Stillness Is the Key
This is our fourth Note on one of Ryan Holiday’s books. Ryan is one of my absolute favorite writers. One of the testimonials in the front of the book perfectly captures my sentiment. Screenwriter and director Brian Koppelman (Rounders, Ocean’s Thirteen and Billions) puts it this way: “I don’t have many rules in life, but one I never break is: If Ryan Holiday writes a book, I read it as soon as I can get my hands on it.” (btw: Cal Newport’s the first testimonial. He says: “Some authors give advice. Ryan Holiday distills wisdom. This book is a must read.”) Penguin Random House sent me an advance copy of this book. As I knew it would be: It’s fantastic. Of course, the book’s packed with Big Ideas and I’m excited to share some of my favorites so let’s jump straight in!
Big Ideas
- Stillness? It’s the key that unlocks everythingIt’s the key that unlocks everything.
- Limit Your inputsTo get your mind right.
- Start journaling (Think: Spiritual windshield wipers!)Think: Spiritual windshield wipers.
- Choose VirtueTo get your soul right.
- The Domain of the BodyGet your Energy right.
“It wouldn’t have mattered whether you were a pupil at the feet of Confucius in 500 BC, a student of the early Greek philosopher Democritus one hundred years later, or sitting in Epicurus’s garden a generation after that—you would have heard equally emphatic calls for this imperturbability, unruffledness, and tranquility.
The Buddhist word for it was upekkha. The Muslims spoke of aslama. The Hebrews, hishtavut. The second book of the Bhagavad Gita, the epic poem of the warrior Arjuna, speaks of samatvam, an ‘evenness of mind—a peace that is ever the same.’ The Greeks, euthymia and hesychia. The Epicureans, ataraxia. The Christians, aequanimitas.
In English: stillness.
To be steady while the world spins around you. To act without frenzy. To hear only what needs to be heard. To possess quietude—exterior and interior—on command.
To tap into the dao and the logos. The Word. The Way.
Buddhism. Stoicism. Epicureanism. Christianity. Hinduism. It’s all but impossible to find a philosophical school or religion that does not venerate this inner peace—this stillness—as the highest good and as the key to elite performance and a happy life.
And when basically all the wisdom of the ancient world agrees on something, only a fool would decline to listen.”
~ Ryan Holiday from Stillness Is the Key
This is our fourth Note on one of Ryan Holiday’s books. We started with The Obstacle Is the Way. Then Ego Is the Enemy. Then The Daily Stoic.
And, now, Stillness Is the Key.
Ryan is one of my absolute favorite writers. One of the testimonials in the front of the book perfectly captures my sentiment. Screenwriter and director Brian Koppelman (Rounders, Ocean’s Thirteen and Billions) puts it this way: “I don’t have many rules in life, but one I never break is: If Ryan Holiday writes a book, I read it as soon as I can get my hands on it.”
(btw: Cal Newport’s the first testimonial. He says: “Some authors give advice. Ryan Holiday distills wisdom. This book is a must read.”)
Penguin Random House sent me an advance copy of this book. Thanks (again!) guys. As I knew it would be: It’s fantastic. (Get a copy here.)
Of course, the book’s packed with Big Ideas and I’m excited to share some of my favorites so let’s jump straight in!
Side note: I haven’t chatted with Ryan about it yet (I’m interviewing him in a couple days and I’ll test my hypothesis) but my guess on one of his next books: Being a Dad. I just learned about his fantastic site and newsletter: DailyDad—which is a sort of Dad version of his DailyStoic site and newsletter. Highly recommend both. In fact, those are the only two daily emails I receive after returning to email post burning the hermitage.)
Download MP3
Download PDFThe struggle is great, the task divine—to gain mastery, freedom, happiness, and tranquility.
Get the BookStillness? It’s the key that unlocks everything
“‘Vicksburg is the key,’ he [Lincoln] told the crowd with the certainty of a man who had studied the matter so intensely that he could express it in the simplest of terms. ‘The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket.’
As it happened, Lincoln turned out to be exactly right. It would take years, it would take incredible equanimity and patience, as well as ferocious commitment to his cause, but the strategy laid out in that room was what won the war and ended slavery in America forever. … In his reflective, intuitive manner, without being rushed or distracted, Lincoln had seen (and held fast to) what his own advisors, and even his enemy, had missed. Because he possessed the key that unlocked victory from the rancor and folly of all those early competing plans.
