Stillness Is the Key

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Stillness Is the Key

Author

Ryan Holiday

Samenvatting

"Stillness Is the Key" by Ryan Holiday explores the importance of inner peace and stillness across various philosophies and religions, emphasizing that achieving a tranquil mind is essential for clear thinking, effective decision-making, and overall well-being. The book advocates for cultivating stillness through practices that harmonize the mind, body, and soul, ultimately leading to a fulfilled life.

To Seneca and to his fellow adherents of Stoic philosophy, if a person could develop peace within themselves—if they could achieve apatheia, as they called it—then the whole world could be at war, and they could still think well, work well, and be well. (Location 121)

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. (Location 131)

Who has the power to stop? Who has time to think? Is there anyone not affected by the din and dysfunctions of our time? (Location 149)

“All of humanity’s problems,” Blaise Pascal said in 1654, “stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” (Location 152)

Stillness is what aims the archer’s arrow. It inspires new ideas. It sharpens perspective and illuminates connections. It slows the ball down so that we might hit it. It generates a vision, helps us resist the passions of the mob, makes space for gratitude and wonder. Stillness allows us to persevere. To succeed. It is the key that unlocks the insights of genius, and allows us regular folks to understand them. (Location 159)

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 . . . To thinking clearly. To seeing the whole chessboard. To making tough decisions. To managing our emotions. To identifying the right goals. To handling high-pressure situations. To maintaining relationships. To building good habits. To being productive. To physical excellence. To feeling fulfilled. To capturing moments of laughter and joy. (Location 183)

Anyone who has concentrated so deeply that a flash of insight or inspiration suddenly visited them knows stillness. (Location 201)

To achieve stillness, we’ll need to focus on three domains, the timeless trinity of mind, body, soul—the head, the heart, the flesh. (Location 230)

This is, in fact, the first obligation of a leader and a decision maker. Our job is not to “go with our gut” or fixate on the first impression we form about an issue. No, we need to be strong enough to resist thinking that is too neat, too plausible, and therefore almost always wrong. Because if the leader can’t take the time to develop a clear sense of the bigger picture, who will? If the leader isn’t thinking through all the way to the end, who is? (Location 275)

Perhaps it was there, as Kennedy sat with his advisors and doodled, that he remembered a passage from another book he’d read, by the strategist B. H. Liddell Hart, on nuclear strategy. (Location 284)

Keep strong, if possible. In any case, keep cool. Have unlimited patience. Never corner an opponent, and always assist him to save face. Put yourself in his shoes—so as to see things through his eyes. Avoid self-righteousness like the devil—nothing is so self-blinding. (Location 287)

The 1930s taught us a clear lesson: Aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war. (Location 308)

Kennedy didn’t let his own ego dominate the discussions, nor did he allow anyone else’s to. When he sensed that his presence was stifling his advisors’ ability to speak honestly, he left the room so they could debate and brainstorm freely. (Location 316)

In the tensest moments, Kennedy sought solitude in the White House Rose Garden (afterward, he would thank the gardener for her important contributions during the crisis). He would go for long swims, both to clear his mind and to think. He sat in his specially made rocking chair in the Oval Office, bathed in the light of those enormous windows, easing the pain in his back so that it might not add to the fog of (cold) war that had descended so thickly over Washington and Moscow. (Location 319)

Yet he lets none of this rush him. None of it will cloud his judgment or deter him from doing the right thing. He is the stillest guy in the room. (Location 327)

With clear thinking, wisdom, patience, and a keen eye for the root of a complex, provocative conflict, Kennedy had saved the world from a nuclear holocaust. (Location 350)

Careful as someone crossing an iced-over stream. Alert as a warrior in enemy territory. Courteous as a guest. Fluid as melting ice. Shapable as a block of wood. Receptive as a valley. Clear as a glass of water. (Location 354)

In these situations we must: Be fully present. Empty our mind of preconceptions. Take our time. Sit quietly and reflect. Reject distraction. Weigh advice against the counsel of our convictions. Deliberate without being paralyzed. (Location 367)

The lesson was one not of force but of the power of patience, alternating confidence and humility, foresight and presence, empathy and unbending conviction, restraint and toughness, and quiet solitude combined with wise counsel. (Location 378)

To experience another person fully in the moment is a rare thing. To feel them engage with you, to be giving all their energy to you, as though there is nothing else that matters in the world, is rarer still. (Location 404)

Being present demands all of us. It’s not nothing. It may be the hardest thing in the world. As we stand on the podium, about to give a speech, our mind is focused not on our task but on what everyone will think of us. How does that not affect our performance? As we struggle with a crisis, our mind repeats on a loop just how unfair this is, how insane it is that it keeps happening and how it can’t go on. Why are we draining ourselves of essential emotional and mental energies right when we need them most? (Location 416)

We are not present . . . and so we miss out. On life. On being our best. On seeing what’s there. (Location 422)

We do not live in this moment. We, in fact, try desperately to get out of it—by thinking, doing, talking, worrying, remembering, hoping, whatever. We pay thousands of dollars to have a device in our pocket to ensure that we are never bored. We sign up for endless activities and obligations, chase money and accomplishments, all with the naïve belief that at the end of it will be happiness. (Location 432)

Tolstoy observed that love can’t exist off in the future. Love is only real if it’s happening right now. If you think about it, that’s true for basically everything we think, feel, or do. The best athletes, in the biggest games, are completely there. They are within themselves, within the now. (Location 436)

Remember, there’s no greatness in the future. Or clarity. Or insight. Or happiness. Or peace. There is only this moment. Not that we mean literally sixty seconds. The real present moment is what we choose to exist in, instead of lingering on the past or fretting about the future. It’s however long we can push away the impressions of what’s happened before and what we worry or hope might occur at some other time. Right now can be a few minutes or a morning or a year—if you can stay in it that long. (Location 438)

Who is so talented that they can afford to bring only part of themselves to bear on a problem or opportunity? (Location 443)

Note: Au

The less energy we waste regretting the past or worrying about the future, the more energy we will have for what’s in front of us. (Location 445)

We want to learn to see the world like an artist: While other people are oblivious to what surrounds them, the artist really sees. (Location 447)

An artist is present. And from this stillness comes brilliance. (Location 449)

Don’t reject a difficult or boring moment because it is not exactly what you want. Don’t waste a beautiful moment because you are insecure or shy. Make what you can of what you have been given. Live what can be lived. That’s what excellence is. That’s what presence makes possible. (Location 452)

Jesus told his disciples not to worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will take care of itself. Another way of saying that is: You have plenty on your plate right now. Focus on that, no matter how small or insignificant it is. Do the very best you can right now. (Location 457)

That’s the nice thing about the present. It keeps showing up to give you a second chance. (Location 462)

A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. —HERBERT SIMON (Location 464)

As a general, Napoleon made it his habit to delay responding to the mail. (Location 466)

There is way too much coming at us. In order to think clearly, it is essential that each of us figures out how to filter out the inconsequential from the essential. (Location 474)

Breathless, twenty-four-hour media coverage makes it considerably harder for politicians and CEOs to be anything but reactive. (Location 477)

“If you wish to improve,” Epictetus once said, “be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters.” (Location 483)

We need to cultivate a similar attitude—give things a little space, don’t consume news in real time, be a season or two behind on the latest trend or cultural phenomenon, don’t let your inbox lord over your life. (Location 486)

The important stuff will still be important by the time you get to it. The unimportant will have made its insignificance obvious (or simply disappeared). Then, with stillness rather than needless urgency or exhaustion, you will be able to sit down and give what deserves consideration your full attention. (Location 487)

If we were stiller, more confident, had the longer view, what truly meaningful subject could we dedicate our mental energy to? (Location 494)

Note: De vraag

The point is, it’s very difficult to think or act clearly (to say nothing of being happy) when we are drowning in information. (Location 501)

Indeed, the first thing great chiefs of staff do—whether it’s for a general or a president or the CEO of a local bank—is limit the amount of people who have access to the boss. (Location 512)

So the boss can see the big picture. So the boss has time and room to think. Because if the boss doesn’t? Well, then nobody can. (Location 514)

In his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius says, “Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’” Knowing what not to think about. What to ignore and not to do. It’s your first and most important job. (Location 516)

The way you feel when you awake early in the morning and your mind is fresh and as yet unsoiled by the noise of the outside world—that’s space worth protecting. (Location 527)

To become empty is to become one with the divine—this is the Way. —AWA KENZO (Location 546)

It seems crazy, but it isn’t. “Man is a thinking reed,” D. T. Suzuki, one of the early popularizers of Buddhism in the West, once said, “but his great works are done when he is not calculating and thinking. ‘Childlikeness’ has to be restored with long years of training in the art of self-forgetfulness. When this is attained, man thinks yet he does not think.” (Location 561)

Epictetus, Marcus’s philosophical predecessor, was in fact speaking about sports when he said, “If we’re anxious or nervous when we make the catch or throw, what will become of the game, and how can one maintain one’s composure; how can one see what is coming next?” As is true in athletics, so too in life. (Location 607)

Yes, thinking is essential. Expert knowledge is undoubtedly key to the success of any leader or athlete or artist. The problem is that, unthinkingly, we think too much. (Location 610)

