Ryan Holiday, author of the brilliant book, Ego is the Enemy, has written another masterpiece, Stillness is the Key. The premise of the book is that, in our fast-changing and chaotic world, a key attribute of achieving contentment and developing as a leader is to achieve stillness. Holiday defines stillness as “To be steady while the world spins around you. To act without frenzy. To hear what only needs to be heard. To possess quietude – exterior and interior – on command”. The author quotes French philosopher Blaise Pascal in 1654 who said, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone”. Stillness is required to become master of your own life and to “survive and thrive in any and every environment, no matter how loud or busy”.

Stillness is the Key contains many important life lessons. Here are some of them.

  • Seek wisdom – Wisdom is “The need to ask questions. The need to study and reflect. The importance of intellectual humility. The power of experiences – most of all failures and mistakes – to open our eyes to truth and understanding. In this way, wisdom is the sense of the big picture, the accumulation of experience and the ability to rise above the biases, the traps that catch lazier thinkers”.
  • Let go – Holiday writes, “What we need in life, in the arts, in sports, is to loosen up, to become more flexible, to get to a place where there is nothing in our way – including our own obsession with certain outcomes…Mastering our mental domain – as paradoxical as it might seem – requires us to step back from the rigidity of the word “mastery”. We’ll get the stillness we need if we focus on the individual steps, if we embrace the process and give up chasing. We’ll think better if we aren’t thinking so hard“.
  • Choose virtue – “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 we take”. To lead a virtuous life means sitting down and examining ourselves. “What do we stand for? What do we believe to be essential and important? What are we really living for? Deep in the marrow of our bones, in the chambers of our heart, we know the answer. The problem is that the busyness of life, the realities of pursuing a career and surviving in the world, come between us and that self-knowledge”.
  • Enough – Holiday asks us, “What do we want more of in life? That’s the question. It’s not accomplishments. It’s not popularity. It’s moments we feel like we are enough”. Being truly satisfied means the knowledge that you have enough. “Most people never learn that their accomplishments will ultimately fail to provide the relief and happiness we tell ourselves they will. Or they come to understand this only after so much time and money, so many relationships and moments of inner peace, were sacrificed on the altar of achievement. We get to the finish line only to think: This is it? Now what?“.
  • Say no – Holiday wisely writes, “Each of us needs to get better at saying no…Always think about what you’re really being asked to give. Because the answer is often a piece of your life, usually in exchange for something you don’t even want. Remember, that’s what time is. It’s your life, it’s your flesh and blood, that you can never get back…When we know what to say no to, we can say yes to the things that matter”.
  • Seek solitude – The author believes that “Sometimes you have to disconnect in order to better connect with yourself and with the people you serve and love”. Holiday quotes Marine Corps general and former secretary of defense James Mattis who said,” If I was to sum up the single biggest problem of senior leadership in the Information Age, it’s lack of reflection. Solitude allows you to reflect while others are reacting. We need solitude to refocus on prospective decision-making, rather to just reacting to problems as they arise”. Holiday understands that “the wise and busy also learn that solitude and stillness are there in pockets, if we look for them”.

Stillness is the Key is a must-read. Hopefully, after reading the above, you won’t use the excuse that “I don’t have time”.