Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday

But detachment and purposelessness don’t exactly sound like
productive attitudes, do they? That was exactly the kind of vexing
predicament Kenzo wanted to put his students in. Most of his pupils,
like us, wanted to be told what to do and shown how to do it. We’re
supposed to care, a lot. Willful will should be a strength. That’s
what’s worked for us since we were kids who wanted to excel in
school. How can you improve without it? How can this be the way to
hitting a bull’s-eye?
Well, let’s back up.
Have you ever noticed that the more we want something, the
more insistent we are on a certain outcome, the more difficult it can
be to achieve it? Sports like golf and archery are the perfect examples
of this. When you try to hit the ball really hard, you end up snap-
hooking it. If you look up to follow the ball, you jerk the club and
slice it into the woods. The energy you’re spending aiming the arrow
—particularly early on—is energy not spent developing your form. If
you’re too conscious of the technical components of shooting, you
won’t be relaxed or smooth enough. As marksmen say these days,
“Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.”
Stillness, then, is actually a way to superior performance.
Looseness will give you more control than gripping tightly—to a
method or a specific outcome.
Obviously an archery master like Kenzo realized that by the early
twentieth century the skills he was teaching were no longer matters
of life and death. Nobody needed to know how to shoot an arrow for
survival. But other skills required to master archery remained
essential: focus, patience, breathing, persistence, clarity. And most of
all, the ability to let go.
What we need in life, in the arts, in sports, is to loosen up, to
become flexible, to get to a place where there is nothing in our way—
including our own obsession with certain outcomes. An actor doesn’t
become his character by thinking about it; he has to let go, dispense
with technique and sink into the role. Entrepreneurs don’t walk the
streets deliberately looking for opportunities—they have to open
themselves up to noticing the little things around them. The same
goes for comedians or even parents trying to raise a good kid.