A Philosophy for Leveraging Adversity
The path of mastery is paved with obstacles for us to dance with.
Life is bittersweet. Adversity whacked me in the face a few weeks ago as I was made redundant, a setback that has affected many in the tech industry lately. It wasn’t a complete surprise but it was still a shock when it happened. A few days of despair and depression followed a week of panicked anxiety as I was forced to step back and accommodate the new reality.
I can imagine someone saying to me, “Well, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade”. I can also imagine punching that patronising imbecile in the face. Adversity can leave you anxious, confused, fearful, angry, depressed and worse and when you’re in that mindset you don’t respond to reason, or ‘inspirational quotes’, so the last thing I want to do here is to write a platitudinous piece about making lemons. So this is a note to self, rather than a collection of trite prescriptions to remedy your particular adversity. Take what is useful at the moment, and feel free to disregard the rest rather than punch me in the face for being patronising.
My personal challenge now is to invert the obstacle I’m facing, use it as leverage to pull me forward onto the next step along my own path and indulge in some divergent thinking to openmindedly explore various future paths which I hitherto may not have considered. This is perhaps an attempt at Mastery of Ordinary life.
Exploring and writing on the concept of Ordinary Mastery is part of the adaptive and cathartic process for me - I have been collecting input, and storing so ideas over the past years, but have been too busy caught in the net of everyday obligations to ponder and make meaning of things. My redundancy has suddenly released me from that net, and during this short window that has opened up, I intend to exploit this unwanted adversity to delve deeply into the subject of Mastery and find out whether I have something to offer that the world needs within this domain.
Adversity as normal
Here in early 2023, we are living in times of uncertainty and an undercurrent of gnawing anxiety. Our default lives may seem as if they are turned upside down as the complexity of society seems to be exponentiating. Whether we like it or not, life is going through an increasing rapidity of change to which we will be challenged to adapt. Planning for a predictable future is no longer a viable strategy, we must be agile and develop our sensemaking capabilities to respond moment by moment.
For the past week, I have set my muse on the idea of embracing impediments and using them as leverage to pull us forward. What I’ve been seeking is something that goes beyond the platitudes of the self-help world and inspirational quotes. What I feel is more useful is a philosophy, a mindset shift to welcome obstacles as an opportunity to grow, rather than something to cower from. So that’s the intent with which I’ve been pondering for this article, exploring sources of inspiration to slowly develop a philosophy of welcoming the natural obstacles which seem to impede our progress as the very thing that we need in order to grow and progress.
The Tower
The Tower card in the Tarot is interpreted as a symbol of upheaval, chaos, and destruction. In traditional depictions, The Tower shows a tall, narrow structure, a white ivory tower, that is being struck by lightning, dislodging its crown, with people falling out of the windows and the entire structure about to crumble to the ground.
An unexpected change or disruption in your life will hurt like hell in the short term, with a painful loss of power and status. But interpreted as a rude awakening, jolted into seeing crude reality by the strike of a lightning bolt, the sudden collapse can be used to steer yourself towards the path of long-term growth and transformation. A breakthrough flash of enlightenment that shines a light on things from a new perspective so you can let go of old patterns and a rigid self-identity that was holding you back.
When dealing with everyday impediments to our progress, The Tower card can be a reminder that sometimes we need to break down old structures and ways of doing things, in order to move forward. We easily become stuck in a rut and resist change, but The Tower reminds us that disruptive change is also a turning point which can be a huge release, freeing us up to start again and rebuild.
An opportunity to see reality and accept the situation:
Life sucks sometimes. As the falling crown in The Tower example suggests, we feel an impediment to our plans as a blow to the ego, a loss of status, and a loss of power which the body may feel as a threat to its very survival. We may even have to change our sense of identity, and who we think we are in response. We may have to adjust our aspirations completely, or simply the timescale in which we may make progress towards their unfolding. The flash of enlightenment shows us reality as it is, we have to accept it, because the longer we fight it, the longer the situation controls us.
Use the flash of lightning to be a hyperrealist, as per the philosophy of the billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates and author of the book Principles, Ray Dalio:
“Most people fight seeing what’s true when it’s not what they want it to be. That’s bad because it is more important to understand and deal with the bad stuff since the good stuff will take care of itself.”
A philosophy for dancing with adversity:
In my previous articles on Mastery, I’ve relied heavily on the thinking of George Leonard and his 1992 book, Mastery. He frequently refers to the ‘numerous setbacks along the way’ and how things will ‘temporarily fall apart’. These are the defining moments of the master, to which the non-master will be unable to respond effectively. Obstacles, by their very nature, are unexpected and will rear their beastly head at just the wrong time, an anomalous situation calling for novel and creative responses.
