Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday

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 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. That
was also Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It might have
seemed like he wasn’t doing enough—that he wasn’t rushing to
destroy his opponent—but he was rightly carving out the space and
time to think, and time and space for the Russians to do the same
thing. Practicing wu wei was precisely what Tiger Woods lost the
ability to do as his work and sex addictions took control.
A disciplined action, that’s what John Cage called doing nothing
in the performance instructions on 4′33′′.
You don’t solve a maze by rushing through. You have to stop and
think. You have to walk slowly and carefully, reining in your energy—
otherwise you’ll get hopelessly lost. The same is true for the problems
we face in life.
The green light is a powerful symbol in our culture. We forget
what Mr. Rogers was trying to make us see—that the yellow light and
the red light are just as important. Slow down. Stop. One recent
study found that subjects would rather give themselves an electric
shock than experience boredom for even a few minutes. Then we
wonder why people do so many stupid things.
There is a haunting clip of Joan Rivers, well into her seventies,
already one of the most accomplished and respected and talented
comedians of all time, in which she is asked why she keeps working,
why she is always on the road, always looking for more gigs. Telling
the interviewer about the fear that drives her, she holds up an empty
calendar. “If my book ever looked like this, it would mean that
nobody wants me, that everything I ever tried to do in life didn’t
work. Nobody cared and I’ve been totally forgotten.”
It’s not just that there was never enough for Joan. It’s that our
best and most lasting work comes from when we take things slow.
When we pick our shots and wait for the right pitches.
Somebody who thinks they’re nothing and don’t matter because
they’re not doing something for even a few days is depriving