In our own lives, we face a seemingly equal number of problems and are pulled in countless directions by competing priorities and beliefs. In the way of everything we hope to accomplish , personally and professionally, sit obstacles and enemies. Martin Luther King Jr. observed that there was a violent civil war raging within each and every person—between our good and bad impulses, between our ambitions and our principles, between what we can be and how hard it is to actually get there.
In those battles, in that war, stillness is the river and the railroad junction through which so much depends. It is the key . . .
Stillness is the key to, well, just about everything.
To being a better parent, a better artist, a better investor, a better athlete, a better scientist, a better human being. To unlocking all that we are capable of in this life.”
Ryan kicks the book off with a story about Abraham Lincoln and the “key” to win the Civil War.
Then, as he so masterfully does, he connects that compelling historical event to some profound wisdom—telling us that if WE want to win the civil war that is constantly (!) being waged within ourselves, we must also find the key.
Which is why the book is called “Stillness Is the Key.”
Of course, the book is all about helping us find and use that key. Ryan weaves in ancient wisdom and modern science with a whole host of practical tools to help us gain mastery with stillness.
He shares that wisdom via stories featuring everyone from John F. Kennedy and Fred Rogers to Anne Frank and Queen Victoria. Plus Jesus and Tiger Woods, Socrates, Napoleon, Buddha, Leonardo da Vinci and Marcus Aurelius.
Like his other books, this one is also broken down into three parts. Stillness is discovered by mastering our Mind + Spirit + Body.
As Ryan says: “The premise of this book is that the three domains—the mind, the heart, and the body—must be in harmony. The truth is that for most people not only are these domains out of sync, but they are at war with each other. We will never have peace until that civil war Dr. King described is settled.
History teaches us that peace is what provides the opportunity to build. It is the postwar boom that turns nations into superpowers, and ordinary people into powerhouses.”
P.S. Our last Note was on Marie Forleo’s Everything Is Figureoutable. She also talks about a “key”: “All you need is one core meta belief, a master key that unlocks every imaginable door in the castle of your consciousness. It’s like throwing a switch that instantly illuminates a field of infinite potential. If you haven’t yet guessed, the whole purpose of this book is to inspire you to adopt the supremely powerful belief that everything is figureoutable.”
Remember, there’s no greatness in the future. Or clarity. Or insight. Or happiness. Or peace. There is only this moment.
We have to do the kind of thinking that 99 percent of the population is just not doing, and we have to stop doing the destructive thinking that they spend 99 percent of their time doing.
That space between your ears—that’s yours. You don’t just have to control what gets in, you also have to control what goes on in there. You have to protect it from yourself, from your own thoughts. Not with sheer force, but rather with a kind of gentle, persistent sweeping. Be the librarian who says, ‘Shhh!’ to the rowdy kids, or tells the jerk on his phone to please take it outside. Because the mind is an important and sacred place. Keep it clean and clear.
Limit Your inputs
“It is in this stillness that we can be present and finally see truth. It is in this stillness that we can hear the voice inside us.
How different would the world look if people spent as much time listening to their conscience as they did to chattering broadcasts? If they could respond to the calls of their convictions as quickly as we answer the dings and rings of technology in our pockets.
All this noise. All this information. All these inputs.
We are afraid of the silence. We are afraid of looking stupid. We are afraid of missing out. We are afraid of being the bad guy who says, ‘Nope, not interested.’
We’d rather make ourselves miserable than make ourselves a priority, than be our best selves.
Than be still . . . and in charge of our own information diet.”
That’s from Part I: “The Domain of the Mind,” Chapter #2: “Limit Your Inputs.”
Which, of course, immediately made me think of Rule #1 from The Power of Agency. Want to “turn the key” on your ability to be your (Optimus!) best self?
As they say: “Control Stimuli. Cutting back the number of distractions in your immediate environment increases your ability to choose where your attention goes, improves your concentration, bolsters creative thinking, and makes you less susceptible to both impulsive acts and poorly thought-out decisions.”
In other words, Limit Your Inputs.
