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?
122-The Obstacle Is The Way: Part 3-Episode 2; Anticipating Obstacles: The Hidden Power of Negative Thinking
We dive into Ryan Holiday's exploration of "Anticipation" and "The Art of Acquiescence" from his bestseller "The Obstacle is the Way," revealing how planning for failure can actually set you up for success.
• Exploring the concept of the "pre-mortem" – envisioning potential failures before they happen
• Building resilience through anticipating obstacles rather than being blindsided by them
• Using the "What if?" exercise to prepare contingency plans for potential challenges
• Learning to separate emotion from planning by approaching obstacles with neutrality
• Understanding that acceptance doesn't mean surrendering but recognizing what's beyond your control
• Viewing life's journey like taking the back roads – expecting disruptions as part of the adventure
• Recognizing that resilience comes from focusing energy on what's within your control
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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 everyone, welcome back to another episode of what's on your Bookshelf. This is our life and leadership podcast, where we're living out loud and deep, diving into the pages of the books that are on our bookshelves. My name is Denise Russo. My co-host and friend, sam Powell, and I are reading through a book called the Obstacle is the Way, bestselling book by Ryan Holiday. This book is in three parts. We are now in the third part of the book called the Will, and I'm looking forward to this chapter with you today, sam, more than I felt like last week, because I realized that the name of the chapter, which is about thinking negatively, was actually pretty positive.
Speaker 2:It is. It is yeah. So this is Anticipation, thinking Negatively, and the, the art of acquiescence, which doesn't neither of those things sound good on the surface. But bear with us, it'll be good stuff in the end here. But I love how all of these chapters begin with a quote, and I love this one, that is, offer a guarantee and disaster threatens, and like, if that's not one of the most true things about life, I don't know what is yes oh, my goodness.
Speaker 1:So what I loved about the beginning of this chapter is that it's super applicable to the business world. So if you've ever had a project or a launch of a product, or maybe you've had an experience where something didn't go well at work, typically or at least in the tech world where Sam and I came from you would have a meeting called a postmortem After a release, after a launch, after a sale, after some transformation, maybe reorg a postmortem of what went wrong. What can we look back at so that we can prepare to not have that happen in the future? However, this book, I think, has come up with something that I wish that I would have applied back then but I'm definitely going to apply going forward which is called a pre-mortem. So I'm curious, when you read this part of the chapter, sam, what you thought about a pre-mortem concept and the negativity that is around that to prepare you so that the post-mortem is probably not as painful.
Speaker 2:I loved it. As somebody who has sat through countless escalations, I've been yelled at by I don't know how many VPs and C-suite executives because of escalations I love this concept. I love the idea of thinking about something as if it all went wrong, as if like right, like it's like sit down and okay, this has failed. Now what do we do? Right, Like what's the reaction? Right, like it's like sit down and okay, this has failed. Now what do we do? Right, like what's the reaction? Right, like the release didn't go well, the product launch was terrible, the you know, the plan, the presentation totally flopped. Whatever it is. Thinking about it from that and then preparing for that.
Speaker 2:I love it because I also think that it helps us build a tolerance to failure. Right, because if you want to succeed in life, you have to be really good at failing, really, really, really, really, really good at it. And I'm learning this lesson hard over and over and over again as I build a business and and I've learned it in my career, you know, throughout the years in the corporate world and just in my personal life too Right, like, you've got to get good at failing. I love the idea of a pre-mortem, of anticipating the negative things that will happen, so that you're ready for them, right? And again, like it just made me think of, solve for happy, right. If I set my expectation at failure, then, like, I'm never not happy, like.
Speaker 1:I failed I did it.
Speaker 2:Okay, that was one out of the way, however many more to go, but it's fine. Like we'll figure it out. So I love this. I like, I just want to do everything in my life. Everything I attempt needs a pre-mortem.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. So we have to credit Gary Klein. He's a psychologist that came up with this, and so the idea is you know, before you launch something, it's easy to think about all the good that's going to come from it. You're going to get a lot of customers, you're going to enhance your brand, you're going to make money, you'll elevate the success of your company. But what Gary Klein says is that a pre-mortem is to envision all the things that are the blind spots, what could go wrong, what will go wrong, anything that you can think about in advance of starting it. Because then if you plan for that and it's not saying to plan to fail in life, it's just saying that plan that if you do fail, well then what? Then? What will you do? And then you won't be as shocked as well. And so I thought that part was really reassuring, where he was saying okay, if something doesn't go the way you planned, it would, but you've already accepted that it might not go the way you planned it would, already accepted that it might not go the way you planned it would. Then that kind of pain isn't as bad, because you could have said well, I thought that if it didn't go well, this could be it, and I'm not saying, in positive intelligence wise, that you should think about things not being successful. You know, certainly there's a lot of value in putting out positive energy into the atmosphere. When you launch them. You don't go into something in order to fail, but if you go into it in order to succeed, but knowing that if you don't, that it's okay.
