A few months ago, I sent an email.

I don't normally reach out to potential podcast guests myself, but this one felt very personal.

The email was to Ryan Holiday, and I was writing him about his book, The Obstacle Is the Way.

The Obstacle Is the Way was hugely helpful for me during one of the hardest periods of my life.

And the knowledge that I gained from that book, the perspective I gained from that book,

the deep dive into stoic thinking and stoic philosophy, and the idea that the biggest challenge

you're facing in your life right now is actually the answer to the thing you're trying to figure out.

Basically, if you can figure out how to solve the obstacle,

you now have a whole new set of tools and resources and muscles and information and all kinds of things you didn't have before.

The obstacle is literally the way you become the next great version of yourself.

So I loved this book, and I sent an email to Ryan, and I was like, I gotta have you on the show.

We've gotta have a conversation. I really want the audience to get to meet you and to hear some of these ideas.

And I had the opportunity recently to drive out to Ryan's bookstore, and we sat down for a very long conversation.

In fact, the conversation was so long that we originally split it into parts.

I was going to post one part of our episode, and he was going to post the other on his podcast.

And in fact, if you are coming to this episode as one of Ryan's listeners,

you're going to find the continuation of the conversation at about 55 minutes into this chat.

But if you're my crew, and you haven't heard any of this before,

I'm going to play the episode in its entirety. It's a long, but it's good.

We talk about everything. And I think you'll find it fascinating.

I hope you'll find it helpful. And I hope that it encourages you to go get the book that was so helpful to me.

The obstacle is the way this is the conversation with Ryan Holiday.

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