Ryan kicks this chapter off with the always eye-opening line from Herbert Simon who told us that “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
The full passage from which that gem is mined is worth a reread. Recall that Simon was a psychologist and Nobel Laureate in Economics. He helped create our understanding of the pernicious effects of what he dubbed “attention economics.”
He tells us: “…information consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”
Remember: He wrote that in 1971 when the inputs available were a miniscule fraction of what now bombards our consciousness.
Ryan also references Thich Nhat Hanh in this section. In Silence, he tells us that our consciousness needs to “digest” every single piece of input we are exposed to. Consume too much and you get (very) bloated. And sick.
Which leads us to the great Stoic Epictetus who tells us: “If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters.”
All of which leads us back to YOU.
How’re your inputs? What’s ONE thing you KNOW you could do to Optimize?
Today the day?
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.
Start journaling (Think: Spiritual windshield wipers!)
“Anne [Frank] used her journal to reflect: ‘How noble and good everyone could be’ she wrote, ‘if at the end of the day they were to review their own behavior and weigh up the rights and wrongs. They would automatically try to do better at the start of each new day, and after a while, would certainly accomplish a great deal.’ …
That is what journaling is all about. It’s spiritual windshield wipers, as the writer Julia Cameron once put it. It’s a few minutes reflection that both demands and creates stillness. It’s a break from the world. A framework for the day ahead. A coping mechanism for troubles of the hours just past. A revving up of your creative juices, for relaxing and clearing.
Once, twice, three times a day. Whatever. Find what works for you.
Just know that it may turn out to be the most important thing you do all day.”
That’s from a chapter in the Mind domain called “Start Journaling” in which we learn about the “almost comically long and fascinatingly diverse” list of people who have practiced the art of journaling—including Marcus Aurelius, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Anaïs Nin and Ben Franklin.
How should we journal?
Ryan says, “Who cares!” There’s no right or wrong way. Just DO IT.
Back to our last Note on Marie Forleo’s Everything Is Figureoutable. She tells us about some research that tells us we increase our odds of success by 42% (FORTY-TWO PERCENT!) by simply writing our goals down.
In that Note, I suggested that, if our ultimate goal is to live with eudaimonia, then we should write THAT goal down on a daily basis.
I shared our Carpe Diem journaling process in which we get clarity on our Optimus-best “Big 3” Identities in Energy + Work + Love, then we reflect on the Virtues that the daimon-inspired best version of ourselves embodies in each of our domains then, perhaps most importantly, we identify the #1 behavior we’ll engage in on each of those domains.
Throw in something that needs a little work and something that’s awesome and worthy of our gratitude and voila! Carpe Diem.
Ryan has his own process and journal you can get. It’s called The Daily Stoic Journal.
However you do it, here’s to flipping on the spiritual windshield wipers and spending a few minutes in reflection that both demands and creates stillness. TODAY.
Most of us would be seized with fear if our bodies went numb, and would do everything possible to avoid it, yet we take no interest at all in the numbing of our souls.
To have an impulse and to resist it, to sit with it and examine it, to let it pass by like a bad smell—this is how we develop spiritual strength. This is how we become who we want to be in this world.
Choose Virtue
“Marcus Aurelius famously described a number of what he called ‘epithets for the self.’ Among his were: Upright. Modest. Straightforward. Sane. Cooperative. These were, then, the traits that served him well as emperor.
There are many other traits that could be added to this list: Honest. Patient. Caring. Kind. Brave. Calm. Firm. Generous. Forgiving. Righteous.
There is one word, however, under which all these epithets sit: virtue.
Virtue, the Stoics believed, was the highest good—the summum bonum—and should be the principle behind all our actions. Virtue is not holiness, but rather moral and civic excellence in the course of daily life. It’s a sense of pure rightness that emerges from our souls and is made real through the actions that we take.
The East prized virtue as much as the West. The Daodejing, for instance, actually translated as The Way of Virtue. Confucius, who advised many of the rulers and princes of his day, would have agreed with Marcus that a leader was well served by the pursuit of virtue. His highest compliment would have been to call a ruler a junzi—a word that translators still have trouble finding equivalents for in English but is roughly understood as a person who emanates integrity, honor, and self-control.”
Welcome to Part 2: The Domain of the Soul.
