XIII. How to Turn Obstacles into Advantages
That's when he knew he had gotten better.
Do you struggle with energy, motivation, or focus? Here’s how to fix it!
“Under the comb, the tangle and the straight path are the same.” — Heraclitus
3 years ago, my friend Matt got fired by 2 of his only clients in freelance on the same week.
He laughed. What are the odds?
But soon the reality hit him like the edge of a table hits your little toe. Frustration oscillated in his brain like nuclear fission atoms ready to blow up. You could see tears furnish his eyes with sadness and he had the abysmal blankness of depression on his face.
He asked them why?
The clients had a similar complaint. The quality of his work was disastrous and they were burning through a lot of time and money editing.
He was willing to learn to improve but no one was willing to teach him the ropes when they could be making more money.
He felt lost and devastated because writing was the pursuit he was certain he wanted to master and perhaps earn a living from it as he had seen other people do.
But here he was — failure slammed on his face like an aggressive pubis does the clitoris.
He tried to get more clients on various platforms but the ocean drying up would have happened sooner.
One day, with his eyes swollen and red, he confessed,
"I feel as if life never goes well for me. Everything I try fails or is in the process of failing.
Do you think I'll ever make it?"
Amid all this devastation, he came across a tidy Marcus Aurelius quote on the internet saying,
"Practice even what seems impossible. The left hand is useless at almost everything, for lack of practice. But it guides the reins better than the right. From practice."
It made lots of sense.
But he was skeptical of the fidelity behind the words. Anyone can say anything and it'll appear logical. Maybe it was a charlatan in history writing delusional motivational aphorisms.
He had had enough of those. They raise your hopes for a good future only for reality to flick them with the pinky.
But, after spending some days drenched in misery, he reckoned that he had to be real with himself.
“What other option do I have?
Would I rather be doing something else?”
He soliloquied.
Practicing the craft wouldn't be a bad use of his time. It was better than doing nothing and he had much to gain if it worked.
Besides, he knew he wanted to write, even if that meant he wouldn't be compensated for it. Even if he had started to doubt his ability and worth in this world.
Days later, he got over himself and started training to write everyday so he could get better.
He even bought a course with the little money he had saved to have a standard to measure up to.
"Mastery of reading and writing requires a master." — Marcus Aurelius
Weeks passed and he got some positive momentum.
He'd study other people's writing style and incorporate it in his work. He also dabbled in poetry, the way people painted reality with words as if in a painting was endearing. He fell in love with the noble craft again and brought to life a new style — his beautiful Frankenstein monster.
One year later he got another client. This one couldn't stop praising his prose.
That's when he knew he had gotten better — it was undeniable. He got the audacity to ask for a raise and got paid 4 times more than he did a year before.
It was going well. So well.
But a year and a few months later A.I came and disrupted the job flow. He got laid off. He was a bit disappointed but he calmed down because he had enough freelance experience to know that these gigs are unreliable for a stable income. He expected it.
"It is what it is. But I'm tired of the ups and downs in this market. How can I fix that?"
He pondered.
This was when he decided not to trust fate anymore because every time he did he got disappointed. He was left to piss off. To go fuck himself.
Nevertheless, there was something different this time.
This time you could see the confidence in his eyes, dedicated to make good of this situation like he had done two years before.
This time he had bought Marcus Aurelius' Meditations and had read that,
"A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it."
He had made significant progress on his craft and had gained a lot of self-belief. He had evidence from the past two years that he was the blazing fire Marcus was talking about. There's no way he was stopping.
His next adventure would be to own his platform and audience. He had a clear idea of what he wanted to write about and was excited to be free to do whatever he wanted with his art without fearing an editor's cut or suppressing his voice to fit a brand's style.
He'd have the gift of creative freedom and would express it in his work.
Now he has thousands of subscribers in his newsletter, sharing valuable insights and inspirational stories, and makes a decent living out of it.
In a similar way to Matt, we can come to see whatever happens in our lives as setting us up for a better future. As a blessing. We can resist complaining and cursing at the gods and adapt to drastic life events. We can confront our inadequacies with confidence and imagine a future where we’ll have improved and become much more valuable and valued than had we won.
“Constant misfortune brings this one blessing: to whom it always assails, it eventually fortifies.” — Seneca
It’s through seeing ourselves as the agents authoring our lives that we can get out of the rut of pitying ourselves for the bad luck that has happened and think of how we can look at it and what we can do so that it can serve our purpose in the end.
Epictetus said,
“Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own inner resources. The trails we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths. Prudent people look beyond the incident itself and seek to form the habit of putting it to good use. On the occasion of an accidental event, don’t just react in a haphazard fashion: remember to turn inward and ask what resources you have for dealing with it. Dig deeply. You possess strengths you might not realize you have. Find the right one. Use it.”
And Marcus Aurelius told himself,
Just as nature takes every obstacle, every impediment, and works around it—turns it to its purposes, incorporates it into itself—so, too, a rational being can turn each setback into raw material and use it to achieve its goal. .
Now the question remains.
Will you take control of your story and turn the obstacle into an advantage?
See you tomorrow.
A.V