Speaker 1:It's probably like thomas edison. I don't remember how many light bulbs the whole story says that he created until the right one was the one that lit up right, hundreds, right, and I you think about. Today I have these lights in my front yard that have a little remote control that you could change the colors on. I mean, that was not even in his, his mind. Right led lights and lights that people put on their cars like this. This wasn't even a concept for edison. So he didn't stop at the last light bulb and think, well, that's the last one, and but he also didn't stop at the one that wasn't the right one. He kept going because he had will to keep it going until he thought, okay, that I'm okay with that version of it.
Speaker 2:And maybe that's what makes inventors and scientists so good, because they're they're continuously looking to improve the product yeah, and I think, like you know, this is all in the context of will, and so this is right, building up that inner citadel that we talked about last time and, you know, building up that discipline of, like the heart of who you are and you're like I keep calling it a drumbeat of moving forward. But this is that, and part of that citadel has to include anticipating the bad things. Like I always say, you should like plan and dream from a positive place, right, like you should get into that positive mindset in order to set the lofty goals, in order to, you know, do the vision work and things like that, but you should act from a place of neutrality. What is it going to take to do this? And part of that is accepting what is it going to take to do this, and part of that is accepting that things are going to happen. And he says here, like always, you know, always prepared for disruption, always working that disruption into our plans. Right, like we are always, we're assuming that's baseline that we're anticipating obstacles, we're anticipating things, and so that's always part of what we do.
Speaker 2:It was it reminds me of this process that, in one of the iterations of one of the organizations I was a part of. We had this operational like process that we pulled together and so when we were building out a new program or a new process or things like that there a new program or a new process or things like that there it would be like a three-day adventure every time. And day one was planning it, planning out like the whole pathway, like if you envision like a subway map of like you could go this way or this way, or this way, this way. It's like somebody comes in, this is the trigger, and then what are all the waves and paths you could go down. And then what's that trigger? Like building out that whole kind of visual matrix of like how does this process work and all the avenues it could go down. So you build up and design this beautiful process. So, like you end day one and you're like I love this, this is so great, it's wonderful.
Speaker 2:And day two, you would come in and rip the whole thing apart and you would talk about every single failure point. It actually probably was-mortem, without using that term at all, but it was. We would tear into shreds, and so you kind of ended the day with like uh gosh, this is just a little bit depressing. But then you would sort of turn it around in okay, well, let's rank the likelihood of these things happening, let's figure out which ones we need contingencies for, and then let's uh accept that you know, we're okay if some of these failure points happen, right, like because the likelihood's not high, and if it is like we have an idea of what to do, but we don't need to build anything around that. But we do need to build for the top 10 because those things are likely and they're bad if they happen, right.
Speaker 2:So it was like the likelihood versus severity type of a matrix you were building out, um, but it was the whole process, was under the assumption that you're going to build this wonderful process and it is going to fall apart in places, and so it's just what are we ready for it? Right? This was like an operational readiness review, I think was the like what we called it, but it was how is it gonna work? What are we ready for? And it always built in what they're talking about here, this, uh, this disruption that's gonna happen. And I love he says here if this comes as a constant surprise each and every time it occurs, you're not only going to be miserable. You're going to have a much harder time accepting it. And moving on to attempts number two, three and four, and so like again. It's just that when I am working on something, when I'm going down a path, it's no surprise when we fail, because I'll just get back up and try again.
Speaker 1:This is really hard to do on your own. It's another good reason why it's best to get a coach a qualified business coach to walk with you through this. I had a client this past week and the client is expecting that they're going to lose their job in August. No one has said that they're going to lose their job in August, but there's just that anticipation and expectation, like the writing is on the wall that there's a layoff coming and the person thinks they're going to be impacted. So the book actually I used this straight out of the book with this particular client and I have to tell you it was a really difficult conversation because the person didn't have the will in the moment. Now this was the first time that we talked through the situation, so hopefully we're going to be able to strengthen those muscles.
