Stillness is the Key

by Ryan Holiday

Sigmund Freud himself wrote about how common it is for deficiencies, big and small, at a young age to birth toxic, turbulent attitudes in adulthood. Because we weren’t born rich enough, pretty enough, naturally gifted enough, because we weren’t appreciated like other children in the classroom, or because we had to wear glasses or got sick a lot or couldn’t afford nice clothes, we carry a chip on our shoulder. Some of us are like Richard III, believing that a deformity entitles us to be selfish or mean or insatiably ambitious. As Freud explained, “We all demand reparation for our early wounds to our narcissism,” thinking we are owed because we were wronged or deprived. (This was Tiger Woods to the detail.)

Each of us on occasion has surprised ourself with a strong reaction to someone’s innocuous comments, or thrown a fit when some authority figure tried to direct our actions. Or felt the pull of attraction to a type of relationship that never ends well. Or to a type of behavior that we know is wrong. It’s almost primal how deep these feelings go—they’re rooted in our infancy.

It will take patience and empathy and real self-love to heal the wounds in your life. As Thich Nhat Hanh has written: After recognizing and embracing our inner child, the third function of mindfulness is to soothe and relieve our difficult emotions. Just by holding this child gently, we are soothing our difficult emotions and we can begin to feel at ease. When we embrace our strong emotions with mindfulness and concentration, we’ll be able to see the roots of these mental formations. We’ll know where our suffering has come from. When we see the roots of things, our suffering will lessen. So mindfulness recognizes, embraces, and relieves.

The comedian Garry Shandling lost his brother, Barry, at age ten to cystic fibrosis, and was left for the rest of his life at the mercy of his distraught and controlling mother, who was so disturbed by the loss of her older son that she forbade Garry from attending the funeral for fear that he would see her cry. But one day, as a much older man, Garry wrote in his diary a formula that might help him overcome that pain and not only heal his own inner child but pass on the lesson to the many surrogate children he had as a mentor and elder in show business.* The formula was simple and is key to breaking the cycle and stilling the deep anguish we carry around with us: Give more. Give what you didn’t get. Love more. Drop the old story. Try it, if you can.

And at least power and sex and attention are pleasurable. The most common form of lust is envy—the lust for what other people have, for the sole reason that they have it. Joseph Epstein’s brilliant line is: “Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.” Democritus, twenty-four hundred years before him: “An envious man pains himself as though he were an enemy.”

The writers Kurt Vonnegut, the author of Slaughterhouse Five, and Joseph Heller, the author of Catch-22, were once at a party in a fancy neighborhood outside New York City. Standing in the palatial second home of some boring billionaire, Vonnegut began to needle his friend. “Joe,” he said, “how does it feel that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel has earned in its entire history?” “I’ve got something he can never have,” Heller replied. “And what on earth could that be?” Vonnegut asked. “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”

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. Yet the desire—or the need—for more is often at odds with happiness. Billie Jean King, the tennis great, has spoken about this, about how the mentality that gets an athlete to the top so often prevents them from enjoying the thing they worked so hard for. The need for progress can be the enemy of enjoying the process.

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.

The soft paw prints of a cat on the dusty trunk of a car. The hot steam wafting from the vents on a New York City morning. The smell of asphalt just as the rain begins to fall. The thud of a fist fitting perfectly into an open hand. The sound of a pen signing a contract, binding two parties together. The courage of a mosquito sucking blood from a human who can so easily crush it. A basket full of vegetables from the garden. The hard right angles that passing trucks cut out of the drooping branches of trees next to a busy road. A floor filled with a child’s toys, arranged in the chaos of exhausted enjoyment. A city arranged the same way, the accumulation of hundreds of years of spasmodic, independent development. Are you starting to see how this works? 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.

To those reeling from trauma or a stressful profession as much as to those suffering from the ennui of modern life, Professor John Stilgoe has simple advice: Get out now. Not just outside, but beyond the trap of the programmed electronic age so gently closing around so many people. . . . Go outside, move deliberately, then relax, slow down, look around. Do not jog. Do not run. . . . Instead pay attention to everything that abuts the rural road, the city street, the suburban boulevard. Walk. Stroll. Saunter. Ride a bike and coast along a lot. Explore.

Anyone can be rich or famous. Only you can be Dad or Mom or Daughter or Son or Soul Mate to the people in your life.

Life without relationships, focused solely on accomplishment, is empty and meaningless (in addition to being precarious and fragile). A life solely about work and doing is terribly out of balance; indeed, it requires constant motion and busyness to keep from falling apart.

Love, Freud said, is the great educator. We learn when we give it. We learn when we get it. We get closer to stillness through it.