When we encounter impediments as threats, our survival instinct responds intuitively with fight, flight or freeze reactions. In relation to the four archetypes covered previously, The Obsessive will fight, The Dabbler will take flight, and The Hacker will freeze and do nothing, for they only ever cared for quick wins.
The Master archetype would describe someone who learns to bend like the willow and dance with adversity instead.
The Dance of Hope:
Let’s begin by exploring the idea of hope. Of course ‘hope is not a strategy’, as they say, but I’m not talking about passive hope, I’m talking about the courageous hope expressed in a most wonderful work of art by the young Brighton-based musician Ren Gill, in his performance called ‘Hi Ren’.
Ren goes deep in this song, portraying the conflicting aspects of his psyche in an epic battle of good versus evil, the conscious against the subconscious, and of hope overcoming doubt. If you haven’t seen it, watch it now (all of it), and if you have seen it watch it again, and take it all in. Personally, this has been one of the most inspirational works of art I’ve ever encountered.
In the concluding climax, Ren sings of defiant and courageous hope, hope that dances with the perennial forces of evil - this is bard-like poetry, artistry, philosophy and performance art - Ren is clearly someone dedicated to his craft on the path of mastery:
Hi Ren…
I’ve been taking some time to be distant
I’ve been taking some time to be still
I’ve been taking some time to be by myself and I've spent half my life ill
But just as sure as the tide starts turning
Just as sure as the night has dawn
Just as sure as rainfall soon runs dry when you stand in the eye of the storm
I was made to be tested and twisted
I was made to be broken and beat
I was made by his hand, it's all part of his plan that I stand on my own two feet
And you know me my will is eternal
And you know me you've met me before
Face to face with the beast I will rise from the east and I'll settle on the ocean floor
And I go by many names also
Some people know me as hope
Some people know me as the voice that you hear when u loosen the noose on the rope
And you know how I know that I'll prosper?
Because I stand here beside you today
I have stood in the flames that cremated my brain
And I didn't once flinch or shake
So cower at the man I've become
When I sing from the top of my lungs
That I won't retire
I'll stand in your fire
Inspire the meek to be strong
And when I am gone I will rise In the music that I left behind
Ferocious persistent, immortal like you we’re a coin with two different sides
“Hi Ren” is more than a song, it’s an odyssey, a hero’s journey, a story of Jungian individuation where Ren is integrating and transcending the shadow elements of his psyche. Though he would never have wished to have been inflicted with Lyme disease, misdiagnosed for years, and the ensuing psychotic battles with the beast that followed, the world is certainly richer for the awe-inspiring works of art he will leave behind.
At the time of writing, Ren is undergoing treatment in Calgary, and as he tells on his GoFundMe page which is paying for his medical bills, he had come to terms with dying in his 20s but with the eventual Lyme disease diagnosis and treatment, he was given a reprieve - “I honestly can't explain what it’s like to be given a second chance at life when you resign to dying in your twenties”. With his second chance, he poured himself into his music which today resonates with millions of people.
Ren explains how the more rigid he became in his struggles with illness, autoimmunity and psychosis, the harder it became. He speaks of a pendulum eternally swaying between the dark and the light, and how the brighter the light shone, the darker the shadow that was cast. There is no escaping this duality of existence, this Yin and Yang that dictate the vicissitudes of life. His experience begins to improve when he sees it as a dance rather than a fight. When he fights and resists, his footsteps are clumsy, but when he relaxes and learns to dance with the beast, it gets easier. In the face of adversity, we are often avoidant and stiffen up. We try to apply more control, try to plan better, and be more structured and rigid, but this merely forces us to clumsily fall over our own footsteps, instead, we need to relax, soften, and bend like the willow with the force of the wind.
Ren’s story has some parallels with the Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky. Not only do they both so eloquently cover the gritty dark matters that haunt the human psyche, but they both were also given a reprieve from what they believed to be a death sentence.
