Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday

Book Summary

This is a comprehensive summary of “Stillness Is the Key” by Ryan Holiday. The book explores timeless stoic and buddhist philosophy.

what’s in it for me? embrace the power of stillness.#

Introduction

welcome to the chapter-2, ryan holiday's stillness is the key, narrated by me, brian dosey.

when was the last time you just stopped, put down your devices, ignored your notifications, and simply spent a moment being still, being present, thoughtful, and reflective?

in today's busy, noisy, distracting world, it's hard to be still.

but history's greatest thinkers and leaders have recognized that stillness is a kind of secret weapon.

they had different names for it.

the buddhists called it upekka, the muslims referred to aslama, the stoics named it apatheia.

but they were talking about the same thing, an inner peace, a profound stillness.

the benefits of fostering stillness are hard to overstate.

it can bring moments of great clarity and creativity.

it can help you triumph over bad temper.

it can create the space to appreciate and rejoice in the pleasures of life.

and anybody can learn to be still, even as the world rages and roars around them.

so, let's dive in and, over the course of the next 10 chapters, find out why stillness is the key.

quick warning before we do, though, just so you know, there's some strong language in chapter 6.

so, please take care while listening.

finding stillness#

chapter 1.

finding stillness one day in rome, in the first century ce, the power broker, playwright, and philosopher lucius aeneas seneca was trying to work.

it wasn't easy.

the noise in seneca's environment was unrelenting.

beneath his room was a gym where athletes grunted and groaned, their weights banging and clanking.

out in the street, dogs barked and vendors shouted their wares.

as though this external ruckus weren't enough, seneca was also plagued by a cacophony of concerns.

his finances were under threat, his enemies had pushed him out of political life, and he was losing favor with his patron, the emperor nero.

all in all, it was not a situation conducive to getting much done, let alone engaging in activities of intellectual value like deep thought, creativity, or decision-making.

seneca's problem, struggling to find stillness in a very unstill world, probably sounds familiar.

in our time, things are even noisier.

to the banging and barking of seneca's environment, we can add loud phone conversations, cars roaring by, planes overhead.

and depending on where you live, there may not be so many vendors shouting their wares, but now we've got overflowing inboxes and unceasing social media notifications, an eternal chorus of pinging and dinging and ringing.

so, what can you do?

well, for his part, seneca found peace amid the noise by embracing stillness.

what exactly is stillness?

well, have you ever concentrated so deeply that, as though from nowhere, like a bolt from the blue, a burst of insight suddenly struck you?

that is stillness.

or have you stepped in front of an audience and poured months of practice into a single powerful performance?

that is also stillness.

or have you watched the slow rise of the morning sun and been warmed by the simple fact of being alive?

that, too, is stillness.

as the poet rainer maria rilke puts it, in a state of stillness, we are full, complete, and all the random and approximate are muted.

seneca was able to find this stillness, to mute his inner and outer environments, and, though plagued by troubles and distractions, to find the serenity to write incisive, powerful philosophical essays that have influenced millions and millions of people.

seneca believed that if people could find peace within themselves, all else would be possible—thought, work, a good life—even if the world around them was at war.

now, seneca lived thousands of years ago, but the power of stillness abides.

around the world, philosophers and religions have embraced stillness, calling it by many different names, as i mentioned before.

upekha, that's the buddhists.

aslama, that's the muslims.

aquanimitas, that's the christians.

apatheia, that's the stoics.

and, by the way, apatheia, which is the root of the word apathy, doesn't mean listless or apathetic or emotionless.

it means to be undisturbed by passion, but in a good way.

equanimity might be the best translation, a kind of emotional stillness.

the point is that under different names in different guises, stillness can be found all around the world and all throughout history.

in this chapter, we'll explore how to find it for ourselves.

stillness in crisis#

chapter 2.

stillness in crisis on october 15, 1962, john f. kennedy, the president of the united states, woke up to a dramatically changed world.

while he'd been sleeping, the cia had identified soviet nuclear missile sites being constructed in cuba, less than a hundred miles from the florida coast.

suddenly, what had seemed like a remote possibility was very close to home, the possibility of a nuclear attack on the united states.

it was, as i'm sure you can imagine, a time of immense pressure for kennedy.

if the soviet provocation spiraled into war, and if a war resulted in a nuclear attack, well, kennedy knew that at least 70 million people would likely die in the initial strikes.