There is a beautiful paradox to this idea of void. The Daodejing points out that when clay is formed around emptiness, it becomes a pitcher that can hold water. Water from the pitcher is poured into a cup, which is itself formed around emptiness. The room this all happens in is itself four walls formed around emptiness. Do you see? By relying on what’s not there, we actually have something worth using. (Location 614)

During the recording of her album Interiors, the musician Rosanne Cash posted a simple sign over the doorway of the studio. “Abandon Thought, All Ye Who Enter Here.” Not because she wanted a bunch of unthinking idiots working with her, but because she wanted everyone involved—included herself—to go deeper than whatever was on the surface of their minds. (Location 618)

Whatever you face, whatever you’re doing will require, first and foremost, that you don’t defeat yourself. That you don’t make it harder by overthinking, by needless doubts, or by second-guessing. (Location 625)

Note: Goals

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. (Location 626)

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. (Location 629)

Note: Librarian. Sacred

SLOW DOWN, THINK DEEPLY (Location 632)

With my sighted eye I see what’s before me, and with my unsighted eye I see what’s hidden. —ALICE WALKER (Location 632)

What’s essential is invisible to the eye. That is: Appearances are misleading. First impressions are too. We are disturbed and deceived by what’s on the surface, by what others see. Then we make bad decisions, miss opportunities, or feel scared or upset. Particularly when we don’t slow down and take the time to really look. (Location 645)

Note: Really look

Think about Khrushchev on the other side of the Cuban Missile Crisis. What provoked his incredible overreach? A poor reading of his opponent’s mettle. A rush to action. Shoddy thinking about how his own actions would be interpreted on the world stage. It was a nearly fatal miscalculation, as most rush jobs are. (Location 648)

Epictetus talked about how the job of a philosopher is to take our impressions—what we see, hear, and think—and put them to the test. He said we needed to hold up our thoughts and examine them, to make sure we weren’t being led astray by appearances or missing what couldn’t be seen by the naked eye. (Location 650)

The world is like muddy water. To see through it, we have to let things settle. (Location 654)

“Just think,” Rogers once wrote to a struggling friend. “Just be quiet and think. It’ll make all the difference in the world.” (Location 660)

There is, on the surface, a contradiction here. On the one hand, the Buddhists say we must empty our minds to be fully present. We’ll never get anything done if we are paralyzed by overthinking. On the other hand, we must look and think and study deeply if we are ever to truly know (and if we are to avoid falling into the destructive patterns that harm so many people). In fact, this is not a contradiction at all. It’s just life. We have to get better at thinking, deliberately and intentionally, about the big questions. On the complicated things. On understanding what’s really going on with a person, or a situation, or with life itself. 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. (Location 661)

Note: 1% thinking

The eighteenth-century Zen master Hakuin was highly critical of teachers who believed that enlightenment was simply a matter of thinking nothing. Instead, he wanted his students to think really, really hard. This is why he assigned them perplexing kōans like “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” and “What did your face look like before you were born?” and “Does the dog have the Buddha nature?” These questions defy easy answers, and that’s the point. By taking the time to meditate on them deeply, in some cases for days and weeks or even years, students put their mind in such a clarified state that deeper truths emerge, and enlightenment commences (and even if they don’t get all the way there, they are stronger for having tried). “Suddenly,” Hakuin promised his students, “unexpectedly your teeth sink in. Your body will pour with cold sweat. At the instant, it will all become clear.” The word for this was satori—an illuminating insight when the inscrutable is revealed, when an essential truth becomes obvious and inescapable. (Location 669)

Note: Real hard thinking

Well, no one gets to satori going a million miles a minute. No one gets there by focusing on what’s obvious, or by sticking with the first thought that pops into their head. (Location 678)

So much of the distress we feel comes from reacting instinctually instead of acting with conscientious deliberation. So much of what we get wrong comes from the same place. We’re reacting to shadows. We’re taking as certainties impressions we have yet to test. We’re not stopping to put on our glasses and really look. (Location 688)

Your job, after you have emptied your mind, is to slow down and think. To really think, on a regular basis.  . . . Think about what’s important to you.  . . . Think about what’s actually going on.  . . . Think about what might be hidden from view.  . . . Think about what the rest of the chessboard looks like.  . . . Think about what the meaning of life really (Location 691)

Note: Your job

Sit alone in a room and let your thoughts go wherever they will. Do this for one minute. . . . Work up to ten minutes a day of this mindless mental wandering. Then start paying attention to your thoughts to see if a word or goal materializes. If it doesn’t, extend the exercise to eleven minutes, then twelve, then thirteen . . . until you find the length of time you need to ensure that something interesting will come to mind. The Gaelic phrase for this state of mind is “quietness without loneliness.” (Location 698)

Note: Quietness without loneliness

If you invest the time and mental energy, you’ll not only find what’s interesting (or your next creative project), you’ll find truth. You’ll find what other people have missed. You’ll find solutions to the problems we face—whether it’s insight to the logic of the Soviets and their missiles in Cuba, or how to move your business forward, or how to make sense of senseless violence. These are answers that must be fished from the depths. And what is fishing but slowing down? Being both relaxed and highly attuned to your environment? And ultimately, catching hold of what lurks below the surface and reeling it in? (Location 703)

Note: Vissen

Seneca, the Stoic philosopher, seems to have done his writing and reflection in the evenings, much along the lines of Anne Frank’s practice. When darkness had fallen and his wife had gone to sleep, he explained to a friend, “I examine my entire day and go back over what I’ve done and said, hiding nothing from myself, passing nothing by.” (Location 737)

Michel Foucault talked of the ancient genre of hupomnemata (notes to oneself). He called the journal a “weapon for spiritual combat,” a way to practice philosophy and purge the mind of agitation and foolishness and to overcome difficulty. To silence the barking dogs in your head. To prepare for the day ahead. To reflect on the day that has passed. Take note of insights you’ve heard. Take the time to feel wisdom flow through your fingertips and onto the page. (Location 742)

Note: Hupomnemata

This is what the best journals look like. They aren’t for the reader. They are for the writer. (Location 745)

Note: For the writer

Keeping a journal is a common recommendation from psychologists as well, because it helps patients stop obsessing and allows them to make sense of the many inputs—emotional, external, psychological—that would otherwise overwhelm them. (Location 753)

Note: Stop obsessing

Putting your own thinking down on paper lets you see it from a distance. (Location 757)

That is what journaling is about. It’s spiritual windshield wipers, as the writer Julia Cameron once put it. (Location 767)

Note: Windshield wipers

In fact, 4′33″ was never about achieving perfect silence—it’s about what happens when you stop contributing to the noise. (Location 798)

“Thought will not work except in silence,” Thomas Carlyle said. If we want to think better, we need to seize these moments of quiet. (Location 809)

Each school has its own take on wisdom, but the same themes appear in all of them: The need to ask questions. The need to study and reflect. The importance of intellectual humility. (Location 852)

Find people you admire and ask how they got where they are. Seek book recommendations. Isn’t that what Socrates would do? Add experience and experimentation on top of this. Put yourself in tough situations. Accept challenges. Familiarize yourself with the unfamiliar. (Location 874)

Wrestle with big questions. Wrestle with big ideas. Treat your brain like the muscle that it is. Get stronger through resistance and exposure and training. (Location 879)

Wisdom does not immediately produce stillness or clarity. Quite the contrary. It might even make things less clear—make them darker before the dawn. (Location 881)

We want to sit with doubt. We want to savor it. We want to follow it where it leads. Because on the other side is truth. (Location 886)

Note: Doubt to truth

David’s confidence arose from experience, not ego. He had been through worse and done it with his bare hands. (Location 901)

David knew his strengths, but he also knew his weaknesses. “I cannot go in these,” he said after trying on a soldier’s armor, “because I am not used to them.” He was ready to proceed with what we could call true self-awareness (and of course, his faith). How did Goliath respond to his tiny challenger? Like your typical bully: He laughed. “Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?” Goliath shouted. “Come here,” he said, “and I’ll give your flesh to the birds and the wild animals!” This arrogance would be short-lived. David came at Goliath at a full sprint, a sling in one hand and a few stones from the river in the other. In those few quick seconds, Goliath must have seen the confidence in David’s eyes and been afraid for the first time—and before he could do anything, he was dead. Felled by the stone flung expertly from David’s sling. His head cut off by his own sword. The story of these two combatants may be true. It may be a fable. But it remains one of the best stories we have about the perils of ego, the importance of humility, and the necessity of confidence. There is perhaps no one less at peace than the egomaniac, their mind a swirling miasma of their own grandiosity and insecurity. They constantly bite off more than they can chew. They pick fights everywhere they go. They create enemies. They are incapable of learning from their mistakes (because they don’t believe they make any). Everything with them is complicated, everything is about them. (Location 902)

Note: Egomaniac

This toxic form of ego has a less-assuming evil twin—often called “imposter syndrome.” (Location 918)

Note: Evil twin of egomania

Of course, this insecurity exists almost entirely in our heads. People aren’t thinking about you. They have their own problems to worry about! (Location 922)

What is better than these two extremes—ego and imposter syndrome—but simple confidence? Earned. Rational. Objective. Still. (Location 924)

