Stillness is the Key

by Ryan Holiday

Unconducive to thinking, creating, writing, or making good decisions. The noise and distractions of the empire were enough “to make me hate my very powers of hearing,”

“I force my mind to concentrate, and keep it from straying to things outside itself; all outdoors may be bedlam, provided that there is no disturbance within.”

if a person could develop peace within themselves—if they could achieve apatheia,

“You may be sure that you are at peace with yourself,” Seneca wrote, “when no noise reaches you, when no word shakes you out of yourself, whether it be flattery or a threat, or merely an empty sound buzzing about you with unmeaning sin.”

—you would have heard equally emphatic calls for this imperturbability, unruffledness, and tranquility.

upekkha

a...

hish...

samatvam, an “evenness of mind—a peace that is...

eut...

hesy...

ata...

aequani...

still...

And when basically all the wisdom of the ancient world agrees on something, only a fool would decline to listen.

Who has the power to stop? Who has time to think? Is there anyone not affected by the din and dysfunctions of our time?

All of humanity’s problems,”

“stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

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.

It is an attainable path to enlightenment and excellence, greatness and happiness, performance as well as presence, for every kind of person.

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.

“Vicksburg is the key,”

The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket.”

Every other important victory in the Civil War—from Gettysburg to Sherman’s March to the Sea to Lee’s surrender—was made possible because at Lincoln’s instruction Ulysses S. Grant laid siege to Vicksburg in 1863, and by taking the city split the South in two and gained control of that important waterway.

Because he possessed the key that unlocked victory from the rancor and folly of all those early competing plans.

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.

Anyone who has concentrated so deeply that a flash of insight or inspiration suddenly visited them knows stillness.

there is really nothing to obtain.”

“You are seeking for an ox while you are yourself on it.”

It’s about the cultivation of and the connection to that powerful force given to us at birth, the one that has atrophied in our modern, busy lives.

To hold the mind still is an enormous discipline,” the late comedian Garry Shandling

“one which must be faced with the greatest commitment of your life.”

We will raid every school and every era we can to find strategies to help us direct our thoughts, process our emotions, and master our bodies.

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

And whatever factors had contributed to its creation, no matter how inevitable war must have appeared, it fell on him, at the very least, to just not make things worse. Because it might mean the end of life on planet Earth.

Barbara Tuchman’s

The Guns of August,

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.

With clear thinking, wisdom, patience, and a keen eye for the root of a complex, provocative conflict, Kennedy had saved the world from a nuclear holocaust.

The Daodejing

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.

like the rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands, unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it.”

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. We must cultivate mental stillness to succeed in life and to successfully navigate the many crises it throws our way. It will not be easy. But it is essential. For the rest of his short life, Kennedy worried that people would learn the wrong lessons from his actions during the Missile Crisis. It wasn’t that he had stood up to the Soviets and threatened them with superior weapons until they backed down. Instead, calm and rational leadership had prevailed over rasher, reckless voices. The crisis was resolved thanks to a mastery of his own thinking, and the thinking of those underneath him—and it was these traits that America would need to call on repeatedly in the years to come. The lesson was one not of force but of the power of patience, alternating confidence and humility, foresight and presence, empathy and unbending conviction,

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

The proposition here is just to empty the self. To be able to be present.”

“People don’t understand that the hardest thing is actually doing something that is close to nothing,”

Tolstoy observed that love can’t exist off in the future. Love is only real if it’s happening right now.