Stillness is the Key

by Ryan Holiday

Aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war.

UNCHALLENGED

How much ordinary wonderfulness they closed their minds to.

Ordinary wonderfulness

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

Only this moment

The way you feel when you awake early in the morning and your mind is fresh and as yet unsoiled by the noise of the outside world—that’s space worth protecting.

Protect the morning

Just like the overactive voice in a slump, the voice in a streak is an equally deleterious racing mental loop. Both get in the way. Both make a hard thing harder.

Whatever you face, whatever you’re doing will require, first and foremost, that you don’t defeat yourself. That you don’t make it harder by overthinking, by needless doubts, or by second-guessing.

“In a situation provided with maximum amplification, perform a disciplined action.”

There is perhaps no one less at peace than the egomaniac, their mind a swirling miasma of their own grandiosity and insecurity.