Stillness is the Key: An Ancient Strategy for Modern Life

by Ryan Holiday

To be able to tune out our surroundings, to access one’s full capabilities at any time, in any place, despite every difficulty? How wonderful that would be! What

To be steady while the world spins around you. To act without frenzy. To hear only what needs to be heard. To possess quietude—exterior and interior—on command.

The stillness required to become master of one’s own life. To survive and thrive in any and every environment, no matter how loud or busy.

between what we can be and how hard it is to actually get there.

Accomplish more but need it less. Feel better and be better at the same time.

This is, in fact, the first obligation of a leader and a decision maker. Our job is not to “go with our gut” or fixate on the first impression we form about an issue. No, we need to be strong enough to resist thinking that is too neat, too plausible, and therefore almost always wrong. Because if the leader can’t take the time to develop a clear sense of the bigger picture, who will? If the leader isn’t

Keep strong, if possible. In any case, keep cool. Have unlimited patience. Never corner an opponent, and always assist him to save face. Put yourself in his shoes—so as to see things through his eyes. Avoid self-righteousness like the devil—nothing is so self-blinding.

Remember, there’s no greatness in the future. Or clarity. Or insight. Or happiness. Or peace. There is only this moment.

Whatever you face, whatever you’re doing will require, first and foremost, that you don’t defeat yourself.

What’s essential is invisible to the eye.

“Just be quiet and think. It’ll make all the difference in the world.”

We have to get better at thinking, deliberately and intentionally, about the big questions. On the complicated things. On understanding what’s really going on with a person, or a situation, or with life itself.

Take the time to feel wisdom flow through your fingertips and onto the page.

Each of us needs to cultivate those moments in our lives. Where we limit our inputs and turn down the volume so that we can access a deeper awareness of what’s going on around us. In shutting up—even if only for a short period—we can finally hear what the world has been trying to tell us. Or what we’ve been trying to tell ourselves.

The need to ask questions. The need to study and reflect. The importance of intellectual humility. The power of experiences—most of all failure and mistakes—to open our eyes to truth and understanding. In this way, wisdom is a sense of the big picture, the accumulation of experience and the ability to rise above the biases, the traps that catch lazier thinkers.

Find people you admire and ask how they got where they are. Seek book recommendations. Isn’t that what Socrates would do? Add experience and experimentation on top of this. Put yourself in tough situations. Accept challenges. Familiarize yourself with the unfamiliar. That’s how you widen your perspective and your understanding. The wise are still because they have seen it all. They know what to expect because they’ve been through so much. They’ve made mistakes and learned from them. And so must you. Wrestle with big questions. Wrestle with big ideas. Treat your brain like the muscle that it is. Get stronger through resistance and exposure and training.

If the mind is disciplined, the heart turns quickly from fear to love. —JOHN CAGE

We want consistent focus and wisdom that can be called upon in even the most trying situations. Getting there will require more work. It’s going to require some holistic self-examination, treating the disease and not just the symptoms.

Eventually one has to say the e-word, enough. Or the world says it for you.

An open heart. Meaningful relationships. Selflessness. Moderation. A sense of right and wrong. These are not just important elements of a balanced life; they are sources of stillness that allow us to endure defeat and enjoy victory. Mental stillness will be short-lived if our hearts are on fire, or our souls ache with emptiness. We are incapable of seeing what is essential in the world if we are blind to what’s going on within us. We cannot be in harmony with anyone or anything if the need for more, more, more is gnawing at our insides like a maggot.

What good is it to be rational at work if our personal lives are a hot-blooded series of disasters? How long can we keep the two domains separate anyway? You might rule cities or a great empire, but if you’re not in control of yourself, it is all for naught.

That is why those who seek stillness must come to . . . • Develop a strong moral compass. • Steer clear of envy and jealousy and harmful desires. • Come to terms with the painful wounds of their childhood. • Practice gratitude and appreciation for the world around them. • Cultivate relationships and love in their lives. • Place belief and control in the hands of something larger than themselves. • Understand that there will never be “enough” and that the unchecked pursuit of more ends only in bankruptcy. Our soul is where we secure our happiness and unhappiness, contentment or emptiness—and ultimately, determine the extent of our greatness. We must maintain a good one.

a person who emanates integrity, honor, and self-control.

Life is meaningless to the person who decides their choices have no meaning.