the advice from his advisors was clear and totally instinctual.

aggression must be met with greater aggression.

the missile sites had to be destroyed.

but kennedy resisted.

if this approach failed, it would trigger a catastrophic nuclear war.

the 13 tense days that followed have come to be known as the cuban missile crisis.

had kennedy failed to maintain his equanimity, had he failed to find that stillness and followed his advisor's advice, we might remember that time by a different name.

the beginning of world war iii, maybe, or we might not be alive to remember it at all.

luckily, though, kennedy was able to remain composed, even as the threat of armageddon loomed.

how?

well, rather than losing his head, he found stillness.

so next time you find yourself in a high-stakes situation, try to do the same.

act from a place of stillness, not a place of stress.

you can do this by doing what kennedy did.

resist your gut feelings and slow things down.

let's look at his process.

so first, he resisted his gut reaction.

he didn't immediately order a missile strike on the missile sites.

second, he slowed things down.

instead of rushing into a decision, kennedy stayed reflective.

sailing was his usual meditation-like activity, but there was no time for that.

so instead, he swam in the white house pool to give himself space to think.

he also sought peace and solitude in the rose garden.

later, he even thanked the resident gardener for her contribution to solving the crisis.

eventually, he announced a blockade of cuba.

now, it didn't resolve the crisis, but kennedy had decided that a swift outcome was less important than making sure his soviet equivalent, first secretary nikita khrushchev, also had time and space to think.

in the end, this proved to be a great move.

eleven days after the crisis began, the soviet leader wrote to kennedy.

if leaders do not display statesman-like wisdom, he wrote, they will clash, bringing mutual annihilation.

the crisis was over, and negotiations over the removal of missiles began.

kennedy had helped pull the world back from the edge of global cataclysm.

and he'd accomplished this not by flexing the muscle of u.s. military might, not by meeting aggression with more aggression, but by finding the time and space, the stillness, to think his options through and choose the wisest course.

the power of presence#

chapter 3 of 10 the power of presence in 2010, at new york's museum of modern art, the performance artist marina abramovich turned stillness into a feat of endurance.

in the museum for 750 hours across 79 days, she sat still and silent.

across from her chair was another chair in which visitors could come and also sit.

more than 1,500 museum visitors sat in that chair.

each time, marina took a moment to look down and collect herself before looking up.

when she did meet the gaze of her new visitor, she was truly there, truly with them.

the show was called the artist is present.

marina knew that if she started daydreaming or exhibited fatigue or boredom, if she let her presentness slip in any way, it would instantly be clear to the person opposite her.

so she focused solely on the present moment.

and the visitors who sat across from her found this experience deeply moving.

some of them, when confronted by her complete presentness, her total occupation of the moment, were overcome by emotion and wept openly.

why?

well, most people, most of the time, aren't trying to occupy the moment.

they're trying to get out of it.

instead of enjoying a beautiful sunset, what do we do?

we take a photo of it.

or if we have a quiet evening at home, our minds race through lists of things that need doing.

even standing in line to see the famous performance artist marina abramovich, we're not totally there.

we're checking our phones instead.

but not being present comes at a cost.

because obvious as it sounds, as much as you've probably heard this before, it's true.

the present is all you've got.

if you're not here, now, really in this moment, then you're letting life slip past you unnoticed.

the thing about artists like marina abramovich is that they remain awake to the present.

they really are present.

while we go through our lives distracting ourselves with hopes and fears and fantasies and worries, artists are truly here, which means they truly see what's going on around them.

and it's this stillness, this occupation of the moment, this ability to see what's really there, it's that that breeds brilliance.

but being truly present isn't just something that benefits artists.

athletes, for example, are coached to be absolutely present, not because it's nice or important to cherish each passing moment, but because distraction means subpar performance.

to be at the top of your game, you have to be there.

you have to be completely in it.

the same goes for life.

be here.

whatever you're working on, don't consider what naysayers might say or some future outcome.

don't worry or overthink.

still your mind and be present.

you'll be surprised at the results.

chapter 4.

reflect deeply#

reflect deeply on june 12, 1942, anne frank wrote in her diary for the very first time.

she hoped she would be able to confide everything to the diary she wrote and that it would be a source of comfort to her.

just 24 hours later, anne's family was forced into hiding from the nazis.

anne continued to journal, a habit that continued to reward her with valuable insights, even under the dire circumstances in which she and her family found themselves.

