My biggest challenge is not beating the S*** out of the irrational dimwits with whom I come in contact.

Finding like minded people to bounce stuff off. Before I found this online Gulch, I began to think there must be something wrong with ME, to be the only one who thinks this way (with logic, rather than emotions). After a while I realized that there are others out there, but most keep it to themselves in public, to avoid the browbeating (you selfish, heartless, emotionless creep!).

Figuring out how to separate myself from the immoral system all around me without becoming a hermit.

If I'm to be honest, my biggest #1 challenge is overcoming a lifetime of collectivist looter brainwashing. This included parents who thought that business profit is immoral, a history teacher who taught how capitalists love war because of its economic stimulus effects, and numerous governments who have gained their votes by pandering to looter mentality.

Almost as great a challenge is what others here have already mentioned - dealing with dimwits around them.

Listening to a libtard attempt to reason (most recently about why sanctuary cities are a good thing and really do have la-la land less violence) on "fair and balanced" Fox News.
It is less challenging for my blood pressure to pick up the remote and go channel-surfing than to roar at the TV like a dino with rabies.

Balancing my sci-fi authors mind, my constitutional conservatism, and objectivism. It's not as much of a challenge as some would think.

Dealing with fools.

Living with an aging parent who has a lot of important knowledge about how to live in the physical realm BUT has absolutely no ability to see the destructive patterns of himself and others that have led him to being dependent upon me.

Generally, I never had a problem. Specifically, yes, as I read these books as a teenager, it was a challenge figuring everything out, just how to live, what kinds of jobs to pursue, etc. Through all of that, especially in the early years, Objectivism was a set of known truths. On my blog, NecessaryFacts, I write about "The First Dagny" and "Dagny Two Point Oh." Having grown up in Cleveland ("Autobiography of a Worker") living in an Ayn Rand novel came rather easily to me. And it was a time of changes for everyone, the revolutions of the sixties, the founding of the Libertarian Party, the runaway inflation (and the Hunt Brothers bust), and then the coming of the Reagan Revolution with the Me Generation, yuppies, the computer revolution. It all pretty much played out as expected.

In my personal life, it was easy enough to find two wives (at different times) who read Ayn Rand's novels. Raising our daughter (2nd marriage), I relied on books that I knew from the Objectivist Newsletter 15 years before, such as How to Raise a Brighter Child and The Tyranny of Testing.

Overall, what I got from AR's novels generally and non-fiction in particular was the strength of my convictions. It is pretty easy to walk away from a bad deal, and even easier to throw my full support behind a good plan.

Allow me to recommend How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne. He was deeply influenced by Ayn Rand, though his presentation of his ideas is his own. His thesis is that we allow ourselves to be trapped by unquestioned assumptions. One of them is that the government is powerful enough to stop you from living your life by your own standards. Another is that you must join big causes to be involved in burning issues of the day. A third is that financial independence is impossible, especially in our mixed (and now collapsing) economy.

I would say the biggest challenge is trying to get around the great government involvement in everything. It makes it very difficult to just do your own thing, and not bother anyone, as they have this nasty habit of intruding into everything. That also has fed into the self justification thing, where people believe it is ok to impose their own behavior onto you and then requiring you to approve and allow it, and even celebrate it.

I was an OBJ before I read AR. I apply it very easily to every part of my life except one.
I don't really believe in myself enough to pursue any great ambitions.

It's the same today as it's been for well over 1/2 century. Daily encounters with those that can't or won't comprehend the reality of the world around them and the others that they share this life with; and watching the effects on the world I live in.

Good post. +1

I guess it would be finding people that take philosophical ideas seriously. Even among the best people in my life most think I am on some bender when I attempt to present a philosophical basis for individual rights and freedom or explain exactly why I am against some things they mostly accept and why I am so strongly against them.

I have people in my life that are pro-freedom and are productive and highly moral people but they are in my eyes operating totally without a net. And some of them have huge gaps where they assume some ideas or people are alright to bring into their life where I see glaring contradictions and dangers from doing so.

It is a challenge to find even objectivist friends who are not so busy looking for an excuse to cast judgment that they seemingly can't have an honest and far reaching philosophical discussion.

Brett, great post. The biggest challenge in applying Objectivism for me is not becoming emotional when people accuse me of being "extremist" or a crack pot. I am outspoken against the philosophic underpinnings of the Dems and the GOP, but find that I am treated as a traitor when I do not support certain GOP actions on the basis that the reason was not valid. I fight against what I call religionists, those who want to implement religion politically or who believe religion is the basis for politics. "Morality comes from the Bible", etc. My GOP friends then accuse me of being anti-religion or implementing my ideals instead of theirs. The intrinsicist argument that religiosity holds as fundamental has to be the most frustrating and biggest challenge for me.