In the case of Dostoevsky, at the age of twenty-seven, he was arrested for his association with a literary society that distributed books considered dangerous by the Tsarist regime, resulting in his conviction and death sentence. On 22nd December 1849, he and several other inmates were taken to a public square in Saint Petersburg to be executed as a warning to others. They were read their death sentence, dressed in white shirts for their execution, forced to kneel and kiss the cross, and had swords broken over their heads as a ritualistic symbolic beheading. He was the sixth person in the line and realised he only had moments to live. However, at the last minute, it was announced that the Tsar was pardoning their lives. It was all a sick joke, a publicity stunt to portray the Tsar as a compassionate ruler. His actual punishment was to spend four years in a Siberian labour camp. Following this, he spent several years of mandatory military service in exile. He was unable to resume his literary aspirations until he was almost forty years old.
The hoax execution seemed to have a profound and enlightening effect on the young Dostoevsky, as revealed in the letters he wrote to his brother following the event of the fake execution. Despite his harsh punishment, he wrote with a sense of euphoric life-affirming hope1.
“I haven’t lost heart, remember that hope has not abandoned me… After all, I was at death’s door today, I lived with that thought for three-quarters of an hour, I faced the last moment, and now I’m alive again!”
“When I look back at the past and think how much time was spent in vain, how much of it was lost in delusions, in errors, in idleness, in the inability to live; how I failed to value it, how many times I sinned against my heart and spirit - then my heart contracts in pain. Life is a gift, life is happiness, each moment could have been an eternity of happiness.”
“Now, changing my life, I’m being regenerated into a new form. Brother! I swear to you that I won’t lose hope and will preserve my heart and spirit in purity. I’ll be reborn for the better. That’s my entire hope, my entire consolation.”
“To be a human being among people and to remain one forever, no matter in what circumstances, not to grow despondent and not to lose heart - that’s what life is all about, that’s its task.
As with Ren, we’ll never know if Dostoevsky wrote so brilliantly because of his adversity or in spite of it. We know that being unable to write during his imprisonment would have been torturous for him, based on more words he sent to his brother, “Can it be that I’ll never take pen in hand? If I won’t be able to write, I’ll perish. Better fifteen years of imprisonment and a pen in hand!”. The deep nature of the literary works he left behind suggests that he transcended his suffering and used it to peer into the darkest realms of the human psyche to use it as the inspiration for the depth of the characters in his novels who often grapple with complex and conflicting emotions, motivations, and beliefs. He met with adversity and seemed to use it as leverage to pull him forward on his path of mastery.
As Bruce Lee advised, it’s all in how you react:
“Believe me that in every big thing or achievement, there are always obstacles, big or small, and the reaction one shows to such obstacles is what counts, not the obstacle itself.” - Bruce Lee
Inverting obstacles:
In his book, The Obstacle is the Way, author Ryan Holiday gives us the opportunity to ponder on the following thoughts of Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic philosopher and Roman emperor from 161 to 180 AD. As he said in secret notes to himself:
"The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."
Marcus Aurelius
In our inherently unpredictable experience of life, it’s not the nature of actual obstacles that Marcus Aurelius advises concern for, instead, he urges the right mindset with which to respond to inevitable impediments. We have no agency over ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’, to borrow from Shakespeare, but we can find agency in our response, and how we invert the obstacle by turning it to our advantage so that it becomes the next step on the path of mastery.
Nietzsche wishes suffering upon you
Friedrich Nietzsche endured a life of suffering, both physically and mentally, as well as in his relationships and how his work was unappreciated during his own lifetime. But he was grateful for it, he used it to empower him and inform his thinking. Your life will go wrong, just as Nietzsche wished, and maybe you’ll thank him for it.
“To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, and indignities - I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not - that one endures.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power
The much misinterpreted and mischaracterised Nietzsche certainly pulled no punches.
Gallows Humour
Loosening up to dance with adversity may require a little levity as a lubricant. Ernest Shackleton's men, stranded in the Antarctic after their failed exploration, made jokes about their predicament and kept their spirits up by mucking about, and even putting on plays for one another. Their failure to cross the Antarctic by foot as planned turned into one of the greatest leadership stories of history, their mission changed to one of survival, and under Shackleton’s leadership, every man lived through the experience, despite their adversity.
“Even when cracked lips and swollen mouths checked the outward and visible signs of amusement we could see a joke of the primitive kind. Man’s sense of humour is most easily stirred by the petty misfortunes of his neighbours, and I shall never forget Worsley’s efforts on one occasion to place the hot aluminium stand on top of the Primus stove after it had fallen off in an extra heavy roll. With his frost-bitten fingers he picked it up, dropped it, picked it up again, and toyed with it gingerly as though it were some fragile article of lady’s wear. We laughed, or rather gurgled with laughter.”
