Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday

exile to overwhelm his mind, burrow into his soul, and compel him to fight his way back into the limelight in those years? Could ...

always get a carving knife from the kitchen and take one with you, can’t you?” The British Empire had been responsible for despi ...

blessing in disguise.” “It must be very well-disguised,” Churchill replied. He was wrong. She was right. As usual. Not only beca ...

not do these things well (even granting that he did live it up when he could afford to). We compare this description to the thre ...

W SAY NO The advantages of nonaction. Few in the world attain these. —THE DAODEJING hen Fabius was dispatched to lead the Roman ...

It didn’t work. Only after the bloodbath at the Battle of Cannae, in which the Romans attacked Hannibal and lost nearly their en ...

swinger—needs quick hands and powerful hips, to be sure, but they must also possess the power of wu wei, or nonaction. Wu wei is ...

themselves of stillness, yes—but they are also closing themselves off from a higher plane of performance that comes out of it. S ...

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 ...

N TAKE A WALK It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth. —FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE early every afternoon the citizens ...

In a beautiful letter to his sister-in-law, who was often bedridden, and depressed as a result, Kierkegaard wrote of the importa ...

Joys of the solitary walk, the spirit bow’d yet proud, the suffering and the struggle? Freud was known for his speedy walks arou ...

Where are they now? What did they believe? What problems did they have? When you feel the tug of your responsibilities or the de ...

which is not far from Grasmere. On these long walks, as lines of poetry came to him, Wordsworth would repeat them over and over ...

E BUILD A ROUTINE If a person puts even one measure of effort into following ritual and the standards of righteousness, he will ...

an afternoon nap, dinner with his family, and a 9:30 bedtime. The same weight. The same food. The same introduction. The same cl ...

discipline. Because without it, chaos and complacency move in. Discipline, then, is how we maintain that freedom. It’s also how ...

Done enough times, done with sincerity and feeling, routine becomes ritual. The regularity of it—the daily cadence—creates deep ...

For this, we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the gro ...

E GET RID OF YOUR STUFF For property is poverty and fear; only to have possessed something and to have let go of it means carefr ...