Speaker 1:But Ryan Holiday says, if you were to go through this, no matter what your situation is listening on the phone, maybe you just had a job transformation, or maybe you want there to be, or maybe you're growing in your job and you want another promotion, or maybe you have something personally going on that you want to change in your life. He makes it pretty simple, which I used in this call with this person, which is okay. Imagine if you don't have surprises with what you think is going to happen. So, the way he outlines it, it's called like a what if?
Speaker 1:exercise, which I think is brilliant, because I'm writing a book about sort of the same thing I thought about you and I wrote in the margin margin when are you going to finish writing your book?
Speaker 1:so I probably should get to finishing that book. But so here's what Ryan Holiday says what if blank? So what if blank happens, whatever it is that you're thinking of as you're listening to the show? Well then he says then I will blank. So if this thing happens, what will I do? I will blank. Then he says well, here's another example. Well, what if that thing happens? He says, instead I'll just blank. And then he does it one more time. Well, what if this blank thing happens? And he says no problem, we can always like it's an alternative. And so in any of those three instances, it's then I will do this, or instead I'll just do that, or no problem, we can always do this other thing.
Speaker 2:There's always a way around the obstacle yeah, and, and he says like it's toward the end of the chapter, but he says like we're ready to be driven off course because we've plotted the way back, right. And it's that anticipation of what are the things that could go wrong here, what are the things that are going to happen and how do we find our way back Right. And I think about this with like atomic habits, right, as he always says, like never miss two days, like right, like just keep going and it's that okay. So, if my plan to develop this habit fails, what's the path back to it, right? Like, when the system breaks down, what's the process to get back, you know, back on board, back, you know back on board. Or what's the thing that we pick back up to get, you know, get, get back, moving in the, you know in the direction that we really, you know really wanted to.
Speaker 2:And I like, I think about a lot of, like the little micro systems I have set up in my life of, like to do lists and, you know, management of, like little tasks and things like I have all these little micro systems that help me get back to it. Oh, I'm off track. This isn't what I wanted. This isn't the life that I'm trying to build here and design here, and so I'm anticipating that.
Speaker 2:So, okay, the path back is you know this easy, you know this easy thing to get back into it. It's like, okay, well, we just start from here and we go back to where we wanted to get to, and I think that it's that like just being prepared for it. And he says, like the world might call you a pessimist, but so what? Like you know, and rather seem like a little bit of a downer than be blindsided or caught off guard, and I, like I'm here for that, even as somebody who is eternally optimistic, I think it's an optimistically pessimistic way to look at the world, right, like I believe there's a path back and so I'm gonna just plan for it.
Speaker 1:Maybe the key is it's not so much about pessimism, but it's taking the emotion out of it. So it's not about being negative, it's about being neutral, right Like you don't have to have an emotion tied to the thing. And maybe this is a good reason for you to go back to the episodes friends on intentional living, which was way early in our series, or the happiness project, which, again, it's not about happy, go lucky. It's about finding happiness in little, small moments. So this isn't about being negative, it's about being prepared. So this chapter for me ended. I wrote a note and it says Wow. I feel like his last sentence was sort of negative, but it's sort of real, because there's a benefit to being positive, but there's also a downside of not being realistic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and I think that that's it. It's that radical acceptance of obstacles are going to be part of your path, and so I'm planning for it, I'm moving forward and I it, I'm moving for it, and I and I move into the next chapter here, which is the art of acquiescence. You know, I love the quote at the beginning of this one too, that says the fates guide to the person who accepts them and hinder the person who resists them. And so it's this, this is more the essence of like I understand that I can't do everything, right, like I am not. You know, I'm not a super talented artist, right, and if I wanted to become one, the hill to climb is very steep. Could I do it? Yeah, but it's going to be really hard. And so it's that, like, acquiescing to this isn't who I am. Like, how, what? What am I more talented in? Right, like maybe I can't draw, but I could write.
Speaker 2:You know and this is talks about Thomas Jefferson, about how he's he was a terrible public speaker, which is, like, again, kind of funny Like I never thought of that, would have thought of him as a terrible public speaker, because all that's left is his written. You know written words and those are so great. But he was a writer, right? Not a, not a speaker, and so it's kind of this lesson of like and it's I think it's the tone for this chapter of I don't know looking in the mirror, figuring out who you are and and working from that place.