Ernest Shackleton, South
We can take the 'gallows humour' attitude of 'Oh Bollocks!' and laugh at the absurdity in our everyday misery. This attitude is celebrated by
author of , as the Englishman's zen:Life is hard and cruel, it can really get you down
Just look it in the eye, and meet it with a frown
Breath in nice and deep, fill your lungs with air
Then utter every consonant, and let me hear you swear…
Oh Bollocks!!
Thus far I’ve been deliberately exploring the idea of welcoming adversity and dancing with it. In doing so I realise that I may be glorifying adversity, oversimplifying things and glossing over the real trauma that afflicts us from time to time. I may be pushing the macho self-reliance narrative a little insensitively. Sometimes, when facing seemingly impassable obstacles, we need the strength to swallow our pride and realise that we can’t do it all alone. We must not let our inflated ego be an obstacle to seeking support, as illustrated by Peter Gabriel’s 1986 duet with Kate Bush, Don’t Give Up:
In an interview with The Quietus, Peter Gabriel revealed that “a number of people have written to me and said they didn't commit suicide because they had that song on repeat or whatever, and obviously you don't think about things like that when you're writing them“.
And according to azcentral.com, this song helped Elton John to sort out his addiction behaviours, and to sober up. Apparently, it was the reassuring strength in the lyrics sung by Kate Bush that prompted his change - “Rest your head. You worry too much. It's going to be all right. When times get rough you can fall back on us. Don't give up, please don’t give up.”
I’m sure a hug from Kate Bush and the reassuring look she gives at 2:58, would save any man from the direst of situations.
“Don’t be ashamed of needing help. You have a duty to fulfil just like a soldier on the wall of battle. So what if you are injured and can’t climb up without another soldier’s help?” - Marcus Aurelius
I also don’t want to ignore the fact that many people are in a situation where they have nobody in their lives to turn to for support. We are social animals, innately driven to seek solace and inspiration from our family or community, but in our atomised and isolated modern world, many who need support cannot access it easily, so what are we to do? This is a societal predicament which does not have easy solutions, so I’ll resist offering any here. But I wanted to mention it as an important point to remember when we encounter people who are suffering. If they’ve opened up to you about their suffering, perhaps you are the only person around they can talk to.
Becoming antifragile:
The common thread with those mentioned so far, from Marcus Aurelius, Ren, Bruce Lee, Ray Dalio, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ernest Shackleton, Dominic Frisby, and Kate Bush is antifragility.
Persistence helps in the face of an impediment, and we may think of the need to be resilient - to toughen up and hit back harder when adversity strikes. But there’s a more graceful state of mind available which is the mindset of antifragility, a term coined by Nassim Taleb. As an options trader, Taleb had a sharp eye for differentiating between things that fared well in conditions of volatility and things that broke under such conditions. He observed that fragile, robust, and resilient things all had their breaking points, but there was one hitherto nameless category of things which actually gained from disorder - he named them antifragile. Think of things like muscles, the immune system, and natural ecosystems like forests that bounce back stronger after floods and fires. There are also more abstract things that strengthen when stressed like a scientific hypothesis, ideas, relationships or personal character, and arguably Bitcoin as an organic distributed networked ecosystem that grows stronger the more it is attacked.
We could delve into Nassim Taleb’s own personal character which has seemed quite fragile, emotional and angsty in the face of differences of opinion within the Bitcoin community, but that will take us too far off the main topic.
We often hear advice about resilience in face of life’s stresses, but resilience just hides weaknesses and postpones the breaking point. Instead, antifragility is about accommodating adversity and flexing. Antifragility is more of a dance.
Be grateful for the obstacles that brought you here:
Your life will go ‘wrong’ in so many ways, just as Nietzsche wished for you. No one is immune to adversity, no matter our privilege, we will all face moments of catastrophe. Whether a reversal in personal fortune, the death of a loved one, relationship failure, a betrayal of trust, physical injury or illness to ourselves or someone close to us - these are the swords of Damocles ever hanging over us the moment we feel stable or in control. We are upset because we had already written our life story, and now that story has more demons and dragons than we’d anticipated.
But the obstacles and tragedies you have surmounted previously are the stepping stones behind you, they have brought you to where you are right now and can give you the spirit of strength and inspiration to overcome this one. As Ryan Holiday writes, "The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition". Human development is brought about through the adaption to obstacles in our path. We may not wish for personal suffering, but with a philosophical mindset, we can learn to be grateful for the obstacle and dance with it.