This is also confidence. Which needs neither congratulations nor glory in which to revel, because it is an honest understanding of our strengths and weakness that reveals the path to a greater glory: inner peace and a clear mind. (Location 940)

Confident people know what matters. They know when to ignore other people’s opinions. They don’t boast or lie to get ahead (and then struggle to deliver). Confidence is the freedom to set your own standards and unshackle yourself from the need to prove yourself. A confident person doesn’t fear disagreement and doesn’t see change—swapping an incorrect opinion for a correct one—as an admission of inferiority. Ego, on the other hand, is unsettled by doubts, afflicted by hubris, exposed by its own boasting and posturing. And yet it will not probe itself—or allow itself to be probed—because it knows what might be found. But confident people are open, reflective, and able to see themselves without blinders. All this makes room for stillness, by removing unnecessary conflict and uncertainty and resentment. (Location 941)

And sure, there is no such thing as full confidence, or ever-present confidence. We will waver. We will have doubts. We will find ourselves in new situations of complete uncertainty. But still, we want to look inside that chaos and find that kernel of calm confidence. (Location 952)

That was something he could control, and so in that he found confidence. This is key. Both egotistical and insecure people make their flaws central to their identity—either by covering them up or by brooding over them or externalizing them. For them stillness is impossible, because stillness can only be rooted in strength. That’s what we have to focus on. Don’t feed insecurity. Don’t feed delusions of grandeur. Both are obstacles to stillness. Be confident. You’ve earned it. (Location 957)

Set thy heart upon thy work, but never on its reward. (Location 965)

The great archery master Awa Kenzo did not focus on teaching technical mastery of the bow. He spent almost no time instructing his students on how to deliberately aim and shoot, telling them to simply draw a shot back until it “fell from you like ripe fruit.” He preferred instead to teach his students an important mental skill: detachment. “What stands in your way,” Kenzo once told his student Eugen Herrigel, “is that you have too much willful will.” It was this willful will—the desire to be in control and to dictate the schedule and the process of everything we’re a part of—that held Herrigel back from learning, from really mastering the art he pursued. What Kenzo wanted students to do was to put the thought of hitting the target out of their minds. He wanted them to detach even from the idea of an outcome. “The hits on the target,” he would say, “are only the outward proof and confirmation of your purposelessness at its highest, of your egolessness, your self-abandonment, or whatever you like to call this state.” That state is stillness. (Location 967)

Have you ever noticed that the more we want something, the more insistent we are on a certain outcome, the more difficult it can be to achieve it? Sports like golf and archery are the perfect examples of this. When you try to hit the ball really hard, you end up snap-hooking it. If you look up to follow the ball, you jerk the club and slice it into the woods. The energy you’re spending aiming the arrow—particularly early on—is energy not spent developing your form. If you’re too conscious of the technical components of shooting, you won’t be relaxed or smooth enough. As marksmen say these days, “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.” (Location 980)

Note: Smooth

Stillness, then, is actually a way to superior performance. Looseness will give you more control than gripping tightly—to a method or a specific outcome. (Location 985)

Entrepreneurs don’t walk the streets deliberately looking for opportunities—they have to open themselves up to noticing the little things around them. (Location 991)

“Everyone tries to shoot naturally,” Kenzo wrote, “but nearly all practitioners have some kind of strategy, some kind of shallow, artificial, calculating technical trick that they rely on when they shoot. Technical tricks ultimately lead nowhere.” (Location 993)

Note: Shallow

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. (Location 995)

Note: Mastery

He wanted them to get lost in the process. He wanted them to give up their notions of what archery was supposed to look like. He was demanding that they be present and empty and open—so they could learn. (Location 1006)

This is the balance we want to strike. If we aim for the trophy in life—be it recognition or wealth or power—we’ll miss the target. If we aim too intensely for the target—as Kenzo warned his students—we will neglect the process and the art required to hit it. What we should be doing is practicing. What we should be doing is pushing away that willful will. (Location 1012)

The closer we get to mastery, the less we care about specific results. The more collaborative and creative we are able to be, the less we will tolerate ego or insecurity. The more at peace we are, the more productive we can be. Only through stillness are the vexing problems solved. Only through reducing our aims are the most difficult targets within our reach. (Location 1015)

“The mind tends toward stillness,” Lao Tzu said, “but is opposed by craving.” We are like the audience at Marina Abramović’s performance. Present for a moment. Moved to stillness for a moment. Then back out into the city, back to the old routines and pulled by endless desires and bad habits, as if that experience never happened. (Location 1031)

The premise of this book is that our 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. (Location 1035)

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. (Location 1038)

“On the surface of the ocean there is stillness,” the monk Thich Nhat Hanh has said of the human condition, “but underneath there are currents.” (Location 1068)

This man who had become an icon for his ability to be calm and focused in moments of intense stress, a man with the physical discipline to pump the emergency brake on his 129-mile-per-hour swing if he wanted to start over, the champion of the “stillest” of sports, was at the mercy of insatiable riptides that lurked beneath his placid demeanor. (Location 1070)

It was in fact in watching his father play golf—instead of being able to play like a regular kid—that Tiger developed his almost unnatural obsession with the game. (Location 1081)

His mind was strong but his soul ached. It ached over his tragic relationship with his father. It ached over the childhood he had lost. It ached because it ached—Why am I not happy, he must have thought, don’t I have everything I ever wanted? (Location 1138)

Everybody’s got a hungry heart—that’s true. But how we choose to feed that heart matters. (Location 1143)

“For what is a man profited,” Jesus asked his disciples, “if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” It’s a question we must ask ourselves. Cheating and lying never helped anyone in the long run, whether it was done at work or at home. In Tiger’s case, it was that he was so talented, he could get away with it . . . until he couldn’t. Eventually one has to say the e-word, enough. Or the world says it for you. (Location 1158)

Mental stillness will be short-lived if our hearts are on fire, or our souls ache with emptiness. We are incapable of seeing what is essential in the world if we are blind to what’s going on within us. We cannot be in harmony with anyone or anything if the need for more, more, more is gnawing at our insides like a maggot. (Location 1167)

Tiger Woods wasn’t just a solitary man; he was, like so many of us in the modern world, an island. He might have been famous, but he was a stranger to himself. (Location 1171)

Being well-trained, he becomes naturally gentle. Then, unfettered, he obeys his master. (Location 1186)

What good is it to be rational at work if our personal lives are a hot-blooded series of disasters? How long can we keep the two domains separate anyway? You might rule cities or a great empire, but if you’re not in control of yourself, it is all for naught. (Location 1190)

The work we must do next is less cerebral and more spiritual. It’s work located in the heart and in the soul, and not in the mind. Because it is our soul that is the key to our happiness (or our unhappiness), contentment (or discontent), moderation (or gluttony), and stillness (or perturbation). That is why those who seek stillness must come to . . . Develop a strong moral compass. Steer clear of envy and jealousy and harmful desires. Come to terms with the painful wounds of their childhood. Practice gratitude and appreciation for the world around them. Cultivate relationships and love in their lives. Place belief and control in the hands of something larger than themselves. Understand that there will never be “enough” and that the unchecked pursuit of more ends only in bankruptcy. Our soul is where we secure our happiness and unhappiness, contentment or emptiness—and ultimately, determine the extent of our greatness. (Location 1192)

The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough. —RALPH WALDO EMERSON (Location 1206)

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 we take. (Location 1212)

If the concept of “virtue” seems a bit stuffy to you, consider the evidence that a virtuous life is worthwhile for its own sake. No one has less serenity than the person who does not know what is right or wrong. No one is more exhausted than the person who, because they lack a moral code, must belabor every decision and consider every temptation. No one feels worse about themselves than the cheater or the liar, even if—often especially if—they are showered with rewards for their cheating and lying. Life is meaningless to the person who decides their choices have no meaning. Meanwhile, the person who knows what they value? Who has a strong sense of decency and principle and behaves accordingly? Who possesses easy moral self-command, who leans comfortably upon this goodness, day in and day out? This person has found stillness. A sort of soul power they can draw on when they face challenges, stress, even scary situations. (Location 1218)

Different situations naturally call for different virtues and different epithets for the self. When we’re going into a tough assignment, we can say to ourselves over and over again, “Strength and courage.” Before a tough conversation with a significant other: “Patience and kindness.” In times of corruption and evil: “Goodness and honesty.” (Location 1232)

The gift of free will is that in this life we can choose to be good or we can choose to be bad. (Location 1234)

We can choose what standards to hold ourselves to and what we will regard as important, honorable, and admirable. The choices we make in that regard determine whether we will experience peace or not. Which is why each of us needs to sit down and examine 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. (Location 1235)

Confucius said that virtue is a kind of polestar. It not only provides guidance to the navigator, but it attracts fellow travelers too. (Location 1240)

Note: Fellow

Seneca knew of the virtuous path, but chased the prizes that drew him away from it. This choice cost him many sleepless nights and forced him into ethically taxing dilemmas. In the end, it cost him his life. (Location 1263)

No one can stop you from knowing what’s right. Nothing stands between you and it . . . but yourself. (Location 1270)

Many of us carry wounds from our childhood. Maybe someone didn’t treat us right. Or we experienced something terrible. Or our parents were just a little too busy or a little too critical or a little too stuck dealing with their own issues to be what we needed. These raw spots shape decisions we make and actions we take—even if we’re not always conscious of that fact. (Location 1302)

