Stillness is the Key

by Ryan Holiday

The news bombards us with one crisis after another on every screen we own—of which there are many. The grind of work wears us down and seems to never stop. We are overfed and undernourished. Overstimulated, overscheduled, and lonely.

“To hold the mind still is an enormous discipline,”

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.

Don’t reject a difficult or boring moment because it is not exactly what you want. Don’t waste a beautiful moment because you are insecure or shy. Make what you can of what you have been given. Live what can be lived. That’s what excellence is. That’s what presence makes possible.

A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.

In his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius says, “Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’”

Whatever you face, whatever you’re doing will require, first and foremost, that you don’t defeat yourself.

The world is like muddy water. To see through it, we have to let things settle. We can’t be disturbed by initial appearances, and if we are patient and still, the truth will be revealed to us.

Putting your own thinking down on paper lets you see it from a distance. It gives you objectivity that is so often missing when anxiety and fears and frustrations flood your mind.

It’s a few minutes of reflection that both demands and creates stillness. It’s a break from the world. A framework for the day ahead.

Confidence is the freedom to set your own standards and unshackle yourself from the need to prove yourself.

The Buddhists believed that anger was a kind of tiger within us, one whose claws tear at the body that houses it. To have a chance at stillness—and the clear thinking and big-picture view that defines it—we need to tame that tiger before it kills us.

I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.” Kierkegaard believed that sitting still was a kind of breeding ground for illness. But walking, movement, to him was almost sacred. It cleansed the soul and cleared the mind in a way that primed his explorations as a philosopher. Life is a path, he liked to say, we have to walk it.

If solitude is the school of genius, as the historian Edward Gibbon put it, then the crowded, busy world is the purgatory of the idiot.

You can’t run away from your choices—you can only fix them with better choices.

A plane ticket or a pill or some plant medicine is a treadmill, not a shortcut. What you seek will come only if you sit and do the work, if you probe yourself with real self-awareness and patience.

In the fourth century BC, Mengzi spoke of how the Way is near, but people seek it in what is distant.

“Nowhere you can go is more peaceful—more free of interruptions,” he said, “than your own soul.”

If true peace and clarity are what you seek in this life—and by the way, they are what you deserve—know that you will find them nearby and not far away. Stick fast, as Emerson said. Turn into yourself. Stand in place.

To see people who will notice a need in the world and do something about it. . . . Those are my heroes. —FRED ROGERS

He had believed he was a good man, but when the moment (indeed moments) called for goodness, he slunk off into the night.

The health of our spiritual ideals depends on what we do with our bodies in moments of truth.

A person who makes selfish choices or acts contrary to their conscience will never be at peace. A person who sits back while others suffer or struggle will never feel good, or feel that they are enough, no matter how much they accomplish or how impressive their reputation may be.