Those of you who have been around the blog for a while know that I have read every Ryan Holiday book on the planet. Except this one. And I think there’s a reason I’ve been putting off reading this one. (For instance, as I’m writing this, I’m watching Project Runway and typing and looking over my notes. I’ve got a problem with #Input.)
This book was hard for me.
Very good. Very necessary. But hard.
The basic concept of this book is (as Holiday often does) to use the life stories of historical figures as a template to learn important lessons about how to have success. In this particular book, his focus is on quiet and stillness, and how that can lead to focus, clarity, and success.
As a #1 Input, I will admit to some fear about this topic. I’m not a person who ever gets a lot of silence, and definitely not a lot of stillness. I came into the book as a skeptic, not convinced that silence was a good thing for everyone.
But about halfway through this book, I tried an experiment. After Holiday had been banging on about how important it was to have quiet, I started to wake up and spend some time in complete silence in the mornings.
And it. was. scary.
Not bad-scary. Just. Scary.
Holiday’s point, in his book, was that there are three types of stillness that we need to inculcate in our lives (mind, body, spirit), and I tried to emulate these three. What I realized was that I did not do stillness easily. Between Input, Activator, Ideation, and then Arranger/Achiever, all in my higher Strengths, I just don’t love stillness.
But wow, once I started to do it, I’m now a little obsessed with it. Holiday’s point (which I definitely heard) was that if we don’t have silence, our brain doesn’t have a chance to rest, and it needs rest. Stillness gives us the opportunity to not have any data coming at us. It allows the data that’s already inside to progress through the internal weighing and processing. And I feel it so much now. After the stillness.
I also realized a couple of things about myself.
Silence is lonely. I had no idea just how terrified I am to be alone, sometimes, and how much I was dreading this. But when Holiday was talking about quietness being different from loneliness, it nailed me hard in the chest. This is so true.
Silence is loud. Even when there’s nothing for your ear to focus on, there’s almost a pressure in the silence that’s very big for me. My thoughts are bigger when it’s quiet. I may like little pulses of silence, but I didn’t love the long stretches.
And yet, some of the best moments I had all week were in the middle of those long stretches. So I’m really going to try to incorporate more stillness into my life.
Starting with shutting off the TV while I’m working. I tell others to do it, but somehow, I need the reminder for myself.
I’m also taking time off next week. I have one whole day set aside to do absolutely nothing, and my intention is to spend a good portion of that day in actual silence. No TV, no music, no nothing.
I’m also planning to shut down my social media more often. Stay away from the input.
So, as you can see, I feel like we all need the constant reminders that we need stillness. So as much as some of us don’t particularly love Ryan Holiday, I do think there’s something important about his approach. He tells very detailed stories about historical figures that highlight his thesis. I like that approach a lot because you can see the concept with skin on it. It helps me a lot to see the skin on it.
Have any of you read this book? Or a similar book? Anyone have a regular stillness/silence practice?
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