As Freud explained, “We all demand reparation for our early wounds to our narcissism,” thinking we are owed because we were wronged or deprived. (This was Tiger Woods to the detail.) It’s dangerous business, though, creating a monster to protect your wounded inner child. The insecure lens. The anxious lens. The persecuted lens. The prove-them-all-wrong lens. The will-you-be-my-father? lens that Leonardo had. These adaptations, developed early on to make sense of the world, don’t make our lives easier. On the contrary. Who can be happy that way? Would you put a nine-year-old in charge of anything stressful or dangerous or important? (Location 1321)

Each of us on occasion has surprised ourself with a strong reaction to someone’s innocuous comments, or thrown a fit when some authority figure tried to direct our actions. Or felt the pull of attraction to a type of relationship that never ends well. Or to a type of behavior that we know is wrong. It’s almost primal how deep these feelings go—they’re rooted in our infancy. (Location 1330)

How much lighter will our load be if we’re not adding extra baggage on top? (Location 1337)

When we embrace our strong emotions with mindfulness and concentration, we’ll be able to see the roots of these mental formations. We’ll know where our suffering has come from. When we see the roots of things, our suffering will lessen. (Location 1341)

Take the time to think about the pain you carry from your early experiences. Think about the “age” of the emotional reactions you have when you are hurt or betrayed or unexpectedly challenged in some way. That’s your inner child. They need a hug from you. They need you to say, “Hey, buddy. It’s okay. I know you’re hurt, but I am going to take care of you.” The functional adult steps in to reassert and reassure. To make stillness possible. (Location 1344)

Note: Think back

We owe it to ourselves as well as to the people in our lives to do this. Each of us must break the link in the chain of what the Buddhists call samsara, the continuation of life’s suffering from generation to generation. (Location 1347)

Note: Samsara

Garry wrote in his diary a formula that might help him overcome that pain and not only heal his own inner child but pass on the lesson to the many surrogate children he had as a mentor and elder in show business.* The formula was simple and is key to breaking the cycle and stilling the deep anguish we carry around with us: Give more. Give what you didn’t get. Love more. Drop the old story. (Location 1352)

Note: Shandling

Lust is a destroyer of peace in our lives: Lust for a beautiful person. Lust for an orgasm. Lust for someone other than the one we’ve committed to be with. Lust for power. Lust for dominance. Lust for other people’s stuff. Lust for the fanciest, best, most expensive things that money can buy. And is this not at odds with the self-mastery we say we want? A person enslaved to their urges is not free—whether they are a plumber or the president. (Location 1385)

Epicurus, again the supposed hedonist, once said that “sex has never benefited any man, and it’s a marvel if it hasn’t injured him.” He came up with a good test anytime he felt himself being pulled by a strong desire: What will happen to me if I get what I want? How will I feel after? (Location 1403)

To the Epicureans real pleasure was about freedom from pain and agitation. If wanting something makes you miserable while you don’t have it, doesn’t that diminish the true value of the reward? If getting what you “want” has its consequences too, is that really pleasurable? If the same drive that helps you achieve initially also leads you inevitably to overreach or overdo, is it really an advantage? (Location 1408)

Note: Diminishing rewards

Think about the times when you feel best. It’s not when you are pining away. It’s not when you get what you pined for either. There is always a tinge of disappointment or loss at the moment of acquisition. (Location 1413)

Athanasius of Alexandria wrote in his Vita Antonii that one of the benefits of journaling—Confessions, as the Christians called the genre—was that it helped stop him from sinning. By observing and then writing about his own behavior, he was able to hold himself accountable and make himself better: Let us each note and write down our actions and impulses of the soul . . . as though we were to report them to each other; and you may rest assured that from utter shame of becoming known we shall stop sinning and entertaining sinful thoughts altogether. . . . Just as we would not give ourselves to lust within sight of each other, so if we were to write down our thoughts as if telling them to each other, we shall so much the more guard ourselves against foul thoughts for shame of being known. Now, then, let the written account stand for the eyes of our fellow ascetics, so that blushing at writing the same as if we were actually seen, we may never ponder evil. (Location 1423)

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. (Location 1432)

Note: Sit with it. Spiritual strength

Only those of us who take the time to explore, to question, to extrapolate the consequences of our desires have an opportunity to overcome them and to stop regrets before they start. (Location 1433)

Note: Only those

Saying the word “enough” is not enough. Deeply spiritual, introspective work is required to understand what that idea means—work that may well destroy illusions and assumptions we have held our entire lives. (Location 1447)

Note: Enough

John Stuart Mill, the philosopher and boy genius who before he hit puberty read and mastered nearly every major classical text in the original Greek or Latin, is an illustration of just how terrifying this process can be. Extremely driven (by his father and by himself), one day, at around twenty years old, Mill stopped to think, for the first time, about what he was chasing. As he writes: It occurred to me to put the question directly to myself, “Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?” And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, “No!” At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down. What ensued was a devastating mental breakdown that required years of recovery. Yet Mill was probably lucky to undergo it so early. (Location 1449)

Note: Early breakdown

It is a painful crossroads. Or worse, one that we ignore, stuffing those feelings of existential crisis down, piling on top of them meaningless consumption, more ambition, and the delusion that doing more and more of the same will eventually bring about different results. (Location 1460)

In a way, this is a curse of one of our virtues. No one achieves excellence or enlightenment without a desire to get better, without a tendency to explore potential areas of improvement. Yet the desire—or the need—for more is often at odds with happiness. (Location 1462)

Note: Curse of virtue

The need for progress can be the enemy of enjoying the process. (Location 1465)

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. (Location 1466)

“When you realize there is nothing lacking,” Lao Tzu says, “the whole world belongs to you.” (Location 1469)

Note: Nothing lacking

The greatest misfortune is to not know contentment. The word calamity is the desire to acquire. And so those who know the contentment of contentment are always content. (Location 1471)

Note: Content

We are restless because deep in our hearts we know now that our happiness is found elsewhere, and our work, no matter how valuable it is to us or to others, cannot take its place. (Location 1486)

More does nothing for the one who feels less than, who cannot see the wealth that was given to them at birth, that they have accumulated in their relationships and experiences. (Location 1493)

Note: More means nothing

Solving your problem of poverty is an achievable goal and can be fixed by earning and saving money. No one could seriously claim otherwise. The issue is when we think these activities can address spiritual poverty. (Location 1495)

Note: Spiritual poverty isn't solved by more

You will never feel okay by way of external accomplishments. Enough comes from the inside. (Location 1500)

Note: Inside

No one does their best work driven by anxiety, and no one should be breeding insecurity in themselves so that they might keep making things. That is not industry, that is slavery. (Location 1509)

Note: Slavery

Joseph Heller believed he had enough, but he still kept writing. He wrote six novels after Catch-22 (when a reporter criticized him by saying he hadn’t written anything as good as his first book, Heller replied, “Who has?”), including a number one bestseller. He taught. He wrote plays and movies. He was incredibly productive. John Stuart Mill, after his breakdown, fell in love with poetry, met the woman who would eventually become his wife, and began to slowly return to political philosophy—and ultimately had enormous impact on the world. Indeed, Western democracies are indebted to him for many changes he helped bring about. The beauty was that these creations and insights came from a better—a stiller—place inside both men. They weren’t doing it to prove anything. They didn’t need to impress anyone. They were in the moment. Their motivations were pure. There was no insecurity. No anxiety. No creeping, painful hope that this would finally be the thing that would make them feel whole, that would give them what they had always been lacking. (Location 1515)

Note: Stiller. Better

What do we want more of in life? That’s the question. It’s not accomplishments. It’s not popularity. It’s moments when we feel like we are enough. More presence. More clarity. More insight. More truth. More stillness. (Location 1523)

Not that all beauty is so immediately beautiful. We’re not always on the farm or at the beach or gazing out over sweeping canyon views. Which is why the philosopher must cultivate the poet’s eye—the ability to see beauty everywhere, even in the banal or the terrible. (Location 1557)

In doing this, in noticing, we become alive to the stillness. It is not the sign of a healthy soul to find beauty in superficial things—the adulation of the crowd, fancy cars, enormous estates, glittering awards. Nor to be made miserable by the ugliness of the world—the critics and haters, the suffering of the innocent, injuries, pain and loss. It is better to find beauty in all places and things. (Location 1570)

It’s ironic that stillness is rare and fleeting in our busy lives, because the world creates an inexhaustible supply of it. It’s just that nobody’s looking. (Location 1580)

There is peace in this. It is always available to you. Don’t let the beauty of life escape you. See the world as the temple that it is. Let every experience be churchlike. (Location 1598)

Note: Churchlike

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself. —ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE (Location 1604)

Acknowledging a higher power is difficult because submitting to anything other than their own desires is anathema to what one addict describes as the “pathological self-centeredness” of addiction. (Location 1611)

Remember, the only way to get over the willful will—the force that Awa Kenzo believed was causing everyone, not just addicts, to miss the targets we aim for—is to let go, at the deep, soul level. (Location 1618)

