Stillness is the Key

by Ryan Holiday

The twelve-step process is not itself transformative. It’s the decision to stop and to listen and to follow that does all the work.

Even if we are the products of evolution and randomness, does this not take us right back to the position of the Stoics? As subjects to the laws of gravity and physics, are we not already accepting a higher, inexplicable power?

we are all one, that we are all in this together, and that this fact is the only thing that truly matters.

We are all strands in a long rope that stretches back countless generations and ties together every person in every country on every continent. We are all thinking and feeling the same things, we are all made of and motivated by the same things. We are all stardust.

The truth is that a good routine is not only a source of great comfort and stability, it’s the platform from which stimulating and fulfilling work is possible.

Nobody realizes just how much they love someone while they’re booking back-to back-to-back meetings.

“In real life,” George Orwell observed, “it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer.”

The overworked person creates a crisis that they try to solve by working harder. Mistakes are piled upon mistakes by the exhausted, delirious mind. The more they try, the worse it gets and the angrier they get that no one appreciates their sacrifice.