she discovered that writing can be a way to watch yourself, as if you're a stranger, giving you a fresh perspective on your actions.

how noble everyone would be, she once wrote, if, at the end of the day, they reviewed their behavior.

surely we would all try to do better the following day.

anne frank wasn't the first to notice this.

our stoic philosopher friend seneca, for example, wrote in his journal every night.

he spared no detail and hid from no hard truth.

after that, he said, he slept soundly.

now, history is full of other notable journalists, including oscar wilde, queen victoria, the tennis champion martina navratilova, and baseball all-star sean green.

and no wonder.

there's clear evidence that journaling improves our well-being.

studies have shown that keeping a journal helps to restore well-being following traumatic events.

a university of arizona study, for example, found that people going through a divorce found it easier to move on if they recorded their experiences in a journal.

so, to cut through the noise of daily life and focus on the most important reflections of the day, try picking up a pen and paper.

and when you do, take seneca's example and be sure to face up to any tough questions that arise.

why did i get so worked up about this today?

why do i care about impressing my co-workers?

how did today's problems reveal my character?

honestly and thoughtfully facing up to these questions is the best way, really the only way, to get the most out of journaling.

but how do you start?

well, the how, when, and where don't really matter that much.

what's important is simply creating a quiet moment to get things off your chest, to find stillness through writing and reflection.

journal in the evening, the morning, or for five minutes while sitting on the train, whenever you can, really, it might be the most important time in your entire day.

cultivate silence#

life is noisy.

phones ring, notifications beep, and many of us wear headphones on a daily basis, blocking out unwanted noise with different, more desirable noise.

sitting in an airplane with nowhere to go, you can see how much we rely on, quote-unquote, noise to avoid silence.

we watch terrible movies or listen to podcasts rather than sit in silence and contemplate the terrain of our own thoughts.

but why turn our minds over to distracting noise when we could instead take advantage of the great riches that silence offers us?

those riches are something that experimental music composer john cage understood profoundly.

cage had always been fascinated by silence.

in 1928, during a high school speaking competition, he even argued that the united states should establish a national day of quiet.

it was the beginning of a life spent exploring what silence truly means.

cage's most famous creation, titled 4'33", is a composition with a twist.

it's a four-minute, 33-second-long stretch of uninterrupted silence.

during a pianist's first performance of the piece, the audience sat listening to the silence.

during the first movement of the piece, they could hear the wind outside the hall.

during the second, raindrops pattered on the roof.

after the performance, cage pointed out something important.

silence, he said, doesn't really exist.

what we think of as silence isn't actually silent because it's full of accidental sounds.

by giving people silence, cage was helping them to start actually hearing.

there's a lesson there for all of us, at least for all of us whose lives are too noisy.

silence, or rather an absence of noise, can help us to refocus and to find clarity, and to find stillness.

leadership expert randy stuttman, who works with ceos and wall street leaders, once studied how business big shots recharge during their time off.

the key, he discovered, lay in spending time in environments with minimal noise, enjoying activities like long-distance cycling, swimming, or scuba diving.

there, these leaders recharged by escaping from the voices that cluttered their working lives.

dialing down the noise like this can help us discover a deeper awareness of what's around us.

that could mean simple awareness of the rain on the roof as a pianist sits silently at a piano.

or it could mean the answers to your business problems, which pop into your head during your 20th mile on the bike.

stillness of the soul#

chapter 6 of 10, and just a reminder, this is the chapter with the strong language, so do with that information what you will.

stillness of the soul.

in june 2008, tiger woods won an 18-hole playoff to win the us open golf championship for the third time.

it was his 14th victory at a major, and some described it as one of the finest victories ever seen in sport.

and what's more, he did the whole thing with a leg that was broken in two places.

it was the high point of woods' career.

but not long afterward, his world collapsed.

for 21 days, the front pages of the new york post detailed his affairs with porn stars and waitresses, as well as trysts in church parking lots, and with young daughters of family friends.

his secret life exposed, woods didn't win another match for over ten years.

as the vietnamese monk thich nhat hanh has said, while the surface of the ocean may seem still, underneath there are currents.

that was certainly the case for tiger woods, a man famous for his ability to find stillness in moments of stress, who was, in fact, at the mercy of powerful riptides lurking under the surface.

all of this is no surprise once you understand how tiger woods was raised to be a champion.