To the Stoics, their higher power was the logos—the path of the universe. They acknowledged fate and fortune and the power these forces had over them. And in acknowledging these higher powers, they accessed a kind of stillness and peace (most simply because it meant less fighting battles for control!) that helped them run empires, survive slavery or exile, and ultimately even face death with great poise. (Location 1627)

Epicurus wasn’t an atheist but rejected the idea of an overbearing or judgmental god. What deity would want the world to live in fear? (Location 1635)

There is no stillness to the mind that thinks of nothing but itself, nor will there ever be peace for the body and spirit that follow their every urge and value nothing but themselves. (Location 1640)

The progress of science and technology is essential. But for many of us moderns, it has come at the cost of losing the capacity for awe and for acknowledging forces beyond our comprehension. It has deprived us of the ability to access spiritual stillness and piety. (Location 1641)

Realism is important. Pragmatism and scientism and skepticism are too. They all have their place. But still, you have to believe in something. You just have to. Or else everything is empty and cold. (Location 1656)

It is probably not a coincidence that when one looks back at history and marvels at the incredible adversity and unimaginable difficulty that people made it through, you tend to find that they all had one thing in common: Some kind of belief in a higher deity. An anchor in their lives called faith. They believed an unfailing hand rested on the wheel, and that there was some deeper purpose or meaning behind their suffering even if they couldn’t understand it. It’s not a coincidence that the vast majority of people who did good in the world did too. (Location 1663)

Is it not interesting that the leaders who end up truly tested by turbulent times end up sincerely relying on some measure of faith and belief to get them through difficult times? (Location 1670)

Nihilism is a fragile strategy. It’s always the nihilists who seem to go crazy or kill themselves when life gets hard. (Or, more recently, are so afraid of dying that they obsess about living forever.) (Location 1675)

At the purest level, the only thing that matters to any father or mother—or any creator—is that their children find peace, find meaning, find purpose. (Location 1684)

It’s not that we need to believe that God is great, only that God is greater than us. (Location 1688)

As subjects to the laws of gravity and physics, are we not already accepting a higher, inexplicable power? (Location 1689)

The point of this belief is in some ways to override the mind. To quiet it down by putting it in true perspective. The common language for accepting a higher power is about “letting [Him or Her or It] into your heart.” That’s it. This is about rejecting the tyranny of our intellect, of our immediate observational experience, and accepting something bigger, something beyond ourselves. (Location 1692)

Note: Heart

It is true that relationships take time. They also expose and distract us, cause pain, and cost money. We are also nothing without them. (Location 1716)

Bad relationships are common, and good relationships are hard. Should that surprise us? Being close to and connecting with other people challenges every facet of our soul. Especially when our inner child is there, acting out. Or we are pulled away by lust and desire. Or our selfishness makes little room for another person. (Location 1717)

A good relationship requires us to be virtuous, faithful, present, empathetic, generous, open, and willing to be a part of a larger whole. It requires, in order to create growth, real surrender. No one would say that’s easy. But rising to this challenge—even attempting to rise to it—transforms us . . . if we let it. (Location 1721)

Note: Good

Anyone can be rich or famous. Only you can be Dad or Mom or Daughter or Son or Soul Mate to the people in your life. (Location 1724)

Note: Only you can

Relationships come in many forms. Mentor. Protégé. Parent. Child. Spouse. Best friend. And even if, as some have argued, maintaining these relationships reduces a person’s material or creative success, might the trade be worth it? (Location 1726)

Stillness is best not sought alone. And, like success, it is best when shared. (Location 1741)

Relationships are not a productivity hack, though understanding that love and family are not incompatible with any career is a breakthrough. It is also true that the single best decision you can make in life, professionally and personally, is to find a partner who complements and supports you and makes you better and for whom you do the same. (Location 1742)

Life without relationships, focused solely on accomplishment, is empty and meaningless (in addition to being precarious and fragile). A life solely about work and doing is terribly out of balance; indeed, it requires constant motion and busyness to keep from falling apart. (Location 1746)

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. (Location 1754)

Note: Island

Fyodor Dostoevsky once described his wife, Anna, as a rock on which he could lean and rest, a wall that would not let him fall and protected him from the cold. There is no better description of love, between spouses or friends or parent and child, than that. Love, Freud said, is the great educator. We learn when we give it. We learn when we get it. We get closer to stillness through it. (Location 1765)

It’s been said that the word “love” is spelled T-I-M-E. It is also spelled W-O-R-K and S-A-C-R-I-F-I-C-E and D-I-F-F-I-C-U-L-T-Y, C-O-M-M-I-T-M-E-N-T, and occasionally M-A-D-N-E-S-S. But it is always punctuated by R-E-W-A-R-D. Even ones that end. (Location 1769)

The notion that isolation, that total self-driven focus, will get you to a supreme state of enlightenment is not only incorrect, it misses the obvious: Who will even care that you did all that? (Location 1773)

By ourselves, we are a fraction of what we can be. (Location 1778)

Note: Wow

If history is any indication, leaders, artists, generals, and athletes who are driven primarily by anger not only tend to fail over a long enough timeline, but they tend to be miserable even if they don’t. (Location 1823)

“Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.” (Location 1827)

The leaders we truly respect, who stand head and shoulders above the rest, have been motivated by more than anger or hate. From Pericles to Martin Luther King Jr., we find that great leaders are fueled by love. Country. Compassion. Destiny. Reconciliation. Mastery. Idealism. Family. (Location 1829)

Seneca’s argument was that anger ultimately blocks us from whatever goal we are trying to achieve. (Location 1835)

When we feel our temper rising up, we need to look for insertion points (the space between stimulus and response). Points where we can get up and walk away. (Location 1850)

The point is that people who are driven by anger are not happy. They are not still. They get in their own way. They shorten legacies and short-circuit their goals. (Location 1858)

We have to beware of desire, but conquer anger, because anger hurts not just ourselves but many other people as well. (Location 1862)

All that you behold, that which comprises both god and man, is one—we are the parts of one great body. —SENECA (Location 1872)

All Mitchell could think of, when he looked at the planet from the quiet, weightless cabin of his spaceship, was grabbing every selfish politician by the neck and pulling them up there to point and say, “Look at that, you son of a bitch.” Not that he was angry. On the contrary, he was the calmest and most serene he’d ever been. He wanted them—the leaders, the people who are supposed to work on behalf of their fellow citizens—to have the same realization he was having: the realization that we are all one, that we are all in this together, and that this fact is the only thing that truly matters. The Christian word for this term is agape. It is the ecstasy of love from a higher power, the sheer luck and good fortune of being made in that image. (Location 1879)

Note: Agape

Whether it comes from the perspective of space, a religious epiphany, or the silence of meditation, the understanding that we are all connected—that we are all one—is a transformative experience. Such quiet peace follows this . . . such stillness. With it, we lose the selfishness and self-absorption at the root of much of the disturbance in our lives. The Greeks spoke of sympatheia, the kind of mutual interdependence and relatedness of all things, past, present, and future. They believed that each person on this planet had an important role to play, and should be respected for it. (Location 1888)

The truly philosophical view is that not only is originality necessary, but everyone is necessary. Even the people you don’t like. (Location 1897)

We can make an active effort to practice forgiveness, especially to those who might have caused those inner-child wounds we have worked to heal. We can seek understanding with those we disagree with. (Location 1901)

Take something you care about deeply, a possession you cherish, a person you love, or an experience that means a lot to you. Now take that feeling, that radiating warmth that comes up when you think about it, and consider how every single person, even murderers on death row, even the jerk who just shoved you in the supermarket, has that same feeling about something in their lives. Together, you share that. Not only do you share it, but you share it with everyone who has ever lived. (Location 1904)

No one is alone, in suffering or in joy. Down the street, across the ocean, in another language, someone else is experiencing nearly the exact same thing. (Location 1912)

When you step back from the enormity of your own immediate experience—whatever it is—you are able to see the experience of others and either connect with them or lessen the intensity of your own pain. (Location 1917)

We are all strands in a long rope that stretches back countless generations and ties together every person in every country on every continent. (Location 1919)

We are all stardust. And no one needs this understanding more than the ambitious or the creative, since they live so much in their own heads and in their own bubble. (Location 1920)

Finding the universal in the personal, and the personal in the universal, is not only the secret to art and leadership and even entrepreneurship, it is the secret to centering oneself. (Location 1922)

Note: Centering

Peace is when we realize that victory and defeat are almost identical spots on one long spectrum. Peace is what allows us to take joy in the success of others and to let them take joy in our own. Peace is what motivates a person to be good, to treat every other living thing well, because they understand that it is a way to treat themselves well. (Location 1934)

Note: Peace

L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux. What’s essential is invisible to the eye. (Location 1943)

Examining our souls is not as easy as clearing our minds, you’ll find. It requires that we peel back what the writer Mark Manson has called the “self-awareness onion” and take responsibility for our own emotions and impulses. Anyone who’s done it can tell you that tears and onions often go together. (Location 1950)

A body that is overworked or abused is not only actually not still, it creates turbulence that ripples through the rest of our lives. A mind that is overtaxed and ill-treated is susceptible to vice and corruption. A spoiled, lazy existence is the manifestation of spiritual emptiness. We can be active, we can be on the move, and still be still. Indeed, we have to be active for the stillness to have any meaning. (Location 1960)