There is however a cautionary note from the writing of Ryan Holiday, this time from Ego is the Enemy, once we’ve inverted the obstacle, don’t become too attached to it, and don’t let it become your defining story:
“Too often, artists who think it was “inspiration” or “pain” that fueled their art and create an image around that - instead of hard work and sincere hustle - will eventually find themselves at the bottom of a bottle or on the wrong end of a needle. The same goes for us, whatever we do. Instead of pretending that we are living some great story, we must remain focused on the execution - and on executing with excellence. We must shun the false crown and continue working on what got us here. Because that’s the only thing that will keep us here.”
Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy
Practicalities
If you’re an action-oriented person you may well be impatiently waiting for some practical suggestions for dealing with adversity rather than continuing to labour over this dancing with adversity idea. “Enough with the philosophising, give me some solutions!”, I hear you say.
My intention is to flesh out the ASPIRE Mastery Coaching Model that I’ve proposed recently to provide a structured approach to obstacle handling. The ‘R’ section of the ASPIRE model is for Reality and this is where I’ll be exploring the need to strive for objectivity in accepting adversity and finding practical approaches, tools and techniques for making sense of our situation and taking action. From here we would reference the ‘A’ section for your Aspirations, your inner calling that will inspire you to push through, as well as the various Paths available to you in the ‘P’ section.
We were formed by the chisel of adversity
Looking back, the obstacles that we’ve overcome in our lives so far can be seen as precisely the ones we needed at the time for our growth and development. We may have been too privileged in life, without enough obstacles to test us in our comfy bubble-wrapped existence. In such a case we may benefit from seeking out deliberate impediments, deliberate difficulties and challenges if we are to grow. If you’re on the path of comfort, the path of least resistance, you will be on the path of least growth. This is why we stress our muscles in the gym, so they adapt to the trauma. The modern world wants to keep us coddled, and deep down we know that’s not good for us. We were made to be tested and twisted, we were made to be broken and beat.
“There is not love of life without despair about life.” - Albert Camus.
Preface, Lyrical and Critical Essays (1970)
Without obstacles and the despair they cause, there would be no contrast with which to compare the good times. Our lives are stories. Our ego, our very self-identity, is merely a bunch of stories we tell ourselves. Battle scars tell a tale. Without them, the stories of our lives are characterless and dull. The hero’s journey is one of torturous struggles and overcoming, fighting dragons (internal and external) before returning home.
To sum up
I opened this article on a personal note around the adversity I’m presently facing with a recent redundancy. Of course, my adversity is nothing compared to people’s lives in Turkey devastated by the recent earthquake, or those suffering through the war in Ukraine, but it has nonetheless proven a difficult time for me personally.
So has this deep dive into leveraging adversity helped me in any way? Well, yes it has. Not in any dramatic transcendence or turnaround in fortune, but in small ways. Every time I go into negative rumination, or wake in the morning with a jolt of anxiety, I have a useful way to frame my experience, I can project myself a year into the future, trusting that I’ve found another suitable source of income, hopefully in a better and happier place than I was in my last job, adding this current moment as another element to my evolving story of life. Whether talking to myself in my head or with other people, I’m more easily reminded of these philosophical references to drop into the conversation which steers it towards more enlightened outcomes, and more resourceful thinking, away from negative rumination and self-pity.
The most dramatic influence has been the discovery of the artist Ren and his own personal backstory. Not only have I been impressed and inspired by the evident mastery inherent in the work itself, but discovering Ren just before Christmas 2022 whilst reading George Leonard’s Mastery, created a confluence of ideas which were to inspire the birth of Ordinary Mastery. His story, his words, and his music have impacted me deeply and given me renewed hope for the future of music.
Thank you for reading through this long article. Putting survivorship bias to one side, the story of humanity is one of adapting to adversity since its provenance. I sincerely hope the illustrations I’ve provided are a little more helpful than simply being instructed to use life’s lemons for making lemonade.
Life is bittersweet. Without the bitterness, we’d not enjoy the sweetness.
Dostoevsky’s notes to his brother are summarised from the article Dostoyevsky, Just After His Death Sentence Was Repealed, on the Meaning of Life by Maria Popova
I've just come across a 3 minute 57 seconds video by someone called Shawn Boland that talks about the value of adversity in a much more in your face and straightforward way. I particularly like this part:
"Adversity is the great master teacher and the master comes wearing the cloak of suffering. Suffering is an aversion to what is. The greater the aversion, the greater the suffering. What’s pain for one is pleasure for another."
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqPIh8owHoI