his father, who knew that golf relies on an ability to keep a clear head, would make fun of woods as he tried to tee off, calling him a, here comes the strong language, motherfucker or slinging racist abuse at moments of high concentration.

his mother threatened to beat him if he ruined her reputation as a parent.

in woods' own words, he was raised to be a cold-blooded killer on the golf course.

and it worked.

his upbringing made him a great champion.

but it also left him with a profoundly troubled soul, which drove him to neglect and betray his family in pursuit of dishonest and ultimately dissatisfying affairs.

later, woods reflected on this time in his life and realized that if you're lying all the time, life is no fun.

woods' story shows that the relentless pursuit of anything just isn't worth it if we damage our souls in the process.

as we've seen, stillness is handy for becoming more effective in business and in sports, but what's it all for if in our personal lives we're more like hot-blooded raging bulls than the serene monks we aim to be?

our happiness and our contentedness in life comes from achieving stillness of the soul.

chapter 7.

know when you have enough#

know when you have enough not all of john f. kennedy's behavior during the cuban missile crisis demonstrated the ideals of stillness.

at one point, with american and soviet forces on the brink of conflict, kennedy had a rendezvous with a 19-year-old student from wheaton college at a hotel near the white house.

the most powerful man in the world was being led astray by his base desires at a critical time.

but before you judge too harshly, take a moment to reflect on how much you're driven by desire.

most of us fall prey to desire, whether for a beautiful person, power, the latest iphone, money, the list goes on and on.

but if we're overly driven by our desires, it becomes harder to achieve true contentedness.

that's because superficial desires, as opposed to those that lead to more noble pursuits, usually come at a cost.

the greek philosopher epicurus had a good test that helped him distinguish between the two.

anytime he felt himself being tugged by a new desire, he asked himself, how will i feel afterward if i actually get what i want?

asking yourself this question will help you focus on the hangover and not just the taste of the drink, on the sense of guilt and not just the thrill of the affair.

once you've learned to control your desires, it may be easier to take an important step toward finding stillness, which is accepting that you have enough.

here's a little anecdote.

the writers kurt vonnegut and joseph heller once attended a party at the palatial home of a billionaire.

vonnegut asked his friend how it felt to know that their host had probably earned more that same day than heller's book, catch-22, had earned in its entire history.

heller replied that he had something the billionaire never would.

the knowledge that he had enough.

what heller meant is that he was content with what he had achieved.

this acceptance of enough can be a beautiful thing, bringing stillness in the form of release from want and comparison to others.

so if you find yourself lusting for more, remind yourself of heller's contented embrace of enough.

and know that after he said those words, heller went on to produce six more novels.

he wasn't doing it to prove anything to himself or to anyone else.

when a reporter critically commented that heller hadn't written anything as good as his first work, that is, catch-22, heller was able to reply with equanimity, who has?

chapter 8.

bask in the beauty#

bask in the beauty there's a concept in japan called shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing.

it's a kind of therapy that uses nature to heal spiritual woes.

not unlike, as we discussed earlier, kennedy finding stillness in the white house's rose garden during the cuban missile crisis.

now, of course, it isn't always possible to take regular forest baths ourselves.

maybe you live in the city and can't always retreat to the wilderness in search of beauty.

but if you can attune yourself to less obvious manifestations of beauty, you might begin to see it everywhere.

that was the case for the roman emperor and philosopher marcus aurelius.

often seen as a dark and depressive stoic, marcus aurelius wrote vividly of finding beauty in the ordinary.

he talked of how bread splits as it bakes and its cracks catch our eye and stir appetite within us.

he even found beauty in death.

we should, he wrote, come gracefully to our final resting place, falling as a ripened olive might, grateful to the tree that gave it life and growth.

so, no matter where you find yourself, take inspiration from marcus aurelius and john f. kennedy and simply notice the beauty around you.

the stillness that you find there may be a rarely appreciated phenomenon in most of our lives, but there is an inexhaustible supply of it in the world.

you just need to take a moment and look.

finding stillness in activity#

winston churchill led a very productive life.

by the age of 26, he'd been elected to the british parliament.

he would continue to serve in government over the course of six and a half decades.

as britain's wartime prime minister, he helped defeat nazism.

he also wrote over 40 books and gave more than 2,000 speeches throughout his long and prolific life.

now, churchill might seem like the last person from whom we would expect stillness, but in fact, he possessed it in spades.