Note: Movement

Johnson as a seventeen-year-old, decades before his own career as a writer, met Churchill on the street and shouted to 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.” (Location 1990)

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 the spark of joy that made life worth living. (Location 1993)

Each morning, Churchill got up around eight and took his first bath, which he entered at 98 degrees and had cranked up to 104 while he sat (and occasionally somersaulted) in the water. Freshly bathed, he would spend the next two hours reading. Then he responded to his daily mail, mostly pertaining to his political duties. Around noon he’d stop in to say hello to his wife for the first time—believing all his life that the secret to a happy marriage was that spouses should not see each other before noon. Then he tackled whatever writing project he was working on—likely an article or a speech or a book. By early afternoon he would be writing at a fantastic clip and then abruptly stop for lunch (which he would finally dress for). After lunch, he would go for a walk around Chartwell, his estate in the English countryside, feeding his swans and fish—to him the most important and enjoyable part of the day. Then he would sit on the porch and take in the air, thinking and musing. For inspiration and serenity he might recite poetry to himself. At 3 p.m., it was time for a two-hour nap. After the nap, it was family time and then a second bath before a late, seated and formal dinner (after 8 p.m.). After dinner and drinks, one more writing sprint before bed. (Location 2026)

The mid-1920s saw Churchill serving as chancellor of the exchequer (a position in which he was in way over his head), while having also signed a contract to produce a six-volume, three-thousand-page account of the war, titled The World Crisis. Left to his own devices, he might have tried to white-knuckle this incredible workload. But those around him saw the toll that his responsibilities were taking and, worried about burnout, urged him to find a hobby that might offer him a modicum of pleasure and enjoyment and rest. “Do remember what I said about resting from current problems,” Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin wrote to him. “A big year will soon begin and much depends on your keeping fit.” In typical Churchillian fashion, he chose an unexpected form of leisure: bricklaying. Taught the craft by two employees at Chartwell, he immediately fell in love with the slow, methodical process of mixing mortar, troweling, and stacking bricks. (Location 2044)

Note: Bricks

“I have had a delightful month building a cottage and dictating a book: 200 bricks and 2000 words a day.” (He also spent several hours a day on his ministerial duties.) (Location 2053)

Note: Dicteer

In a little book titled Painting as a Pastime, Churchill spoke eloquently of a reliance on new activities that use other parts of our minds and bodies to relieve the areas where we are overworked. “The cultivation of a hobby and new forms of interest is therefore a policy of first importance to a public man,” he wrote. “To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, and they must all be real.” (Location 2058)

Early on, Churchill was advised by a well-known painter never to hesitate in front of the canvas (that is to say, overthink), and he took it to heart. (Location 2064)

Painting, like all good hobbies, taught the practitioner to be present. (Location 2067)

Churchill was happy because he got out of his own head and put his body to work. (Location 2077)

Churchill himself would write that every prophet must be forced into the wilderness—where they undergo solitude, deprivation, reflection, and meditation. It’s from this physical ordeal he said that “psychic dynamite” is made. (Location 2098)

Epicurus once said that the wise will accomplish three things in their life: leave written works behind them, be financially prudent and provide for the future, and cherish country living. That is to say, we will be reflective, we will be responsible and moderate, and we will find time to relax in nature. (Location 2142)

If we are to be half as productive as Churchill, and manage to capture the same joy and zest and stillness that defined his life, there are traits we will need to cultivate. Each of us will need to: Rise above our physical limitations. Find hobbies that rest and replenish us. Develop a reliable, disciplined routine. Spend time getting active outdoors. Seek out solitude and perspective. Learn to sit—to do nothing when called for. Get enough sleep and rein in our workaholism. Commit to causes bigger than ourselves. (Location 2150)

As they say, the body keeps score. If we don’t take care of ourselves physically, if we don’t align ourselves properly, it doesn’t matter how strong we are mentally or spiritually. This will take effort. Because we will not simply think our way to peace. We can’t pray our soul into better condition. We’ve got to move and live our way there. It will take our body—our habits, our actions, our rituals, our self-care—to get our mind and our spirit in the right place, just as it takes our mind and spirit to get our body to the right place. It’s a trinity. A holy one. Each part dependent on the others. (Location 2159)

The advantages of nonaction. Few in the world attain these. —THE DAODEJING (Location 2165)

While most great Romans were given honorific titles that highlighted their great victories or accomplishments in foreign lands, Fabius was later given one that stands out: Fabius Cunctator. The Delayer. He was special for what he didn’t do—for what he waited to do—and has stood as an important example to all leaders since. Especially the ones feeling pressure from themselves or their followers to be bold or take immediate action. (Location 2181)

What they have to learn, what the great hitter Sadaharu Oh himself learned in a series of complicated batting exercises designed by his Zen master and hitting coach, Hiroshi Arakawa, was the power of waiting, the power of precision, the power of the void. (Location 2193)

Note: Power of the void

Wu wei is the ability to hold the bat back—waiting until the batter sees the perfect pitch. It is the yogi in meditation. They’re physically still, so that they can be active on a mental and spiritual level. (Location 2197)

You don’t solve a maze by rushing through. (Location 2203)

Note: Wow

Somebody who thinks they’re nothing and don’t matter because they’re not doing something for even a few days is depriving themselves of stillness, yes—but they are also closing themselves off from a higher plane of performance that comes out of it. Spiritually, that’s hard. Physically, it’s harder still. You have to make yourself say no. You have to make yourself not take the stage. (Location 2213)

We should look fearfully, even sympathetically, at the people who have become slaves to their calendars, who require a staff of ten to handle all their ongoing projects, whose lives seem to resemble a fugitive fleeing one scene for the next. There is no stillness there. It’s servitude. (Location 2220)

Each of us needs to get better at saying no. As in, “No, sorry, I’m not available.” “No, sorry, that sounds great but I’d rather not.” “No, I’m going to wait and see.” “No, I don’t like that idea.” “No, I don’t need that—I’m going to make the most of what I have.” “No, because if I said yes to you, I’d have to say yes to everyone.” (Location 2222)

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. (Location 2230)

In every situation ask: What is it? Why does it matter? Do I need it? Do I want it? What are the hidden costs? Will I look back from the distant future and be glad I did it? If I never knew about it at all—if the request was lost in the mail, if they hadn’t been able to pin me down to ask me—would I even notice that I missed out? When we know what to say no to, we can say yes to the things that matter. (Location 2232)

It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth. —FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (Location 2242)

Kierkegaard never seemed to walk straight—he zigged and zagged, crossing the street without notice, trying to always remain in the shade. When he had either worn himself out, worked through what he was struggling with, or been struck with a good idea, he would turn around and make for home, where he would write for the rest of the day. (Location 2248)

Kierkegaard believed that sitting still was a kind of breeding ground for illness. But walking, movement, to him was almost sacred. It cleansed the soul and cleared the mind in a way that primed his explorations as a philosopher. Life is a path, he liked to say, we have to walk it. (Location 2256)

Gustav Mahler spent as much as four hours a day walking, using this time to work through and jot down ideas. (Location 2272)

It’s probably not a coincidence that Jesus himself was a walker—a traveler—who knew the pleasures and the divineness of putting one foot in front of the other. (Location 2276)

How does walking get us closer to stillness? Isn’t the whole point of what we’re talking about to reduce activity, not seek it out? Yes, we are in motion when we walk, but it is not frenzied motion or even conscious motion—it is repetitive, ritualized motion. It is deliberate. It is an exercise in peace. (Location 2278)

The Buddhists talk of “walking meditation,” or kinhin, where the movement after a long session of sitting, particularly movement through a beautiful setting, can unlock a different kind of stillness than traditional meditation. (Location 2280)

The key to a good walk is to be aware. To be present and open to the experience. Put your phone away. Put the pressing problems of your life away, or rather let them melt away as you move. (Location 2283)

Get lost. Be unreachable. Go slowly. It’s an affordable luxury available to us all. Even the poorest pauper can go for a nice walk—in a national park or an empty parking lot. (Location 2291)

Walk away from the thoughts that need to be walked away from; walk toward the ones that have now appeared. (Location 2295)

On a good walk, the mind is not completely blank. It can’t be—otherwise you might trip over a root or get hit by a car or a bicyclist. The point is not, as in traditional meditation, to push every thought or observation from your mind. On the contrary, the whole point is to see what’s around you. (Location 2296)

A study at New Mexico Highlands University has found that the force from our footsteps can increase the supply of blood to the brain. Researchers at Stanford have found that walkers perform better on tests that measure “creative divergent thinking” during and after their walks. (Location 2300)

The poet William Wordsworth walked as many as 180,000 miles in his lifetime—an average of six and a half miles a day since he was five years old! He did much of his writing while walking, usually around Grasmere, a lake in the English countryside, or Rydal Water, which is not far from Grasmere. On these long walks, as lines of poetry came to him, Wordsworth would repeat them over and over again, since it might be hours until he had the chance to write them down. Biographers have wondered ever since: Was it the scenery that inspired the images of his poems or was it the movement that jogged the thoughts? Every ordinary person who has ever had a breakthrough on a walk knows that the two forces are equally and magically responsible. (Location 2303)

