Stillness is the Key

by Ryan Holiday

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.

Wisdom does not immediately produce stillness or clarity. Quite the contrary. It might even make things less clear—make them darker before the dawn.

We want to sit with doubt. We want to savor it. We want to follow it where it leads. Because on the other side is truth.

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

David’s confidence arose from experience, not ego. He had been through worse and done it with his bare hands.

The story of these two combatants may be true. It may be a fable. But it remains one of the best stories we have about the perils of ego, the importance of humility, and the necessity of confidence.

Shakespeare’s image for this feeling was of a thief wearing a stolen robe he knows is too big.

likened imposter syndrome to the feeling of a bank clerk who is cooking the books. Frantically trying to keep it all going. Terrified of being discovered.

He knew he just needed to stay the course. He also knew that losing hope—or his cool—was unlikely to help anything.

“unpretending hero, whom no ill omens could deject and no triumph unduly exalt.”)

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.

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

“The hits on the target,” he would say, “are only the outward proof and confirmation of your purposelessness at its highest, of your egolessness, your self-abandonment, or whatever you like to call this state.”

focus, patience, breathing, persistence, clarity. And most of all, the ability to let go.

Only through stillness are the vexing problems solved. Only through reducing our aims are the most difficult targets within our reach.

“shrug it all off and wipe it clean—every annoyance and distraction—and reach utter stillness.” To

History teaches us that peace is what provides the opportunity to build.

unforgiving world of sports. Starting when Tiger was about seven, Earl took active measures to develop his son’s concentration. Whenever Tiger teed off, Earl would cough. Or jingle change in his pocket. Or drop his clubs. Or throw a ball at him. Or block his line of sight. “I wanted to teach him mental toughness,” Earl recounted.

Everybody’s got a hungry heart—that’s true. But how we choose to feed that heart matters.

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.

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.

Different situations naturally call for different virtues and different epithets for the self. When

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.

childhood. Maybe someone didn’t treat us right. Or we experienced something terrible. Or our parents were just a little too busy or a little too critical or a little too stuck dealing with their own issues to be what we needed.

“We all demand reparation for our early wounds to our narcissism,”

How much better and less scary life is when we don’t have to see it from the perspective of a scared, vulnerable child?

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.

“Hey, buddy. It’s okay. I know you’re hurt, but I am going to take care of

Give more. Give what you didn’t get. Love more.

Drop the old story.

Do we not fall prey to various desires in our own personal lives? Do we not know better and do it anyway?

person enslaved to their urges is not free—whether they are a plumber or the president.

because they freely chose to indulge their endless appetites, whatever they happened to be?

“An envious man pains himself as though he were an enemy.”

he felt himself being pulled by a strong desire: What will happen to me if I get what I want? How will I feel after?

most desires are at their core irrational emotions, and that’s why stillness requires that we sit down and dissect them.

If wanting something makes you miserable while you don’t have it, doesn’t that diminish the true value of the reward? If getting what you “want” has its consequences too, is that really pleasurable? If the same drive that helps you achieve initially also leads you inevitably to overreach or overdo, is it really an advantage?

desire the “ever-present enemy of the wise . . .

which like a fire cannot find satisfaction.” The

“on the level of beasts.”

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.

that one of the benefits of journaling—Confessions, as the Christians called the genre—was that it helped stop him from sinning.

Let us each note and write down our actions and impulses of the soul . . . as though we were to report them to each other; and you may rest assured that from utter shame of becoming known we shall stop sinning and

entertaining sinful thoughts altogether. . . . Just as we would not give ourselves to lust within sight of each other, so if we were to write down our thoughts as if telling them to each other, we shall so much the more guard ourselves against foul thoughts for shame of being known. Now, then, let the written account stand for the eyes of our fellow ascetics, so that blushing at writing the same as if we were actually seen, we may never ponder evil.

Imagine the stillness that sense of enough

No ceaseless wanting. No insecurity of comparison. Feeling satisfied with yourself and your work? What gift!

Deeply spiritual, introspective work is required to understand what that idea means—work that may well destroy illusions and assumptions we have held our entire lives.

“Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?”