Introduction 

• During my recent reading around the topic of Stoicism, I came across the now famous ‘The Obstacle is the Way‘ by Ryan Holiday. If you recognise the title but haven’t read it, that might be because it has been made famous by its rapid spread across American sporting teams. For example, on the way to winning the 2014 Super Bowl a copy of the book was given to each of the players and staff of the New England Patriots. It’s a fabulous book which I highly recommend, but one specific line of argument really stood out as extremely important, and I wanted to share with you how I’ve interpreted it, internalised it and applied it to my own life.
• Holiday argues for the importance of perception; that everything you do, say and think starts from your perception of that thing or the situation in which it occurs, he highlights in fact that it is 9/10s of the law.
• The aim of this piece is to provide more detail on what perception is, why it is so important and then explain how it has helped me in both my personal and work life.
• Marcus Aurelius sums up the fundamental point of my belief on perspective better than I can: ‘Choose not to be harmed – and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed – and you haven’t been.’
• What does this mean? Having an initial or immediate perspective is fine, and human nature, but you should work hard to actively amend that perspective (if necessary) to put yourself in an optimal position. Any situation you find yourself in has at least one aspect within it that you have the ability to change and improve, and everyone can do it.
• In recent months, I have found myself reading more and more about, and around, the topic of Stoicism, Stoic philosophy and its resurgence in recent years. If you are looking for a brief introduction on Stoicism and its central concepts I’d suggest checking out this post: https://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/stoicismtoday/what-is-stoicism/

 

What is perception? 

• At its most fundamental level, perception is how we see and understand what occurs around us. Because of perception we have complete control of our view of every situation. This is an extremely powerful tool when you think about it, more on that later.
• Holiday goes beyond this broad stroke description and breaks perception down into two definitions; (1) Context: a sense of the large picture of the world, not just what is immediately in front of us (2) Framing: an individual’s unique way of looking at the world, a way that interprets the worlds events’. Let’s take each of these in turn.
  • Perception as Context. Associated more with reactive perception, it’s our baseline perception of the world, and the way we see or understand things will be perceived by our brain. This can also be thought of as unconscious perception as it doesn’t involve any conscious thought on what we have seen or experienced.
  • Perception as a Frame.  Associated more with proactive perception, instead of seeing things and unconsciously internalising them, framing occurs when we actively draw conclusions on situations we find ourselves in.
• Contextual perception is much harder to impact in the short term, it can be influenced and modified over the long term through changes in reading, education and people we associate with. Whereas framing perception can be amended right now if you are more concise and aware of how you want to perceive things. Because of this it is really framing perception which the remainder of this piece will focus on.
• As Holiday himself highlights ’perception precedes action. Right action follows the right perspective,’ therefore being concise of your framing perception and how it can affect you is very important.
• An example, from The Obstacle is the Way should help make this clear:

“George Clooney spent his first years in Hollywood getting rejected at auditions. He wanted the producers and directors to like him, but they didn’t and it hurt…Everything changed for Clooney when he tried a new perspective. He realized that casting is an obstacle for producers too – they need to find somebody, and they’re all hoping that the next person to walk in the room is the right somebody…He wasn’t going to be someone grovelling for a shot. He was someone with something special to offer. He was the answer to their prayers, not the other way around. That was what he began projecting in his auditions -not exclusively his acting skills but that he was the man for the job. That he understood what the casting director and producers were looking for in a specific role and that he would deliver it in each and every situation, in preproduction, on camera, and during promotion.”

• This is a very simple mind-set / framing shift but can have a huge impact on the way you approach situations and the way you are perceived in those situations. I’ll dig into this a little more in the next section.

 

Perception Facilitates Focus & Potential Advantages 

• Once we have understood what perception is, and through an example seen how important it can be, the next logical step is to ascertain how to use this understanding to our advantage.
  • Obstacle is the Way – Holiday’s fundamental premise of the book is an example of using perception to your advantage, he argues that ‘we choose how we’ll look at things. We retain the ability to inject perspective into a situation. We can’t change the obstacles themselves – that part of the equation is set – but the power of perspective can change how the obstacles appear.’ Taking the time to consciously acknowledge that you can’t change the obstacle but you can change at least one part of the situation through perception will not only reduce the intimidation of the obstacle but even help you think outside the box to either incorporate the obstacle into your way forward or innovate to make the obstacle unimportant in the future.
  • Creation of priority list of focus – Knowing that perception is the first thing in your toolbox for progression and applying it fully focuses your mind and the next steps which come out from this, i.e. what are the other things you can control, what is up to you? As minimum is it always: emotions, judgements, creativity, perspective, desires, decisions, determination.
  • Control of the situation – If others expect you to respond in a certain way and you don’t, because you take a breath and pivot the situation to have a more positive perspective on it, they are on the back foot, and you are at an advantage.
  • Prevents mistaken judgements – By actively taking time to stop and think about how you are perceiving the situation, and potentially amending your perception to provide a better position, you prevent misunderstanding or misjudging things. In the heat of the moment people can get the wrong end of the stick, placing perception at the fore front and actively taking your time will prevent these situations arising.
  • Prevents unnecessary worry & trepidation – If you know and remember that you have at least some control of things that are coming your way and power to do something about it, it allows you to eliminate unnecessary worry and trepidation. This occurs because you can image the different situations whatever comes your way and can always handle it.
• If you already have a working knowledge of Stoicism you’ll see that some of the above advantages align with many of the general advantages of Stoicism, this is unsurprising really. What I hope will help bring some of this advantages to life is a few personal examples.