In our own search for beauty and what is good in life, we would do well to head outside and wander around. (Location 2308)

If a person puts even one measure of effort into following ritual and the standards of righteousness, he will get back twice as much. —XUNZI (Location 2321)

Boring? 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. Routine, done for long enough and done sincerely enough, becomes more than routine. It becomes ritual—it becomes sanctified and holy. (Location 2334)

Ah, but the greats know that complete freedom is a nightmare. They know that order is a prerequisite of excellence and that in an unpredictable world, good habits are a safe haven of certainty. (Location 2348)

It was Eisenhower who defined freedom as the opportunity for self-discipline. In fact, freedom and power and success require self-discipline. (Location 2349)

It’s also how we get in the right headspace to do our work. The writer and runner Haruki Murakami talks about why he follows the same routine every day. “The repetition itself becomes the important thing,” he says, “it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.” When our thoughts are empty and our body is in its groove, we do our best work. (Location 2351)

The poet John Milton was up at 4 a.m. to read and contemplate, so that by 7 a.m. he was ready to be “milked” by his writing. (Location 2357)

A routine can be focused on order or arrangement. (Location 2358)

Routine can be built around a tool or a sound or a scent. (Location 2362)

A routine can also be religious or faith-based. (Location 2365)

Done enough times, done with sincerity and feeling, routine becomes ritual. The regularity of it—the daily cadence—creates deep and meaningful experience. (Location 2368)

When the body is busy with the familiar, the mind can relax. The monotony becomes muscle memory. To deviate seems dangerous, wrong. As if it’s inviting failure in. (Location 2370)

The purpose of ritual isn’t to win the gods over to our side (though that can’t hurt!). It’s to settle our bodies (and our minds) down when Fortune is our opponent on the other side of the net. (Location 2377)

Most people wake up to face the day as an endless barrage of bewildering and overwhelming choices, one right after another. What do I wear? What should I eat? What should I do first? What should I do after that? What sort of work should I do? Should I scramble to address this problem or rush to put out this fire? Needless to say, this is exhausting. It is a whirlwind of conflicting impulses, incentives, inclinations, and external interruptions. It is no path to stillness and hardly a way to get the best out of yourself. (Location 2379)

The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. (Location 2388)

When we not only automate and routinize the trivial parts of life, but also make automatic good and virtuous decisions, we free up resources to do important and meaningful exploration. We buy room for peace and stillness, and thus make good work and good thoughts accessible and inevitable. To make that possible, you must go now and get your house in order. Get your day scheduled. Limit the interruptions. Limit the number of choices you need to make. (Location 2392)

A master is in control. A master has a system. A master turns the ordinary into the sacred. (Location 2400)

For property is poverty and fear; only to have possessed something and to have let go of it means carefree ownership. —RAINER MARIA RILKE (Location 2403)

In short, mental and spiritual independence matter little if the things we own in the physical world end up owning us. (Location 2418)

Today, we might call Diogenes a bum or a loser (or a crazy person), and in some sense he was those things. But on the few occasions when Diogenes met Alexander the Great, then the most powerful man in the world, it was Diogenes who observers came away thinking was the more impressive. Because Alexander, as much as he tried, could neither tempt Diogenes with any favors nor deprive him of anything that he had not already willingly tossed aside. (Location 2421)

We don’t need to get rid of all our possessions, but we should constantly question what we own, why we own it, and whether we could do without. (Location 2427)

Just as every hoarder becomes trapped by their own garbage, so too are we tied down by what we own. (Location 2432)

John Boyd, a sort of warrior-monk who revolutionized Western military strategy in the latter half of the twentieth century, refused to take checks from defense contractors and deliberately lived in a small condo even as he advised presidents and generals. “If a man can reduce his needs to zero,” he said, “he is truly free: there is nothing that can be taken from him and nothing anyone can do to hurt him.” To that we would add, “And he or she can also be still.” (Location 2437)

The person who is afraid to lose their stuff, who has their identity wrapped up in their things, gives their enemies an opening. They make themselves extra vulnerable to fate. (Location 2442)

Monks and priests take vows of poverty because it will mean fewer distractions, and more room (literally) for the spiritual pursuit to which they have committed. No one is saying we have to go that far, but the more we own, the more we oversee, the less room we have to move and, ironically, the less still we become. (Location 2451)

Start by walking around your house and filling up trash bags and boxes with everything you don’t use. Think of it as clearing more room for your mind and your body. Give yourself space. Give your mind a rest. Want to have less to be mad about? Less to covet or be triggered by? Give more away. (Location 2454)

The best car is not the one that turns the most heads, but the one you have to worry about the least. (Location 2456)

The best house for you is the one that feels the most like home. Don’t use your money to purchase loneliness, or headaches, or status anxiety. (Location 2458)

The memory is what’s important. The experience itself is what matters. You can access that anytime you want, and no thief can ever deprive you of it. (Location 2462)

Take action. Get out from under all your stuff. Get rid of it. Give away what you don’t need. (Location 2470)

A crowded world thinks that aloneness is always loneliness and that to seek it is perversion. —JOHN GRAVES (Location 2474)

To find solitude, the way Eugen Herrigel said that the Buddhist does, “not in far-off, quiet places; he creates it out of himself, spreads it around him wherever he may be, because he loves it.” (Location 2489)

It is difficult to think clearly in rooms filled with other people. It’s difficult to understand yourself if you are never by yourself. It’s difficult to have much in the way of clarity and insight if your life is a constant party and your home is a construction site. Sometimes you have to disconnect in order to better connect with yourself and with the people you serve and love. (Location 2495)

“If I was to sum up the single biggest problem of senior leadership in the Information Age,” four-star Marine Corps general and former secretary of defense James Mattis has said, “it’s lack of reflection. Solitude allows you to reflect while others are reacting. We need solitude to refocus on prospective decision-making, rather than just reacting to problems as they arise.” (Location 2498)

Note: Reflect vs react

Breakthroughs seem to happen with stunning regularity in the shower or on a long hike. (Location 2504)

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. (Location 2506)

His solitude was hardly indolent repose. It was instead an active exploration of himself, of religion, of human nature, and later, into solving serious societal problems like inequality, war, and injustice. (Location 2514)

To pray and work in the morning and to labor and rest in the afternoon, and to sit still again in meditation in the evening when night falls upon that land and when the silence fills itself with darkness and with stars. This is a true and special vocation. There are few who are willing to belong completely to such silence, to let it soak into their bones, to breathe nothing but silence, to feed on silence, and to turn the very substance of their life into a living and vigilant silence. (Location 2518)

Thomas à Kempis’s line In omnibus requiem quaesivi, et nusquam inveni nisi in angulo cum libro—“Everywhere I have sought peace and not found it, except in a corner with a book.” (Location 2528)

Do not mistake this for some kind of vacation. It is hard work—long days, some without sleep. It is wrestling with complex topics, contradictory ideas, and identity-challenging concepts. But despite this struggle, Gates emerges recharged and refocused. He can see further into the distance. (Location 2530)

Each of us needs to put ourselves, physically, in the position to do that kind of deep work. We need to give our bodies, as Virginia Woolf put it, a room of our own—even if only for a few stolen hours—where we can think and have quiet and solitude. (Location 2534)

It’s hard to make that time. It’s hard (and expensive) to get away. We have responsibilities. But they will be better for our temporary disappearance. (Location 2537)

(The dancer Twyla Tharp points out that “solitude without purpose” is a killer of creativity.) (Location 2542)

Merton eventually came to understand that after so much time by himself in the woods, he now possessed solitude inside himself—and could access it anytime he liked. (Location 2547)

The wise and busy also learn that solitude and stillness are there in pockets, if we look for them. The few minutes before going onstage for a talk or sitting in your hotel room before a meeting. The morning before the rest of the house wakes up. Or late in the evening after the world has gone to sleep. Grab these moments. Schedule them. Cultivate them. (Location 2548)

Note: Cultivate moments of stillness

Work is what horses die of. Everybody should know that. —ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN (Location 2552)

Eliud Kipchoge, possibly the greatest distance runner ever to live, actively works to make sure he is not overworking. In training, he deliberately does not give his full effort, saving that instead for the few times per year when he races. He prefers instead to train at 80 percent of his capacity—on occasion to 90 percent—to maintain and preserve his longevity (and sanity) as an athlete. (Location 2596)

Yes, there is purity and meaning in giving your best to whatever you do—but life is much more of a marathon than it is a sprint. In a way, this is the distinction between confidence and ego. Can you trust yourself and your abilities enough to keep something in reserve? Can you protect the stillness and the inner peace necessary to win the longer race of life? (Location 2602)

Man is not a beast of burden. Yes, we have important duties—to our country, to our coworkers, to provide for our families. Many of us have talents and gifts that are so extraordinary that we owe it to ourselves and the world to express and fulfill them. But we’re not going to be able to do that if we’re not taking care of ourselves, or if we have stretched ourselves to the breaking point. (Location 2608)

Good decisions are not made by those who are running on empty. (Location 2619)

We end up having to work more to fix the errors we made when we would have been better off resting, having consciously said no instead of reflexively saying yes. (Location 2620)

Note: Fix

The body that each of us has was a gift. Don’t work it to death. Don’t burn it out. Protect the gift. (Location 2627)

