Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday

As Paul Johnson, one of Churchill’s best biographers, would
write, “The balance he maintained between flat-out work and
creative and restorative leisure is worth study by anyone holding a
top position.” 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.”
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. (Indeed, in addition to the importance of
hard work, Johnson said the other four lessons from Churchill’s
remarkable life were to aim high; to never allow mistakes or criticism
to get you down; to waste no energy on grudges, duplicity, or
infighting; and to make room for joy.) Even during the war, Churchill
never lost his sense of humor, never lost sight of what was beautiful
in the world, and never became jaded or cynical.
Different traditions offer different prescriptions for the good life.
The Stoics urged determination and iron self-will. The Epicureans
preached relaxation and simple pleasures. The Christians spoke of
saving mankind and glorifying God. The French, a certain joie de
vivre. The happiest and most resilient of us manage to incorporate a
little of each each of these approaches into our lives, and that was
certainly true of Churchill. He was a man of great discipline and
passion. He was a soldier. He was a lover of books, a believer in glory
and honor. A statesman, a literal bricklayer, and a painter. We are all
worms, he once joked to a friend, simple organisms that eat and
defecate and then die, but he liked to think of himself as a
glowworm.
In addition to his impressive mental abilities and spiritual
strength, Churchill was also an unexpected—given his portly frame—
master of the third and final domain of stillness, the physical one.
Few would have predicted he would distinguish himself here.
Born with a frail constitution, Churchill complained as a young man
that he was “cursed with so feeble a body that I can hardly support