Stillness is the Key
2019 • 290 pages
Ratings43
Average rating3.9
15
Ratings43
Average rating3.9
Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller & Wall Street Journal Bestseller In The Obstacle Is the Way and Ego Is the Enemy, bestselling author Ryan Holiday made ancient wisdom wildly popular with a new generation of leaders in sports, politics, and technology. In his new book, Stillness Is the Key, Holiday draws on timeless Stoic and Buddhist philosophy to show why slowing down is the secret weapon for those charging ahead. All great leaders, thinkers, artists, athletes, and visionaries share one indelible quality. It enables them to conquer their tempers. To avoid distraction and discover great insights. To achieve happiness and do the right thing. Ryan Holiday calls it stillness--to be steady while the world spins around you. In this book, he outlines a path for achieving this ancient, but urgently necessary way of living. Drawing on a wide range of history's greatest thinkers, from Confucius to Seneca, Marcus Aurelius to Thich Nhat Hanh, John Stuart Mill to Nietzsche, he argues that stillness is not mere inactivity, but the doorway to self-mastery, discipline, and focus. Holiday also examines figures who exemplified the power of stillness: baseball player Sadaharu Oh, whose study of Zen made him the greatest home run hitter of all time; Winston Churchill, who in balancing his busy public life with time spent laying bricks and painting at his Chartwell estate managed to save the world from annihilation in the process; Fred Rogers, who taught generations of children to see what was invisible to the eye; Anne Frank, whose journaling and love of nature guided her through unimaginable adversity. More than ever, people are overwhelmed. They face obstacles and egos and competition. Stillness Is the Key offers a simple but inspiring antidote to the stress of 24/7 news and social media. The stillness that we all seek is the path to meaning, contentment, and excellence in a world that needs more of it than ever.
Reviews with the most likes.
I thought it was superficial most times, and the people???s stories used as inspiration/example were not inspirational to me. The only chapter I enjoyed was the one about Anne Frank and journaling.
Not the best compared to the two previous one, but contains its lot of teachings. I don't know exactly why but this one felt less structured and lots of things were already told in the two previous one so it felt a lot like a repetition. It's also the same historical figures all over again so it doesn't help. Still, as a standalone, might be worth it.
Oooh, this one was very good. I think I'll need to buy myself a physical copy!
A really disappointing book. Holiday totally oversteps himself in trying to write something original (albeit borrowed from a million sources) but the deeper he steps into profoundity the more he reveals his inauthenticity. I was prepared to initially write it off and something that might be useful (as a triumph-of-marketing-over-useful-information) for younger people but ultimately I am left just thinking that this is the worst that popular philosophy writers have to contribute. A bunch of words that are no better than your average political campaign; sounds good to the unsophisticated ear but in reality is just the words of a commissioned speech writer. Yes a good story teller and writer but empty and inauthentic and useless and not nourishing for humanity.