The gift of free will is that in this life we can choose to be good or we can choose to be bad. We can choose what standards to hold ourselves to and what we will regard as important, honorable, and admirable. The choices we make in that regard determine whether we will experience peace or not.

It’s dangerous business, though, creating a monster to protect your wounded inner child.

We owe it to ourselves as well as to the people in our lives to do this. Each of us must break the link in the chain of what the Buddhists call samsara, the continuation of life’s suffering from generation to generation.

None of us are perfect. We have biologies and pathologies that will inevitably trip us up. What we need then is a philosophy and a strong moral code—that sense of virtue—to help us resist what we can, and to give us the strength to pick ourselves back up when we fail and try to do and be better.

In a way, this is a curse of one of our virtues. No one achieves excellence or enlightenment without a desire to get better, without a tendency to explore potential areas of improvement.

Temperance. That’s the key. Intellectually, we know this. It’s only in flashes of insight or tragedy that we feel it.

We are restless because deep in our hearts we know now that our happiness is found elsewhere, and our work, no matter how valuable it is to us or to others, cannot take its place.

They weren’t doing it to prove anything. They didn’t need to impress anyone. They were in the moment. Their motivations were pure. There was no insecurity. No anxiety. No creeping, painful hope that this would finally be the thing that would make them feel whole, that would give them what they had always been lacking.

What do we want more of in life? That’s the question. It’s not accomplishments. It’s not popularity. It’s moments when we feel like we are enough. More presence. More clarity. More insight. More truth. More stillness.

The term for this is exstasis—a heavenly experience that lets us step outside ourselves. And these beautiful moments are available to us whenever we want them. All we have to do is open our souls to them.

Which is why the philosopher must cultivate the poet’s eye—the ability to see beauty everywhere, even in the banal or the terrible.

It is not the sign of a healthy soul to find beauty in superficial things—the adulation of the crowd, fancy cars, enormous estates, glittering awards. Nor to be made miserable by the ugliness of the world—the critics and haters, the suffering of the innocent, injuries, pain and loss. It is better to find beauty in all places and things. Because it does surround us. And will nourish us if we let it.

It’s ironic that stillness is rare and fleeting in our busy lives, because the world creates an inexhaustible supply of it. It’s just that nobody’s looking.

Let it calm you. Let it cleanse you.

It’s about surrender. It’s about faith.

The progress of science and technology is essential. But for many of us moderns, it has come at the cost of losing the capacity for awe and for acknowledging forces beyond our comprehension. It has deprived us of the ability to access spiritual stillness and piety.

Realism is important. Pragmatism and scientism and skepticism are too. They all have their place. But still, you have to believe in something. You just have to. Or else everything is empty and cold.

It is true that relationships take time. They also expose and distract us, cause pain, and cost money. We are also nothing without them.

A good relationship requires us to be virtuous, faithful, present, empathetic, generous, open, and willing to be a part of a larger whole. It requires, in order to create growth, real surrender.

Stillness is best not sought alone. And, like success, it is best when shared. We all need someone who understands us better than we understand ourselves, if only to keep us honest.

The world hurls at us so many hurricanes. Those who have decided to go through existence as an island are the most exposed and the most ravaged by the storms and whirlwinds.

By ourselves, we are a fraction of what we can be. By ourselves, something is missing, and, worse, we feel that in our bones. Which is why stillness requires other people; indeed, it is for other people.

Anger is counterproductive. The flash of rage here, an outburst at the incompetence around us there—this may generate a moment of raw motivation or even a feeling of relief, but we rarely tally up the frustration they cause down the road. Even if we apologize or the good we do outweighs the harm, damage remains—and consequences follow. The person we yelled at is now an enemy. The drawer we broke in a fit is now a constant annoyance. The high blood pressure, the overworked heart, inching us closer to the attack that will put us in the hospital or the grave.

Which is why we must choose to drive out anger and replace it with love and gratitude—and purpose. Our stillness depends on our ability to slow down and choose not to be angry, to run on different fuel. Fuel that helps us win and build, and doesn’t hurt other people, our cause, or our chance at peace.

The truly philosophical view is that not only is originality necessary, but everyone is necessary. Even the people you don’t like. Even the ones who really piss you off. Even the people wasting their lives, cheating, or breaking the rules are part of the larger equation. We can appreciate—or at least sympathize with—them, rather than try to fight or change them.

No one is alone, in suffering or in joy. Down the street, across the ocean, in another language, someone else is experiencing nearly the exact same thing. It has always been and always will be thus.