Stillness Is The Key

Quick Background

Drawing on a wide range of history's greatest thinkers, Holiday shows us how Stillness is the key to the self-mastery, discipline and focus necessary to succeed in this competitive, noisy world - and how we can cultivate it in our own lives today.

(This was our favorite Ryan Holiday book yet!)

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You should read this book if...

• You're into ancient philosophy, history, sports
• You feel overwhelmed about your life
• You're a driven but unhappy workaholic

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3 Big Ideas

1) If you want more breakthroughs, create more silence.

"'Thought will not work except in silence,' Thomas Carlyle said.

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If we want to think better, we need to seize these moments of quiet.

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If we want more revelations—more insights or breakthroughs or new, big ideas—we have to create more room for them."

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2) Cultivate a poet's eye to find the beauty in everything.

"We’re not always on the farm or at the beach or gazing out over sweeping canyon views.

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Which is why the philosopher must cultivate the poet’s eye—the ability to see beauty everywhere, even in the banal or the terrible.

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The hot steam wafting from the vents on a New York City morning.

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The sound of a pen signing a contract, binding two parties together.

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A floor filled with a child’s toys, arranged in the chaos of exhausted enjoyment.

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Are you starting to see how this works?"

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3) Achieving won't make you happy - only gratitude will.

"The writers Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller were once at a party in a fancy neighborhood outside New York City.

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Standing in the palatial second home of some boring billionaire, Vonnegut began to needle his friend.

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“Joe,” he said, “how does it feel that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel has earned in its entire history?”

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“I’ve got something he can never have,” Heller replied.

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“And what on earth could that be?” Vonnegut asked.

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“The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”

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