I thought about this some more and I realized that I do have a continuing problem determining selling out from compromise. I am fully aware of the essay "Doesn't Life Require Compromise?" from The Virtue of Selfishness.

The problem is that on the one hand, a good merchant does not argue religion with his customer. If someone offers something you that want at a price that you are willing to pay, then no other consideration is relevant. On the other hand, the message of Atlas Shrugged is that we do not support our destroyers. If someone's religion (literal or figurative) is contrary to your values, you gain nothing from doing business with them.

I go back and forth on this all time.

Well, this a very timely question. After 16 months of working on our gold property in Northern Nevada, we find it is subject to a regulatory takings with the sage grouse FEIS.

After working for the biggies for 30 years in the gold mining industry, this property was the chance of a lifetime. For a very small group of us, it was like our entire careers had led to this.

We were on the cusp in late May of raising several million dollars to test drill, and develop a mineral resource. The potential was fantastic. And then in the swoop of drawing a boundary line, federal agency bureaucrats changed the maps from low value habitat to priority habitat and recommending an historic mining district for locatable mineral withdrawal. This effectively cutoff any financing due to investment risk.

I am so angry, I cannot be anything approaching objective. The thoughts drift to the realm of retaliation - miners have lots of ordinance and explosives - but don't worry, no, I won't be on the news one evening. I can just see the fair and balanced treatment I would get.

So, what does objectivism have to contribute here? I am wide open to suggestions.

As one who has been an Objectivist for more than 50 years (yeah, I’m old), probably the system I recommend is a “modified Galt” as suggested by the late Harry Browne. Browne was not an Objectivist, but he figured out some things pretty well. “Freedom,” Browne points out, “is the opportunity to live your life as you want to live it." This is a definition I think most of us can agree with.

“The plans, the movements, the crusades — none of these things has worked. And so the unfree person continues to dream, to condemn, and to remain where he is.

“You can be free without changing the world. You can live your life as you want to live it — no matter what others decide to do with their lives."

Browne, Harry (2014-07-22). How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World (Kindle Locations 219-237). Kindle Edition.

Getting people to stop bothering me with their nonsense. As I get older, I find I have less tolerance for idiots and their agendas. What I regret is that I have many people with whom I communicate who are not idiots but whose basic premises are skewed and screwed. I am beginning to lose my patience with them as well. Pretty soon the only people I'll tolerate to communicate with will be certain members of my family and Gulchers.

The hardest thing I find is identifying the value someone else holds that depends on the rationality in the culture. My favorite right now is grand kids. I say that if I am right your grand kids will have a wonderful life and if you are right they will live under ISIS or a Putin. I never let them assume that their values will lead to a good outcome. Since there are plenty of examples of their values in practice they are on the defensive. I then have the burden of proof that my values will produce good results. It a burden I happily assume.

Great question! Thanks for asking it.

I have found - through research, personal experienceand indirect experience working with my executive coaching clients over 15 years that developing a deep, meaningful and practically powerful spirituality and set of spritual disciplines tremendously raises the bar my performance, fulfillment, resilience and overall capacity to live larger and more successfully.

How to do this on a secular basis, without the involvement of mysticism or supernaturalism has been my single biggest challenge in integrating Objectivist principles in my life.

My bride and have Dagny's issue letting go of the fight. Knowing how we think it should be. And the massive wave of bodies we fight for what we know to be what is right. We just can not just go on strike.

Convincing people that making a decision based on reason rather than emotion is not psychopathic behavior.

Trying to live without violating my convictions. I had long thought that it would be wrong to go on
Social Security, as the money I had paid in was
gone. They cut people in the plant where I worked,
and I was sent away last October. And I have tried and tried and tried to get a job. (I also have
tried to avoid stores, at least running the cash
register, as stores sell so much Communist
crap).( There are jobs I could get, if I didn't have
epilepsy and could drive a car;a landscaping
job I was turned down for, for instance.But I
would have had to drive a dirt-pushing machine,
and I was told it wouldn't do. And obviously, I
can't drive a cab). My brother pushed the idea
of going to to Salvation Army for help, but I
would starve first. (Not that I have started to
starve yet; but who knows?) One gets into
very embarrassing difficulties.

Statism.

Statism is the first ailment that hypocrites are inflicted with. So, I deal with it among others who call themselves Objectivists. I deal with it in the evening news every damn night. I deal with it from all angles. Big government is here to stay because, deep down, that's what almost everybody really wants.

I should elaborate. Many of my friends who call themselves "conservatives" really want big government. They actually like seeing people dressed in costumes using force. They speak of smaller government, yet are very eager to make some key exceptions.

In short - we are a nation, a society of sheep. I don't fit in.