and his life was a prime example of one particular method for bringing peace and stillness to even the busiest life, taking care of yourself physically.

churchill's physical activity of choice was bricklaying, which was unusual, to say the least.

he learned from two of his employees at his chartwell estate and soon fell in love with the meditative process of mixing mortar, troweling it on, and stacking up the bricks.

in a 1927 letter to then prime minister stanley baldwin, churchill wrote that he had enjoyed a delightful month.

alongside his duties as a minister, he had written 2,000 words a day and also laid 200 bricks.

according to churchill's daughter, mary, bricklaying and her father's other much-loved hobby, painting, were more than just pastimes.

they were also his primary antidotes for the depression to which he was prone.

both activities allowed him an intellectual escape and, crucially, an opportunity to exercise his body.

cultivating mind and body can be a huge step toward becoming even a fraction as productive as churchill, and a hobby is an ideal way to do so.

that's why so many of the great figures of history were also hobbyists on the side.

a generation before churchill, four-time prime minister of the united kingdom william gladstone took up chopping down trees.

john cage became a mushroom hunter.

so consider what physical activity might help release you from the pressure of your work or life and allow you to find the stillness that gladstone found in the thwack of axe on oak or that churchill found in the slap of mortar on brick.

but whatever you choose, you shouldn't take things too far as we'll see in our final chapter, chapter 10.

make room for rest#

chapter 10 of 10 make room for rest though churchill discovered the joys of bricklaying at his own estate, it was in cuba where he made arguably the most important discovery of his life.

it wasn't a military strategy or a rhetorical device.

no, it was the energy-giving powers of the siesta.

so, sure, taking care of ourselves physically means being active and finding ways to invigorate and enrich ourselves.

but it's easy to focus too much on activity, as many of us do at work.

it's all too common in our society to trade health for a few more hours in the office.

i'll sleep when i'm dead, say bankers, lawyers, and startup founders as they put in yet another grueling shift.

but the true greats, the winston churchills of this world, know that no matter how active we are, we should never neglect the simple power of sleep.

sleep is something to be protected because it allows us to perform at our best.

the psychologist anders erikson studied master violinists and found that they slept a full eight and a half hours each night on average and most days they also napped.

what's more, the greats napped more than lesser performers.

and there's more to this than just physiological benefits.

accepting that you need to stop working and get some sleep is fundamentally a question of knowing your limits.

and this, the embrace of moderation, is another great route to stillness.

too many of us are simply trying to do too much.

prince albert, husband to britain's queen victoria in the 19th century, was a prime example.

prince albert didn't just take his role as prince consort seriously, he took it too seriously, with an endless series of meetings and social obligations.

he threw himself into organizing the 1851 great exhibition, a six-month long celebration of the british empire, and spent years of his life on the project.

by the time it opened, he told his family that he felt more dead than alive.

the event was a great success, but albert's health never recovered from his overwork.

when he died in 1861, his doctors believed that his constant overwork had seriously damaged his health.

he had, quite literally, worked himself to death.

many of us today feel that there is always something to do.

we tell ourselves that we need to reply to that email, that we have to join the last-minute out-of-state business trip.

look, we don't.

just stop.

be present.

know your limits.

embrace moderation.

protect the gift that is your body.

if you pay attention to your physical health, to your spirit and your mind, you'll be able to cultivate stillness.

you'll be able to feel its power in your life.

so, slow things down.

calm things down.

quiet things down.

stillness is there, waiting for you.

and remember, stillness is the key.

final summary#

Conclusion

okay, you did it!

you listened to r-chapter 2, stillness is the key, by ryan holiday.

here's a very quick recap.

there's one key quality shared by truly great people.

i bet you can guess what it is.

it's the ability to be still, even while the world rages around them.

so, be still.

that means being present, cultivating silence, reflecting deeply by, for example, journaling, finding the beauty in life, or taking a nice forest bath, knowing when you have enough, having a hobby, and taking care of your body, which means getting enough sleep and also exercise.

here's one last bit of actionable advice.

get rid of your stuff.

we are born free of belongings, and then we start accumulating stuff.

but how much of it do we really need?

a rich life is a life rich in people and experiences, not knick-knacks and expensive clothes.

so, pick up a few garbage bags, start filling them up.

think of it as a way to make space, both for your mind and for freedom from unimportant things.

to make space, in other words, for stillness.

thanks for listening, and i hope to see you in the next chapter.

Stillness Is the Key

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