What does Ryan tell us we must do first if we want to Optimize our relationship with our soul? The same thing we talk about all the time: “Choose Virtue.”
You know that “Big 3” Carpe Diem journaling we just walked through? Well… That’s our attempt to, as we say in the Mastery phase of our Coach program, “Operationalize Virtue.”
To briefly recap that Carpe Diem process in this context: We start with our good-soul-inspired (eudaimonic!) sense of who we would be if we expressed the best version of ourselves Today via the reflection on our Identity—remembering that “a sense of pure rightness” “emerges from our souls.” Then… After briefly reflecting on those virtues we will embody, we remember that virtue “is made real through the actions we take.”
As we strive to live in deeper and deeper integrity with our cherished virtues, Ryan tells us we cultivate a sort of “soul power” that we can draw on when we face inevitable challenges.
He further admonishes us: “Each of us must cultivate a moral code, a higher standard that we love almost more than life itself. Each of us must sit down and ask: What’s important to me? What would I rather die than betray? How am I going to live today?
These are not idle questions or the banal queries of a personality quiz. We must have the answers if we want the stillness (and the strength) that emerges from the citadel of our own virtue.”
I repeat: What’s important to you? What would you rather die than betray? How are you going to live today?
P.S. The other chapters in The Domain of the Soul include thoughtful reflections on the importance of healing the inner child, being grateful for “enough,” forming relationships, controlling anger, seeing that everything is interconnected and accepting a higher power.
The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.
There is no stillness for the person who cannot appreciate things as they are, particularly when that person has objectively done so much. The creep of more, more, more is like a hydra. Satisfy one—lop it off the bucket list—and two more grow in its place.
The world hurls at us so many hurricanes. Those who have decided to go through existence as an island are the most exposed and the most ravaged by the storms and whirlwinds.
The Domain of the Body
“As Paul Johnson, one of Churchill’s best biographers, would write, ‘The balance he maintained between flat-out work and creative and restorative leisure is worth study by anyone holding a top position.’ Johnson as a seventeen-year-old, decades before his own career as a writer, met Churchill on the street and shouted at him, ‘Sir, to what do you attribute your success in life?’
Immediately, Churchill replied, ‘Conservation of energy. Never stand up when you can sit down, and never sit down when you can lie down.’
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 that 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.”
I enjoyed the whole book. There were many passages that jump out and fire up your soul. But… The introduction to The Domain of the Body from which that passage is pulled? It’s astonishingly (!) good.
I’ve read a fair number of books at this stage and I have a deep appreciation for what *really* good writing feels like. And this chapter? It’s one of the best 16 pages I’ve ever read.
Churchill was one of the most astonishingly productive human beings ever. He served in public office for six and a half decades. He wrote something like ten million words and over forty books. Plus he painted more than five hundred paintings and gave more than 2,300 speeches. Oh, and “he helped save the world from the Nazi menace.”
Although a portly guy and not necessarily the portrait of fitness per se, Churchill managed his energy exquisitely and serves as an exemplar for Ryan’s introduction to the importance of managing “The Domain of the Body.”
Or, as we would say, getting our Energy optimized so we can show up most fully in our Work and our Love.
Although Ryan doesn’t put it in these terms, Churchill was a master at “oscillating”—going from ALL IN ON to equally ALL IN OFF. He worked like a beast but he also took the time for two-hour long naps, laying bricks and reading. (btw: The precision of his schedule is inspiring.)
The result? He had what I challenge us to aspire to: Energized Tranquility.
The alternate? Enervated Anxiety—that state of incessant near-burnout that’s the result of forgetting the fact that we need to TRAIN our recovery. Those “off” cycles are JUST as important as the intense ON cycles of life.
Following a rigorous, disciplined protocol of proper nutrition, movement, and sleep is how we cultivate our emotional stamina that allows us to courageously confront life’s biggest challenges. With stillness.
Back to Ryan who tells us: “We are all worms, [Churchill] once joked to a friend, simple organisms that eat and defecate and then die, but he liked to think of himself as a glowworm.”
Here’s to flipping the stillness switch that gives us that effervescent glow
We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones.
Life is hard. Fortune is fickle. We can’t afford to be weak. We can’t afford to be fragile. We must strengthen our bodies as the physical vessel for our minds and spirit, subject to the capriciousness of the physical world.
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