 

Perception in Reality  

• I always find that examples help me convert theoretical arguments into something more tangible which I can then actually apply to my life. I’m going to cover two examples here, from both my personal and work life. In choosing these examples I wanted to cover different aspects of the advantages of embracing perception therefore, my first example covers how you can embrace the ‘obstacle’ and take it with you whilst the second example show’s how perception can help you do something completely different because of, and inspired by, the ‘obstacle’.
  • Example of embracing the ‘obstacle’ and taking it with you. A Managing Director at the firm I work for is famous for making that level in record time, how did she do it? She morphed her own perceptions onto situations that others had written off. She made her name as someone who took situations others saw as impossible or not helpful to career progression and turned them around. Your boss is always going to reward those who took a massive headache from them and turned it into a badge of honour, over those who converted something they were expecting to be a success into a success. I try to learn from this and ensure that my perspective of a situation is not too clouded by others views. People often haven’t done their own in depth evaluation of the situation, or have only spoken to people at a high level. By going into the detail and doing my own analysis I can better assess and apply my own perspective, which can lead to identifying the obstacle or pain point that others also found, but then embracing that and carrying it forward with me whilst tackling the problem.
  • Example of how perception can help you do something completely different because of and inspired by the ‘obstacle.’ I was burnt early when investing in the stock market, because I invested in individual stocks which lost significant value. As a result of this experience, and with my risk averse nature, this formed an ‘obstacle’ to me having a potentially excellent source of passive income. I could have tackled this head on and try to shift my natural risk aversion, learn my lessons and re-invest. However, I took a different perspective. If investing in individual stocks wasn’t for me, I would vow to work as hard as possible for the best investment fund/trusts to give me as good, or even better returns. Inspired and motivated to prove I could do better without investing in individual firms I did more research and analysis into the best performing portfolio investments, where the risk of significant loss is reduced by the increased degree of diversification.
• If the theory of how important perception is was a little heavy and not clear enough in the early part of this blog, I hope the above examples help to make the points more tangible and applicable to your own life.

 

Potential Negatives 

• As I briefly alluded to above, there are potential negatives from re-interpreting your perspective to situations to see the best for you and gain an advantage, I want to touch on three of these briefly.
  • There is a fine line between persistence and delusion – make sure you don’t confuse perception with delusion, when evaluating situations for a better perspective you must maintain a reference point of reality. I often find that running it past a select number of very close family and friends acts as a good litmus test. Don’t carry on hitting your head against a brick wall because you’ve managed to convince yourself it’ll make your head unnaturally strong, you’ll only end up with concussion.
  • 9/10s isn’t the whole thing – Don’t fall into the trap that all you need is the best perception of a situation to succeed, in his book Holiday points to two other macro ingredients; Action & Will, these are the minimum others. Once you have your perception sorted you still have to action it and have the motivation to see it through.
  • Re-interpreting your perspective won’t always work – This is linked in part to the first point, don’t be delusional and don’t think that it can always work. There are some things in life which are truly rubbish and horrible, hopefully you’ll be able to see some light from them by shifting your perspective but that is one tool – an important tool – but not the only tool to ‘succeeding’ (whatever your definition of that is).
• Remember these, and be conscious of them when actively looking to pivot your perspective, however don’t get too scared of them. Having a conscious awareness of them will naturally ensure you question yourself sufficiently and therefore not be guilty of them.

 

Perception Cheat Sheet & Conclusion 

• The way we all view the world and our interaction with it form such a massive part of who we are and how happy we are with ‘our’ world and this should never be forgotten.
• I’ll end with sharing a short prompt of things which you can use to attempt to shift your perspective of a situation or opportunity to help you get the most out of it:
  • Detach from your emotions – This is not to say become an emotionless zombie, simply that you should ensure you acknowledge what are emotional arguments and treat them as such. Start with the cold hard facts, and only then, if necessary, bring the emotional aspects in.
  • Don’t act immediately – Wherever possible allow yourself time to internalise information and rationalise it outside the immediate situation. Doing this allows your brain time to understand all the considerations, not just the one that popped into your head in the moment.
  • Get the input of others –  Other people are a great sound board for re-affirming your perspective on situations for two key reasons; (1) Your brain has to do a lot of work condensing all your thoughts into a understandable message to someone else, simply explaining it to someone else can help you see the wood from the trees. (2) Other people are often more likely spot if you are falling into any of the traps of pivoting perspective, and can call this out to you immediately.
• I started this with a quote from Marcus Aurelius which I felt summed up my overall view on perspective very well, and I’m going to end this blog with another great quote, this time from Ryan Holiday. It highlights perfectly the competitive advantage from taking control of your perception: ‘Discipline in perception lets you clearly see the advantage and the proper course of action in every situation – without the pestilence of the panic of fear’.

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