There is a time for many words and there is a time for sleep. —HOMER, THE ODYSSEY (Location 2630)

Research has shown that as we approach twenty or so hours without sleep, we are as cognitively impaired as a drunk person. (Location 2648)

If we treat sleep as a luxury, it is the first to go when we get busy. If sleep is what happens only when everything is done, work and others will constantly be impinging on your personal space. (Location 2670)

The philosopher and writer Arthur Schopenhauer used to say that “sleep is the source of all health and energy.” He said it better still on a separate occasion: “Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death. (Location 2672)

The bloodshot engineer six Red Bulls deep has no chance of stillness. (Location 2682)

A 2017 study actually found that lack of sleep increases negative repetitive thinking. (Location 2684)

Sleep is the other side of the work we’re doing—sleep is the recharging of the internal batteries whose energy stores we recruit in order to do our work. It is a meditative practice. It is stillness. It’s the time when we turn off. It’s built into our biology for a reason. (Location 2685)

The greats—they protect their sleep because it’s where the best state of mind comes from. They say no to things. (Location 2689)

Anders Ericsson, of the classic ten-thousand-hours study, found that master violinists slept eight and a half hours a night on average and took a nap most days. (Location 2691)

According to Ericsson, great players nap more than lesser ones. (Location 2694)

It was all there. It was brilliant. It was the product of a rested mind that took care of its body. A healthy soul that could sleep soundly. And it has echoed down through the ages. (Location 2702)

If you want peace, there is just one thing to do. If you want to be your best, there is just one thing to do. Go to sleep. (Location 2704)

This is the main question, with what activity one’s leisure is filled. —ARISTOTLE (Location 2707)

From Gladstone’s diary, we note that on more than one thousand occasions he went to the forest with his axe, often bringing his family along and making an outing of it. It was said that he found the process so consuming, he had no time to think of anything but where the next stroke of his axe would fall. (Location 2711)

But above all, Gladstone’s arboreal activity was a way to rest a mind that was often wearied by politics and the stresses of life. (Location 2719)

Gladstone was also said to enjoy vigorous hikes, and mountain climbing well into old age, and the only thing that appears in his diary more than tree felling is reading. (Location 2722)

When most of us hear the word “leisure,” we think of lounging around and doing nothing. In fact, this is a perversion of a sacred notion. In Greek, “leisure” is rendered as scholé—that is, school. Leisure historically meant simply freedom from the work needed to survive, freedom for intellectual or creative pursuits. It was learning and study and the pursuit of higher things. (Location 2728)

The swordsman Musashi, whose work was aggressively and violently physical, took up painting late in life, and observed that each form of art enriched the other. (Location 2741)

In his essay on leisure, Josef Pieper wrote that “the ability to be ‘at leisure’ is one of the basic powers of the human soul.” But that’s what’s so interesting about it. It’s a physical state—a physical action—that somehow replenishes and strengthens the soul. Leisure is not the absence of activity, it is activity. What is absent is any external justification—you can’t do leisure for pay, you can’t do it to impress people. You have to do it for you. (Location 2747)

Note: Physical

Many people find relief in strenuous exercise. Sure, it might make them stronger at work, but that’s not why they do it. It’s meditative to put the body in motion and direct our mental efforts at conquering our physical limitations. (Location 2756)

“If an action tires your body but puts your heart at ease,” Xunzi said, “do it.” (Location 2760)

Of course, leisure can easily become an escape, but the second that happens it’s not leisure anymore. When we take something relaxing and turn it into a compulsion, it’s not leisure, because we’re no longer choosing it. There is no stillness in that. (Location 2769)

At leisure, we are with ourselves. We are present. It’s us and the fishing pole and the sound of the line going into the water. It’s us and the waiting, giving up control. It’s us and the flash cards for the language we are learning. It’s the humility of being bad at something because we are a beginner, but having the confidence to trust in the process. (Location 2775)

Note: Begiinner

To do leisure well—to be present, to be open, to be virtuous, to be connected—is hard. We cannot let it turn into a job, into another thing to dominate and to dominate others through. (Location 2780)

Life is about balance, not about swinging from one pole to the other. (Location 2782)

There’s nothing to feel guilty about for being idle. It’s not reckless. It’s an investment. There is nourishment in pursuits that have no purpose—that is their purpose. (Location 2788)

It wasn’t restoration that Fante was chasing, nor was it leisure, it was escape from real life. In his own words, Fante pissed away decades golfing, reading, and drinking, and by extension not writing novels. Because that felt better than getting rejected again and again. Because it was easier than sitting alone by himself in a room, doing battle with the demons that made his writing so beautiful in the first place. That’s the difference between leisure and escapism. It’s the intention. (Location 2805)

Note: Intention

Despair and restlessness go together. The problem is that you can’t flee despair. (Location 2812)

But too often, the frenzied or the miserable think that an escape—literal or chemical—is a positive good. Sure, the rush of traveling, the thrill of surfing, or the altered state of a psychedelic can relieve some of the tension that’s built up in our lives. Maybe you get some pretty pictures out of it, and some pseudo-profundity that impresses your friends. But when that wears off? What’s left? (Location 2817)

When you defer and delay, interest is accumulating. The bill still comes due . . . and it will be even harder to afford then than it will be right now. The one thing you can’t escape in your life is yourself. (Location 2825)

Emerson, who in his own life traveled to England and Italy and France and Malta and Switzerland (as well as extensively across America), pointed out that the people who built the sights and wonders that tourists liked to see didn’t do so while they traveled. You can’t make something great flitting around. You have to stick fast, like an axis of the earth. (Location 2829)

A plane ticket or a pill or some plant medicine is a treadmill, not a shortcut. What you seek will come only if you sit and do the work, if you probe yourself with real self-awareness and patience. (Location 2834)

You have to be still enough to discover what’s really going on. You have to let the muddy water settle. That can’t happen if you’re jetting off from one place to another, if you’re packing your schedule with every activity you can think of in order to avoid the possibility of having to spend even a moment alone with your own thoughts. (Location 2835)

In the fourth century BC, Mengzi spoke of how the Way is near, but people seek it in what is distant. A few generations after that, Marcus Aurelius pointed out that we don’t need to “get away from it all.” We just need to look within. “Nowhere you can go is more peaceful—more free of interruptions,” he said, “than your own soul.” (Location 2838)

The next time we feel the urge to flee, to hit the road or bury ourselves in work or activity, we need to catch ourselves. Don’t book a cross-country flight—go for a walk instead. Don’t get high—get some solitude, find some quiet. These are far easier, far more accessible, and ultimately far more sustainable strategies for accessing the stillness we were born with. Travel inside your heart and your mind, and let the body stay put. “A quick visit should be enough to ward off all,” Marcus wrote, “and send you back ready to face what awaits you.” (Location 2841)

Note: Quick visit

Build a life that you don’t need to escape from. (Location 2849)

Note: !

To see people who will notice a need in the world and do something about it. . . . Those are my heroes. —FRED ROGERS (Location 2851)

High-minded thoughts and inner work are one thing, but all that matters is what you do. The health of our spiritual ideals depends on what we do with our bodies in moments of truth. (Location 2873)

Stillness is not an excuse to withdraw from the affairs of the world. (Location 2882)

Neither the Buddhists nor the Stoics believed in what has come to be called “original sin”—that we are a fallen and flawed and broken species. On the contrary, they believe we were born good. To them, the phrase “Be natural” was the same as “Do the right thing.” For Aristotle, virtue wasn’t just something contained in the soul—it was how we lived. It was what we did. He called it eudaimonia: human flourishing. (Location 2884)

Virtue is not an abstract notion. We are not clearing our minds and separating the essential from the inessential for the purposes of a parlor trick. Nor are we improving ourselves so that we can get richer or more powerful. We are doing it to live better and be better. Every person we meet and every situation we find ourselves in is an opportunity to prove that. (Location 2892)

Marcus Aurelius spoke of moving from one unselfish action to another—“only there,” he said, can we find “delight and stillness.” In the Bible, Matthew 5:6 says that those who do right will be made full by God. Too many believers seem to think that belief is enough. How many people who claim to be of this religion or that one, if caught and investigated, would be found guilty of living the tenets of love and charity and selflessness? Action is what matters. (Location 2899)

Do the hard good deeds. “You must do the thing you cannot do,” Eleanor Roosevelt said. It will be scary. It won’t always be easy, but know that what is on the other side of goodness is true stillness. (Location 2905)

If you see fraud, and do not say fraud, the philosopher Nassim Taleb has said, you are a fraud. Worse, you will feel like a fraud. And you will never feel proud or happy or confident. (Location 2913)

Will we fall short of our own standards? Yes. When this happens, we don’t need to whip ourselves, as Clamence did, we must simply let it instruct and teach us, as all injuries do. (Location 2914)

The prognosis is terminal for each and every person and has been from the moment we were born. Our heart beats without fail for an uncertain amount of time, and then one day, suddenly, it is still. Memento mori. (Location 2950)

It’s ironic that we spend so much of our precious time on earth either impotently fighting death or futilely attempting to ignore the thought of it. (Location 2959)

It was Cicero who said that to study philosophy is to learn how to die. (Location 2960)