Speaker 1:It's sort of, for me, said things like don't focus on what you don't have, don't focus on what you can't do, focus on what you do have and what you can do, and I highlighted this part in this chapter that says you know, you're not the only one who has to accept things you don't necessarily like in life.
Speaker 1:Right, it's part of the human condition. This is life. There will sometimes be things that you don't like or that you don't want to accept, and it's just life. And then this particular part of the chapter I wrote down my friend Wendy her name and my friend Vicki, so you know we lost my friend Wendy that we've talked about on episodes in the past. She passed away from really terrible cancer, and my friend Vicki, though, is another friend of mine that I went to college with, and she has been enduring brain cancer for years, and so this chapter talks about how, when a doctor gives you orders or a diagnosis, even if it's the opposite of what you wanted, what do you do? You accept it. You don't have to like it or enjoy the treatment, but you know that denying it only delays the cure, and, with my friend Vicki, we both went through this experience of watching our friend Wendy pass away. But one of the things enjoy the treatment, but you know that denying it only delays the cure and with my friend Vicki we both went through this experience of watching our friend Wendy pass away. But one of the things I appreciate so much about my friend Vicki is her positive attitude and I have a feeling that that in itself is really helping to heal her.
Speaker 1:In fact, my dad my dad had sinus cancer many years ago. It was like one of only 65 people in the world that they knew ever had this kind of a cancer. My dad had it and the doctor, after going through all the process of trying to go through radiation and different things, he said all these things bad would happen to my dad. You're going to lose your taste, you're going to lose your sense of smell, you're probably going to lose all of your bottom teeth and likely all of the bones in your bottom jaw will crumble away. So he was like preparing for the bad. Now my dad, by the way, can smell, can taste or at least we think he can, unless he tricks himself into thinking he's tasting stuff but didn't lose a single tooth and nothing happened to his bones and he's cancer free and has been for many years. And I remember the doctor telling him years ago you're like a miracle.
Speaker 1:But I think that really the only reason that you got through all of this besides radiation and medical because I'm not opposed to the fact that when you need medicine there's a purpose for it. But he said to my dad I think that you survived this and thrived through it because of positive intelligence, the way that your mindset was and the will you had to live is what got you through it and not just through it in a difficult way, but got you to the end. Now it doesn't mean that just because you're positive, you're going to live if you have a diagnosis in that way, because Wendy was probably one of the most positive people that I knew in life. But here's the reality that this chapter talks about. It's about acceptance.
Speaker 1:Things happen, the shot won't go in, the stock goes down, the weather's disrupted, but he says try to have an attitude of gratitude and just say c'est la vie, it's all going to be fine. It's like what you were saying is you're going to fail. You get back up again. Oh well, next time. That failure's done, let's get to the next one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I like how he phrases it here. He says that is not to say we allow it to prevent us from reaching our ultimate destination, but it does change the way we travel to get there and the duration of the trip.
Speaker 2:Right, so it's. It's like these things happen. But if we are accepting that they are here and they are reality, right then, then we have to move. You know, we just we work with, we integrate it into the journey, we integrate it into you know, just part of what we're going through and what we're experiencing.
Speaker 2:And he says he doesn't hear, he's like you know, if you part of what we're going through and what we're experiencing, and he says in here, he's like you know, if you look, if somebody took traffic signals, you know like red, yellow, green traffic signals, personally we would judge them insane.
Speaker 2:Yet this is exactly what life is doing to us. It tells us to come to a stop here, or the intersection is blocked, or you know that you have to reroute, in a way, and we can't argue or yell the problem away, right Like, just because it's a red light. You can't sit there and yell at the red light and be like you need to stop being a red light, like it will actually change. But you know, but you have to accept that you have to stop for a moment, right Like, we just accept it and we don't integrate it personally. And so when we're coming across those things in life, these obstacles that happen to us, like you think of it like a traffic light right, like don't take it personally, it just it is what happened, it is the situation, and so how do you acquiesce to it, how do you accept it and integrate it in?
Speaker 1:I think if you approach life in that way where you just have to say this is what it is and not that you have to accept it, because that's the point of taking action to change your circumstances the best you can within the controllables Right. So Ryan Holiday must have been on a presidential kick, because then he goes on and talks about George Washington.
Speaker 1:He talks about Eisenhower challenges, but they went through the challenges with the belief that, well, whatever's going to happen will happen, and then we'll just go from there. It doesn't mean they didn't have a plan. It doesn't mean they didn't have a strategy. It doesn't mean that they didn't think through well, if this happens, then what it doesn't mean that they didn't do a premortem, it was that they accepted that, no matter what the outcome is, as long as we went into it prepared and we did the very best that we could do, then whatever happens is then going to happen.