If history is any indication, leaders, artists, generals, and athletes who are driven primarily by anger not only tend to fail over a long enough timeline, but they tend to be miserable even if they don’t. It was without a hint of self-awareness that Nixon—who hated Ivy Leaguers, hated reporters, hated Jews and so many other people—said these high-minded words to his loyal staffers in his last hours in the White House: “Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.”

And what of the people whose anger is more of a hot flash than a slow burn? Seneca once more: There is no more stupefying thing than anger, nothing more bent on its own strength. If successful, none more arrogant, if foiled, none more insane—since it’s not driven back by weariness even in defeat, when fortune removes its adversary it turns its teeth on itself.

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.

Take something you care about deeply, a possession you cherish, a person you love, or an experience that means a lot to you. Now take that feeling, that radiating warmth that comes up when you think about it, and consider how every single person, even murderers on death row, even the jerk who just shoved you in the supermarket, has that same feeling about something in their lives. Together, you share that. Not only do you share it, but you share it with everyone who has ever lived. It connects you to Cleopatra and Napoleon and Frederick Douglass.

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.

The quote that hung on Fred Rogers’s wall was actually only a partial quote. The rest appears in The Little Prince, the beautiful and surreal children’s book by the French aviator and World War II hero Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. In it, the fox tells the little boy, “Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Churchill conserved his energy so that he never shirked from a task, or backed down from a challenge. So that, for all this work and pushing, he never burned himself out or snuffed out the spark of joy that made life worth living. (Indeed, in addition to the importance of hard work, Johnson said the other four lessons from Churchill’s remarkable life were to aim high; to never allow mistakes or criticism to get you down; to waste no energy on grudges, duplicity, or infighting; and to make room for joy.) Even during the war, Churchill never lost his sense of humor, never lost sight of what was beautiful in the world, and never became jaded or cynical.

In a little book titled Painting as a Pastime, Churchill spoke eloquently of a reliance on new activities that use other parts of our minds and bodies to relieve the areas where we are overworked. “The cultivation of a hobby and new forms of interest is therefore a policy of first importance to a public man,” he wrote. “To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, and they must all be real.”

Epicurus once said that the wise will accomplish three things in their life: leave written works behind them, be financially prudent and provide for the future, and cherish country living. That is to say, we will be reflective, we will be responsible and moderate, and we will find time to relax in nature. It cannot be said that Churchill did not do these things well (even granting that he did live it up when he could afford to).

If we are to be half as productive as Churchill, and manage to capture the same joy and zest and stillness that defined his life, there are traits we will need to cultivate. Each of us will need to: 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.

In every situation ask: What is it? Why does it matter? Do I need it? Do I want it? What are the hidden costs? Will I look back from the distant future and be glad I did it? If I never knew about it at all—if the request was lost in the mail, if they hadn’t been able to pin me down to ask me—would I even notice that I missed out?

The key to a good walk is to be aware. To be present and open to the experience. Put your phone away. Put the pressing problems of your life away, or rather let them melt away as you move. Look down at your feet. What are they doing? Notice how effortlessly they move. Is it you who’s doing that? Or do they just sort of move on their own? Listen to the sound of the leaves crunching underfoot. Feel the ground pushing back against you. Breathe in. Breathe out. Consider who might have walked this very spot in the centuries before you. Consider the person who paved the asphalt you are standing on. What was going on with them? Where are they now? What did they believe? What problems did they have?

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

Ah, but the greats know that complete freedom is a nightmare. They know that order is a prerequisite of excellence and that in an unpredictable world, good habits are a safe haven of certainty.

It’s also how we get in the right headspace to do our work. The writer and runner Haruki Murakami talks about why he follows the same routine every day. “The repetition itself becomes the important thing,” he says, “it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.”

When our thoughts are empty and our body is in its groove, we do our best work.

Most people wake up to face the day as an endless barrage of bewildering and overwhelming choices, one right after another. What do I wear? What should I eat? What should I do first? What should I do after that? What sort of work should I do? Should I scramble to address this problem or rush to put out this fire? Needless to say, this is exhausting. It is a whirlwind of conflicting impulses, incentives, inclinations, and external interruptions. It is no path to stillness and hardly a way to get the best out of yourself.

To make that possible, you must go now and get your house in order. Get your day scheduled. Limit the interruptions. Limit the number of choices you need to make. If you can do this, passion and disturbance will give you less trouble. Because it will find itself boxed out.

A master is in control. A master has a system. A master turns the ordinary into the sacred.

“Tomorrow, my friend,” he said to himself, “you will find an earthenware lamp; for a man can only lose what he has.” For the rest of his life, he kept this cheaper earthen lamp instead. Upon his death, an admirer, entirely missing the point of Epictetus’s disdain for material items, purchased it for 3,000 drachmas.

