According to my guest today, many of the world’s most eminent leaders, thinkers, athletes, and artists have one thing in common: they cultivate stillness in their lives.
His name is Ryan Holiday and in his latest book, Stillness Is the Key, he highlights how great individuals have used stillness to do great things. We begin our discussion with how Ryan describes stillness, what it means to find stillness in mind, body, and soul, and how an individual can have stillness in one of these areas, but chaos in another. Ryan shares what we can learn about stillness of mind from JFK’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis and how journaling and limiting media inputs can help us foster our own mental stillness. We then discuss the myth that relationships hold you back in life, and how they can in fact help you find both greater achievement, and stillness of soul. We also discuss what we can learn from Winston Churchill on how to find physical stillness, and why having hobbies is so important to finding balance in life.
Show Highlights
- How Stillness the capstone of Ryan’s thinking on Stoicism
- Why Ryan missed some of Stoicism’s message on stillness earlier in his life
- How priorities shift as you age
- What does stillness really mean? Is it just meditation?
- The benefits that come from fostering stillness in your life
- What does it look like when your stillness is out of balance?
- JFK’s leadership during the Cuban Missile Crisis
- Limiting your inputs and avoiding “breaking” news
- The power of reading and journaling
- Using silence to find stillness
- The biggest obstacles to finding stillness in the soul
- What people get wrong about Epicurus
- How do relationships help still the soul?
- What role does the body play in a still life?
- The power of walking (and some famous walkers)
Resources/People/Articles Mentioned in Podcast
- My first podcast with Ryan: The Obstacle Is the Way
- My second podcast with Ryan: The Ego Is the Enemy
- Books So Good I’ve Read Them Twice (or More)
- Meditations on a First Reading of Aurelius’s Meditations
- Ben Sasse: By the Book
- Does Meditation Deserve the Hype?
- Tiger Woods
- Decluttering Your Digital Life
- What It Really Means to Be Self-Reliant
- Is There Any Reason to Keep Up With the News?
- The Eisenhower Decision Matrix
- The History of the Peloponnesian War
- Jumpstart Your Journaling: A 31-Day Challenge
- 31 Journaling Prompts for Greater Self-Reliance
- The Daily Stoic Journal
- Bill Gates’ “Think Week”
- The Spiritual Disciplines: Solitude and Silence
- The Churchill School of Adulthood (including his take on hobbies)
- Clementine by Sonia Purnell
- Painting as a Pastime by Winston Churchill
- The Magic of Walking
- Solvitur Ambulando: It Is Solved by Walking
- Bhagavad Gita
Connect With Ryan
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