Speaker 1:So olivia is kind of dealing with that now, because she just graduated from college and so she's looking for jobs and trying to figure out this next chapter in her life. It's hard, it's hard, it's hard. We just started talking about this idea that if you could just control the controllables and leave the rest to god. In fact, there's a quote in here. It says, as the saying goes, man proposes but god disposes. So just, there's things that you can control, but there's so many more things in life that you can't control.
Speaker 1:And so at the end of this chapter and I know we're almost out of time as well I have written on my page lead the game sam right at the end of this chapter and I know we're almost out of time as well, I have written on my page leave the game Sam right at the top of my page 149, because it talked about how, if you want to use the metaphor, that life is a game. It means, with plenty, to leave your imprint on and just to enjoy the journey. And I often recommend the book the alchemist by paulo coelho and if you've never read that, friends, it's for sure a book for your bookshelf and it's all about a book of this story, of this person that went on a journey expecting something other than what he experienced, but he found through the process that he was enjoying the journey of getting to where he wanted to go. And so he ends here with some important points that I'll close our session with today, but before I do Sam any other closing thoughts on this chapter.
Speaker 2:This one reminds me of like taking the back roads. Reminds me of like taking the back roads, like you know, like we're also focused on like taking the highway, getting there fast, right, like doing all this stuff, but like I think you got to live it more like the back roads, like there might be a cow in the road, there might be some crazy little thing. You might have to slow down to 20 miles an hour, you might have to, you know, speed up again, like in some places, like, and you have to expect that life is gonna look more like a back road than it will a highway right, like when we're on a highway.
Speaker 2:We just don't expect there to be stops ever.
Speaker 2:You should, for safety's sake but, right, please do, um, but we don't right, whereas, like, when we're taking these, like little windy back roads or whatever and I live in Western Pennsylvania, so we have a lot of those I expect disruption, like you know, more so, and so it's it's less of a grievance as to when I come in a standstill traffic on the highway, and so I think that that's what this is really about is like, if you can, can like in the last chapter, right, though we started talking about here if you can plan for all of those things right, I build in the extra time I need then you can enjoy that journey more and you can just accept it as it comes around, like okay, maybe now I have to go around and maybe now I see something I wouldn't have seen before, right, I think about those days where it's like we're gonna take the long way and whatever happens happens, and at least we found this really cool.
Speaker 2:You know, really cool thing that happened to my son and I. We found this town called Onion Town, which is like hilarious, right, and so we still talk about that. You know, we were driving back on this crazy adventure and you know, it just ended up being something fun, and I think that, like, if you can expect that and like just go with it, you're going to be just a lot happier and a lot better prepared for obstacles.
Speaker 1:What a perfect segue about what we're talking about next week. So next week's chapter shifts. It's called love everything that happens, and so this is exactly what you're talking about. So, in order to love everything that happens, the wrap up for this week is you're resilient. You're able to handle whatever, anything that occurs in your life. You have the resilience.
Speaker 1:Coming soon will be some content that we're creating about resilience and stress and burnout. You'll see me posting some of it on LinkedIn. But you're resilient and you have the ability to bounce back. The second thing is that you can't do anything about the things that are outside of your span of control, so why are you wasting your energy doing that? The third piece of the summary for this week is that don't sweat the small stuff. If you're looking enough at the big picture and a long enough timeline, then you'll realize that whatever you're going through like oh gosh, we have to turn on this back road, it's just a blip in time. But that experience that you had with your son, how cool that. Now that's going to be a memory, sort of like the movie Inside Out, disney, pixar, where you have these implanted memories, and those memories come in times that maybe are the least expected. Yeah. So all right, friends, I'm looking forward to next week, and again it's going to be about loving everything that happens, which sometimes is hard to do. But for this week we're going to close.
Speaker 1:For today, my name is Denise Truso. My friend is Sam Powell. We thank you for joining us. If you're getting value from these episodes, would you share them with others? That really will help us as well, and we'd love to hear from you as well. So our great producer, zach Elliott, has ways for you to reach us in the show notes. Thanks, zach, giving you a shout out for being an awesome producer of this series. Thank you, and we'll see you next time, next Wednesday. Every week we have new episodes that come out, and this has been another episode of what's On your Bookshelf, thank you.