One of Seneca’s most powerful metaphors is the slaveowner owned by his slaves, or the wealthy man whose vast estates lord over him rather than the other way around (in modern times, we have our own term for this: being “house poor”). Montaigne was perceptive enough to ask whether it was in fact he who was the pet of his cat. We also find a version of it from the East. Xunzi explained: The gentleman makes things his servants. The petty man is servant to things.

We don’t need to get rid of all our possessions, but we should constantly question what we own, why we own it, and whether we could do without.

Have you ever seen a house torn down? A lifetime of earning and savings, countless hours of decorating and accumulating until it was arranged just right, the place of so much living—and in the end it is reduced to a couple dumpsters full of debris. Even the incredibly wealthy, even the heads of state showered with gifts throughout their life, would only fill a few more bins.

Yet how many of us collect and acquire as if the metric tonnage of our possessions is a comment on our worth as individuals? Just as every hoarder becomes trapped by their own garbage, so too are we tied down by what we own. Every piece of expensive jewelry comes with an insurance bill, every mansion with a staff of groundskeepers, every investment with obligatio...

John Boyd, a sort of warrior-monk who revolutionized Western military strategy in the latter half of the twentieth century, refused to take checks from defense contractors and deliberately lived in a small condo even as he advised presidents and generals. “If a man can reduce his needs to zero,” he said, “he is truly free: there is nothing that can be taken from him and nothing anyone can do to hurt him.” To that we would add, “And he or she can also be still.”

The playwright Tennessee Williams spoke of luxury as the “wolf at the door.” It wasn’t the possessions that were the problem, he said, but the dependency. He called it the catastrophe of success, the way that we become less and less able to do things ourselves, the more and more we cannot be without a certain level of service. Not only is all your stuff a mess, but you need to pay someone to come clean it up.

There is also what we can term “comfort creep.” We get so used to a certain level of convenience and luxury that it becomes almost inconceivable that we used to live without it. As wealth grows, so does our sense of “normal.” But just a few years ago we were fine without this bounty. We had no problem eating ramen or squeezing into a small apartment. But now that we have more, our mind begins to lie to us. You need this. Be anxious that you might lose it. Protect it. Don’t share.

The best car is not the one that turns the most heads, but the one you have to worry about the least. The best clothes are the ones that are the most comfortable, that require you to spend the least amount of time shopping—regardless of what the magazines say. The best house for you is the one that feels the most like home. Don’t use your money to purchase loneliness, or headaches, or status anxiety.

You were born free—free of stuff, free of burden. But since the first time they measured your tiny body for clothes, people have been foisting stuff upon you. And you’ve been adding links to the pile of chains yourself ever since.

“If I was to sum up the single biggest problem of senior leadership in the Information Age,” four-star Marine Corps general and former secretary of defense James Mattis has said, “it’s lack of reflection. Solitude allows you to reflect while others are reacting. We need solitude to refocus on prospective decision-making, rather than just reacting to problems as they arise.”

Breakthroughs seem to happen with stunning regularity in the shower or on a long hike. Where don’t they happen? Shouting to be heard in a bar. Three hours into a television binge. Nobody realizes just how much they love someone while they’re booking back-to back-to-back meetings.

The morning before the rest of the house wakes up. Or late in the evening after the world has gone to sleep. Grab these moments. Schedule them. Cultivate them.

Yes, there is purity and meaning in giving your best to whatever you do—but life is much more of a marathon than it is a sprint. In a way, this is the distinction between confidence and ego. Can you trust yourself and your abilities enough to keep something in reserve? Can you protect the stillness and the inner peace necessary to win the longer race of life?

Good decisions are not made by those who are running on empty. What kind of interior life can you have, what kind of thinking can you do, when you’re utterly and completely overworked? It’s a vicious cycle: We end up having to work more to fix the errors we made when we would have been better off resting, having consciously said no instead of reflexively saying yes. We end up pushing good people away (and losing relationships) because we’re wound so tight and have so little patience.

The philosopher and writer Arthur Schopenhauer used to say that “sleep is the source of all health and energy.” He said it better still on a separate occasion: “Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death. The higher the interest rate and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.”

A 2017 study actually found that lack of sleep increases negative repetitive thinking. Abusing the body leads the mind to abuse itself.

When most of us hear the word “leisure,” we think of lounging around and doing nothing. In fact, this is a perversion of a sacred notion. In Greek, “leisure” is rendered as scholé—that is, school. Leisure historically meant simply freedom from the work needed to survive, freedom for intellectual or creative pursuits. It was learning and study and the pursuit of higher things.