Stillness Is The Key - Book Review

Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday has been my favorite book I’ve read this year. I’m going to break it down by the top reasons I loved it, the specific ideas I loved the most, and who else this book is for. Hopefully after reading this, you’ll pick it up and it can become one of your favorites too. 

Top Reasons I Loved It

Stillness is the Key reads similarly to a lot of modern research-based self help books. Holiday pulls together anecdotes from the most successful people in history. What makes this book different is the fact that he considers both the successes and failures of these people. 

Writers always use Tiger Wood’s singularly-focused dedication to golf as an anecdote to encourage people to be more dedicated. What no one else considers are the dozens of affairs Woods had during his marriage, and the animalistic workout regimen that injured his back and virtually ended his career. Holiday considers both Woods’ successes and failures. He does the same thing with President John F. Kennedy. He analyzes JFK’s mental stillness in the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and he analyzes his spiritual turmoil in his affairs. 

The main reason I loved the book is because it doesn’t dismiss cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance, of course, is when we hold two conflicting ideas in our heads at the same time, without dismissing either one. Ryan Holiday considers the whole being, and calls his readers to a deeper level of stillness than even the most successful people on earth. He warns us against the pitfalls of our idols. 

The second reason I loved this book is because of the wide range of thinkers, religions, and philosophies it pulls together. As a person of faith myself, I can often feel like my commitment to various practices is weird, and maybe antiquated. Hearing the ways these stillness practices have been incorporated across different religions and cultures is encouraging to me. Maybe I’m only a bit strange in my current culture, but not globally or historically. 

Specific Ideas I Loved

The book has three main sections: stillness of mind, stillness of spirit, and stillness of body. I’ll pull one idea from each section to give you a little picture of what this book has to offer. 

Cultivating Silence

One of my favorite ideas in the mind section was about cultivating silence. Holiday encourages us to create more spaces in which we can be silent. He makes the distinction that there is no such thing as true silence. There are always sounds of traffic, nature, wind–even our own heartbeats. Holiday encourages readers to seek out and accept that silence as an opportunity. 

“Too much of our lives is defined by noise. Headphones go in (noise canceling headphones so that we can better hear… noise). Screens on. Phones ringing. The quiet metal womb of a jumbo jet, traveling at 600 miles per hour, is filled with nothing but people trying to avoid silence. They’d rather watch the same bad movies again and again, or listen to some inane interview with an annoying celebrity, than stop and absorb what’s happening around them. They’d rather close their mind than sit there and have to use it.” 

I’ve done my own experiments with cultivating silence through social media and messaging breaks. Sitting on a subway with nothing to do is a mundane experience–until your mind spends about five minutes being bored. After that, it kicks into high gear, ideating and dreaming up new possibilities. Previously confusing situations become clear. Previously uninspired work becomes ripe with meaning and possibility. 

Cultivating silence is an amazing way to empower your brain work at a high level again. Holiday encouraged me to zone out more. 

Healing the Inner Child

Another great idea Holiday explores is healing the inner child. He recognizes that much of the turmoil we experience day by day is due to emotional trauma from childhood. Even if they are minor experiences, if we haven’t dealt with them, they still stir up unrest within us. We make decisions in an attempt to earn love that we weren’t given as children. We fight back to avoid being controlled like we were as teenagers. We speak relentlessly to feel heard, as we weren’t listened to as children. 

“Each of us on occasion has surprised ourself with a strong reaction to someone’s innocuous comments, or thrown a fit when some authority figure tried to direct our actions. Or felt the pull of attraction to a type of relationship that never ends well. Or to a type of behavior that we know is wrong. It’s almost primal how deep these feelings go–they’re rooted in our infancy.”

Of course many people carry serious emotional trauma from abuse as children. And most of us act on a consistent basis in a way that seeks to reconcile childhood pain. Some steps to healing here are journaling about these difficult experiences, talking to close friends about them, and seeking professional psychological help. There’s no shame in doing any of those things, and if we are to achieve true stillness in our spirits, they are essential. 

Finding a Hobby

The most fun idea I latched onto from Stillness was Holiday’s encouragement to find and maintain a hobby. This is in the stillness of body section. His best example comes from the life of Winston Churchill. During his time politics, he painted over 600 paintings, none of them to to sell. Simply as a hobby. Holiday writes this about Churchill’s painting:

“He had lived for forty years on planet earth consumed by his work and his ambition, but through painting, his perspective and perception grew much sharper. Forced to slow down to set up his easel, to mix his paints, to wait for them to dry, he saw things he would have previously blown right past. After the major powers of WWII met for the Casablanca conference in 1943, weighed down and numb after so much death, Churchill travelled five hours to paint a sunset in Marrakech. He returned to Britain re-energized and ready to finish the task.” 

I wrote more about how incorporating a hobby back into my life has been an amazing avenue for finding release and stillness. You can check that out here. My encouragement to you is to do the same. Find something you can get lost in, something that lets you forget to check your phone. Commit to doing it. Put in the calendar! You’ll reap the benefits in happiness, no doubt. 

Who This Book Is For

Finally, I’ll break down who I think this book is for. 

You’ve read too many business books by business bros

If you, like me, have read too many business books from business bros who take examples from top performers and forget about their lack of balance, Stillness is for you. Holiday’s perspective is refreshing, as he calls readers to a life of considered balance, and a standard higher than even our heroes. 

If you’ve read too many Christian books about stillness

If you, like me, have read too many Christian books about practicing stillness, this book will be encouraging, in that it compiles perspectives from around the world, thought history, to push you onward down the path. 

If you’re stressed out

If you’re stressed out, Stillness is a great read. Holiday’s writing style is not condescending, it’s encouraging. The chapters are short, the tone is light, and the anecdotes are easy to follow. Stillness might lead you down some much-needed personal experiments to cultivate stillness in your own life. 

Thanks for reading, I hope this was helpful. Here’s a link to buy the book. 

Enjoy!