Stillness is the Key

by Ryan Holiday

“All of humanity’s problems,” Blaise Pascal said in 1654, “stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

Stillness is what aims the archer’s arrow. It inspires new ideas. It sharpens perspective and illuminates connections. It slows the ball down so that we might hit it. It generates a vision, helps us resist the passions of the mob, makes space for gratitude and wonder. Stillness allows us to persevere. To succeed. It is the key that unlocks the insights of genius, and allows us regular folks to understand them.

In those battles, in that war, stillness is the river and the railroad junction through which so much depends. It is the key . . . To thinking clearly. To seeing the whole chessboard. To making tough decisions. To managing our emotions. To identifying the right goals. To handling high-pressure situations. To maintaining relationships. To building good habits. To being productive. To physical excellence. To feeling fulfilled. To capturing moments of laughter and joy.

To achieve stillness, we’ll need to focus on three domains, the timeless trinity of mind, body, soul—the head, the heart, the flesh.

The mind is restless, Krishna, impetuous, self-willed, hard to train: to master the mind seems as difficult as to master the mighty winds. —THE BHAGAVAD GITA

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 thinking through all the way to the end, who is?

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.

As he stared down nuclear annihilation, he was: Careful as someone crossing an iced-over stream. Alert as a warrior in enemy territory. Courteous as a guest. Fluid as melting ice. Shapable as a block of wood. Receptive as a valley. Clear as a glass of water.

Each of us will, in our own lives, face crisis. The stakes may be lower, but to us they will matter. A business on the brink of collapse. An acrimonious divorce. A decision about the future of our career. A moment where the whole game depends on us. These situations will call upon all our mental resources. An emotional, reactive response—an unthinking, half-baked response—will not cut it. Not if we want to get it right. Not if we want to perform at our best.

Be fully present. Empty our mind of preconceptions. Take our time. Sit quietly and reflect. Reject distraction. Weigh advice against the counsel of our convictions. Deliberate without being paralyzed.

Trust no future, howe’er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act,—act in the living present! Heart within, and God o’erhead! —HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

love can’t exist off in the future. Love is only real if it’s happening right now. If you think about it, that’s true for basically everything we think, feel, or do. The best athletes, in the biggest games, are completely there. They are within themselves, within the now.

The less energy we waste regretting the past or worrying about the future, the more energy we will have for what’s in front of us.

We want to learn to see the world like an artist: While other people are oblivious to what surrounds them, the artist really sees. Their mind, fully engaged, notices the way a bird flies or the way a stranger holds their fork or a mother looks at her child. They have no thoughts of the morrow. All they are thinking about is how to capture and communicate this experience. An artist is present. And from this stillness comes brilliance.

This moment we are experiencing right now is a gift (that’s why we call it the present). Even if it is a stressful, trying experience—it could be our last. So let’s develop the ability to be in it, to put everyt...

A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. —HERBERT SIMON

“If you wish to improve,” Epictetus once said, “be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters.”

To become empty is to become one with the divine—this is the Way. —AWA KENZO

With my sighted eye I see what’s before me, and with my unsighted eye I see what’s hidden. —ALICE WALKER

So much of the distress we feel comes from reacting instinctually instead of acting with conscientious deliberation. So much of what we get wrong comes from the same place. We’re reacting to shadows. We’re taking as certainties impressions we have yet to test. We’re not stopping to put on our glasses and really look.

Your job, after you have emptied your mind, is to slow down and think. To really think, on a regular basis. . . . Think about what’s important to you. . . . Think about what’s actually going on. . . . Think about what might be hidden from view. . . . Think about what the rest of the chessboard looks like. . . . Think about what the meaning of life really is.

All profound things, and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence. . . . Silence is the general consecration of the universe. —HERMAN MELVILLE

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it. —COLIN POWELL

This is also confidence. Which needs neither congratulations nor glory in which to revel, because it is an honest understanding of our strengths and weakness that reveals the path to a greater glory: inner peace and a clear mind.

Confident people know what matters. They know when to ignore other people’s opinions. They don’t boast or lie to get ahead (and then struggle to deliver). Confidence is the freedom to set your own standards and unshackle yourself from the need to prove yourself. A confident person doesn’t fear disagreement and doesn’t see change—swapping an incorrect opinion for a correct one—as an admission of inferiority. Ego, on the other hand, is unsettled by doubts, afflicted by hubris, exposed by its own boasting and posturing. And yet it will not probe itself—or allow itself to be probed—because it knows what might be found. But confident people are open, reflective, and able to see themselves without blinders. All this makes room for stillness, by removing unnecessary conflict and uncertainty and resentment.

This is key. Both egotistical and insecure people make their flaws central to their identity—either by covering them up or by brooding over them or externalizing them. For them stillness is impossible, because stillness can only be rooted in strength. That’s what we have to focus on. Don’t feed insecurity. Don’t feed delusions of grandeur. Both are obstacles to stillness. Be confident. You’ve earned it.

Work done for a reward is much lower than work done in the Yoga of wisdom. Set thy heart upon thy work, but never on its reward. Work not for the reward; but never cease to do thy work. —THE BHAGAVAD GITA

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

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.

The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough. —RALPH WALDO EMERSON

It is impossible to live the pleasant life without also living sensibly, nobly, and justly, and conversely it is impossible to live sensibly, nobly, and justly without living pleasantly. A person who does not have a pleasant life is not living sensibly, nobly, and justly, and conversely the person who does not have these virtues cannot live pleasantly.

History relates no instance in which a conqueror has been surfeited with conquests. —STEFAN ZWEIG

In the face of the Sublime, we feel a shiver . . . something too large for our minds to encompass. And for a moment, it shakes us out of our smugness and releases us from the deathlike grip of habit and banality. —ROBERT GREENE

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself. —ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

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.

There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with. —SENECA

He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city. —PROVERBS 16:32

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.

We share a planet with billions of other sentient beings, and they all have their own complex ways of being whatever they are. All of our fellow animal creatures, as Aristotle observed long ago, try to stay alive and reproduce more of their kind. All of them perceive. All of them desire. And most move from place to place to get what they want and need.

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

Rise above our physical limitations. Find hobbies that rest and replenish us. Develop a reliable, disciplined routine. Spend time getting active outdoors. Seek out solitude and perspective. Learn to sit—to do nothing when called for. Get enough sleep and rein in our workaholism. Commit to causes bigger than ourselves.

If a person puts even one measure of effort into following ritual and the standards of righteousness, he will get back twice as much. —XUNZI

we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation.

A master is in control. A master has a system. A master turns the ordinary into the sacred. And so must we.

A crowded world thinks that aloneness is always loneliness and that to seek it is perversion. —JOHN GRAVES

It was the product of a rested mind that took care of its body. A healthy soul that could sleep soundly. And it has echoed down through the ages. If you want peace, there is just one thing to do. If you want to be your best, there is just one thing to do. Go to sleep.

As a well-spent day brings a happy sleep, so a well-employed life brings a happy death. —LEONARDO DA VINCI