{"id":262,"date":"2014-07-16T21:25:35","date_gmt":"2014-07-17T01:25:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marketingtrw.com\/blog\/?p=262"},"modified":"2016-02-17T20:10:22","modified_gmt":"2016-02-18T00:10:22","slug":"the-impediment-to-action-marcus-aurelius","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marketingtrw.com\/blog\/the-impediment-to-action-marcus-aurelius\/","title":{"rendered":"The Impediment to Action"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u201cThe impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.\u201d – Marcus Aurelius<\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Print available on Society6<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I’d like to share my new project with you. This is the first in a series of quotes that inspire me. I first ran into Marcus Aurelius<\/a> and the idea of stoicism\u00a0while reading Ryan Holiday’s<\/a> amazing book The Obstacle is the Way<\/a>. Before I get into the quote, let’s delve a little into stoicism and Marcus Aurelius.<\/p>\n

Stoicism<\/h3>\n

Stoicism<\/a> is a philosophy, developed in the 3rd century BC, that says destructive emotions result from errors in judgement and a person of “moral and intellectual perfection” would not suffer from these emotions. Stoics preach self-control and being an unbiased thinker. These principles help you come up with logical solutions to problems,\u00a0by looking at them objectively, instead of being bogged down by them.<\/p>\n

Marcus Aurelius<\/strong><\/strong><\/h3>\n

Marcus Aurelius was the Roman Emperor from 161 to 180 AD and is considered one of the most important Stoic philosophers. \u00a0He wrote his great work Meditations<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>as a resource for his own self-improvement. This title was added after his death, the original just said “To Myself”. He never intended\u00a0for his work to be used as a published work, it was meant as a source for his own guidance. In it, he writes about\u00a0analyzing judgement, perspective, rationality, and clear mindedness.<\/p>\n

Back to the quote<\/h3>\n

This quote emphasizes the idea of\u00a0turning obstacles into strengths. Instead of letting obstacles stand in your way, you should find a way to turn it into an advantage. Holiday’s book is filled with tons of examples of this principle, but a modern day\u00a0example that stuck is President Obama’s\u00a0Reverend Wright scandal<\/a>. Instead of trying to cover up the scandal, Obama used it to deliver this powerful speech on race<\/a>. Instead of letting his former pastor’s comments derail his campaign, he used it to start a dialogue about race in the United States. The New Yorker even wrote an article<\/a> about how the speech enabled him to save his candidacy.<\/p>\n

If you found any of this information interesting, I recommend reading The Obstacle is the Way<\/a>. I plan on doing a more extensive write-up of the book, but you should definitely read it yourself.<\/p>\n

Buy a print of the Marcus Aurelius quote<\/h3>\n

Buy Quote Art<\/a><\/p>\n

Resources: Marcus Aurelius Photo<\/a> \u00a0| \u00a0Background Pattern<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.\u201d – Marcus Aurelius Print available on Society6. I’d like to share my new project with you. This is the first in a series of quotes that inspire me. I first ran into Marcus Aurelius and the idea of stoicism\u00a0while reading Ryan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":260,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32],"tags":[35,33,34,39,36,38],"class_list":["post-262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-shop","tag-digital-art","tag-marcus-aurelius","tag-quote","tag-ryan-holiday","tag-shop-2","tag-stoicism","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/marketingtrw.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/The-impediment-to-action-advances-action.jpg?fit=792%2C1224","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Fe6d-4e","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marketingtrw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marketingtrw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marketingtrw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marketingtrw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marketingtrw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/marketingtrw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1657,"href":"http:\/\/marketingtrw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions\/1657"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marketingtrw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marketingtrw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marketingtrw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marketingtrw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}