Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday

cows have gotten wise to the sound and come running to investigate.
I line it up with the hay ring, back up again, and watch it come
tumbling off the back. With the knife in my pocket, I cut off the
netting and drop the heavy steel hay ring over it to prevent waste.
The cows begin to eat, yelling in appreciation, jostling with each
other for their place at the bale.
With them properly distracted, it’s time for me to go find this
bull. I heard him when I was working and suspect he’s over in the
back corner of the front pasture. I find him there, a ton or more of
muscle and horns. I’m a little frustrated. This is not my problem,
though my neighbor seems not to mind that this keeps happening. I
behold him there, as the poem says, but keep my distance. Not just
because I don’t want to be gored, but because in rushing this process
before, in getting him worked up, I’ve run the bull right through a
barbed-wire fence—a costly reminder of the risks of impatience.
The key is to nudge him in the direction you want to go, to
eliminate the other options and then get him moving. It’s got to feel
like it’s his idea. Otherwise, he’ll panic and get angry. And the
problem goes from bad to worse.
So I just stand there, resting against some cedar, looking up at the
first croppings of the Violet Crown—the Texas sunset that settles
over Austin—that is coming toward the horizon. In this moment, I
am at peace. It doesn’t matter how tough things have been lately. It
doesn’t matter what’s going on in the world. My breathing is slowing
down. There is no social media here. The outrage factory that has
become the news cycle can’t reach me. Neither can my clients or
business partners—there’s no reception in these woods. I am far from
this manuscript I have been working on. Far from my research and
my notes, from my comfortable office and the craft that I love. And
here, far from my work, the story of Shawn Green, which I read
months ago, and what he was really teaching us slips from my
subconscious into the front of my mind. I get it now. I get what he
was after.
Chop wood, carry water. Fix fences, load hay, seize the bull.
My mind is empty. My heart is full. My body is busy.
Attamen tranquillus.
Ryan Holiday