrongly accused of a horrific crime he did not commit: triple homicide. He went on trial, and a biased, bogus verdict followed: three life … continue reading

1: George Washington, father of our country.  “Brave and bold general, towering over everything he surveyed, repelling the occupied and tyrannical British.”  

This image is the one most Americans hold of our First President, writes Ryan Holiday in The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph.

The reality is a bit less glorious but much more interesting.  

George “wasn’t a guerrilla, but he … continue reading

1: Dr. Carol Clinton was an ER doctor and a stage 3 ovarian cancer survivor.  

She decided to change her own life and that of her patients by founding Timeless Skin Solutions, a nonsurgical medical company. As an entrepreneur, she adopted the “Make Big Happen” system to build and grow her business.  

A system is “a set of principles or procedures according to which something is done; … continue reading

1: The year was 1863. General Ulysses S. Grant was stuck.

For a year, he and his troops had tried to crack the defenses of Vicksburg. The city sat high on the cliffs of the Mississippi, providing a “stranglehold on the most important river in the country,” writes Ryan Holiday in The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph.

Ulysses had attacked Vicksburg head-on. … continue reading

1: The year was 1878. Thomas Edison was a man on a mission.  

Day and night, he experimented with more than six thousand different filaments in his quest to discover the incandescent light bulb.  

After spending a year in Thomas’ lab, Nikola Tesla commented: “If Edison needed to find a needle in a haystack, he would ‘proceed at once’ to simply ‘examine straw after straw until he found the object … continue reading

1: During the first part of World War II, the worst assignment for British troops was being sent to fight in North Africa. “Methodical and orderly, the British hated the grueling weather and terrain that wreaked havoc on their machines and their plans,” writes Ryan Holiday in The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph.

“They acted how they felt: slow, timid, cautious,” Ryan … continue reading

1: “Amelia Earhart wanted to be a great aviator,” writes Ryan Holiday in The Obstacle Is the Way. “But it was the 1920s, and people still thought that women were frail and weak and didn’t have the stuff. Woman suffrage was not even a decade old.”

Being a pilot wasn’t an option for Amelia. So, she found a job as a social worker. 

“Then one day the phone … continue reading

1: “There was little evidence that Demosthenes was destined to become the greatest orator of Athens, let alone all of history,” Ryan Holiday writes in The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph.

The boy was born weak and feeble with a severe speech impediment. His father died when he was seven.  

And then things got worse.

“The large inheritance left to him—intended to … continue reading

1: Following their defeat in Pennsylvania at Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee and his Confederate Army retreated toward the refuge of Virginia.

“At that moment Lee was more vulnerable than ever before,” write Raymond Kethledge and Michael Erwin in Lead Yourself First. “Lee’s remaining troops were in enemy country, disoriented by defeat, and without reinforcements or ammunition to fight anything near a sustained battle.”

President Abraham Lincoln immediately understood the … continue reading