Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday

T THE DOMAIN OF THE MIND he entire world changed in the few short hours between when John F. Kennedy went to bed on October 15, ...

then, that the first year and half of Kennedy’s administration had not gone well. In April 1961, Kennedy had tried and failed—em ...

overconfident world leaders rushing their way into a conflict that, once started, they couldn’t stop. Kennedy wanted everyone to ...

What is the advantage they are trying to get? he asked, with real interest. “Must be some major reason for the Soviets to set th ...

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

are political considerations, personal considerations, there are more factors than any one person should be able to weigh at one ...

more vivid analogy, one as true in geopolitics as it is in everyday life: “If people do not display statesmanlike wisdom,” he sa ...

Each of us will, in our own lives, face crisis. The stakes may be lower, but to us they will matter. A business on the brink of ...

How much better would the world be with more of this behavior? How much better would your own life be? Kennedy, like Lincoln, wa ...

T BECOME PRESENT Trust no future, howe’er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act,—act in the living present! Heart withi ...

came, hour after hour, day in and day out, for nearly three months. Each time, she looked down, gathered herself, and then looke ...

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 ...

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, ...

Live what can be lived. That’s what excellence is. That’s what presence makes possible. In meditation, teachers instruct student ...

A LIMIT YOUR INPUTS A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. —HERBERT SIMON s a general, Napoleon made it his hab ...

In the modern world, this is not easy. In the 1990s, political scientists began to study what they called the “CNN Effect.” Brea ...

longer view, what truly meaningful subject could we dedicate our mental energy to? In her diary in 1942, Dorothy Day, the Cathol ...

reactive, a mile deep on what mattered rather than an inch on too many things. Indeed, the first thing great chiefs of staff do— ...

Put up barriers. Put up the proper chuting to direct what’s urgent and unimportant to the right people. Walker Percy, one of the ...

S EMPTY THE MIND To become empty is to become one with the divine— this is the Way. —AWA KENZO hawn Green began his third season ...