Yet to read the book. I love this post of Ryan on Tim Talk Talk aka Tim Ferriss’ blog: https://tim.blog/2019/09/26/stillness-is-the-key-ryan-holiday/
Stillness is being non-reactive. It’s being in the moment and having the spare mental capacity to zoom in and out of the situation, go 360 degrees on all dimensions and then to decide to act or not to act after you’ve calculate which route of action will bring you closer to your long-term goals.
It’s freaking simple, freaking hard to do. When you’re confident, you’re like this. When you got your doubts, they leak and poison your decision. The key is to be always prepared because we fall down to the level of our training in moments of pressure.
Not arrogance, but confidence. Arrogance is like a fake Rolex. It’s leaking, not water, but doubts. Because every arrogant people decides to act refusing to acknowledge his doubts over his preparedness by being pressured by the fearful ego. The ego is pushing the arrogant to act and risk, over and over again.
Stillness is an amazing topic, especially in light of this article about… well, they don’t say it, but I think concentration is a myth.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/to-pay-attention-the-brain-uses-filters-not-a-spotlight-20190924/
We don’t force ourselves to focus on one thing, apparently, as it is well described in the article – our brain is simply lowering down the volume of our distraction. We don’t suddenly wake up and force ourselves to think about just 1 thing. We can only switch off the thinking of allllll the other things we have on our minds, one by one… until our desired topic of focus is left alone. You can only hear your brain chatter talking about your topic of focus. You don’t put any effort to stop your other thoughts or topics of interest. You simply don’t let them in your mind, you are forgetting them. There’s only place for 1 topic of interest in your mind. That’s complete and utter dedication. That’s stillness.
P.S. Just a day after I’ve posted this article, Brad Feld blogged about what he calls JOMO – Joy Of Missing Out. It’s about missing out on the widely accepted social functions for your own pleasures – in his case running and reading books.
https://feld.com/archives/2019/10/jomo-the-joy-of-missing-out.html
Ivan On Racing 