by Ryan Holiday
What we will need then is that same stillness that Kennedy drew upon. His calmness. His open-mindedness. His empathy. His clarity about what really mattered.
In these situations we must:
Be fully present.
Empty our mind of preconceptions.
Take our time.
Sit quietly and reflect.
Reject distraction.
Weigh advice against the counsel of our convictions.
Deliberate without being paralyzed.
We must cultivate mental stillness to succeed in life and to successfully navigate the many crises it throws our way.
It will not be easy. But it is essential.
For the rest of his short life, Kennedy worried that people would learn the wrong lessons from his actions during the Missile Crisis. It wasn’t that he had stood up to the Soviets and threatened them with superior weapons until they backed down. Instead, calm and rational leadership had prevailed over rasher, reckless voices. The crisis was resolved thanks to a mastery of his own thinking, and the thinking of those underneath him—and it was these traits that America would need to call on repeatedly in the years to come. The lesson was one not of force but of the power of patience, alternating confidence and humility, foresight and presence, empathy and unbending conviction, restraint and toughness, and quiet solitude combined with wise counsel.
How much better would the world be with more of this behavior? How much better would your own life be?
Kennedy, like Lincoln, was not born with this stillness. He was a defiant troublemaker in high school, a dilettante for most of college and even as a senator. He had his demons and he made plenty of mistakes. But with hard work—work you are capable of doing too—he overcame those shortcomings and developed the equanimity that served him so well over those terrifying thirteen days. It was work in just a few categories that nearly everyone else neglects.
Which is where we will now turn our focus—toward mastering what we will call in this section “the domain of the mind”—because everything we do depends on getting that right.
BECOME PRESENT
Trust no future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,—act in the living present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!
—HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
The decision in 2010 to title Marina Abramović’s four-decade retrospective at MoMA in New York City The Artist Is Present all but preordained the monumental performance that would come out of it. Naturally, Marina would have to be present in one way or another.
But no one would have dared think that she would literally be there . . . for all of it.
Who could conceive that a human could sit silently in a chair, completely still, for a total of 750 hours over 79 days directly across from 1,545 strangers, without aid, without distraction, without so much as a way to go to the bathroom? That she would want to do this? That she would pull it off?
As her former lover and collaborator Ulay said when he was asked what he thought of the possibility, “I have no thoughts. Only respect.”
The performance was as simple as it was straightforward. Marina, aged sixty-three, her long hair braided and over her shoulder, walked into the cavernous room, sat down in a hard wooden chair, and simply stared at the person across from her. One after another they came, hour after hour, day in and day out, for nearly three months. Each time, she looked down, gathered herself, and then looked up afresh at the new face.
As Marina would say of her art, “The proposition here is just to empty the self. To be able to be present.”
Is it really that hard—to be present? What’s so special about that?
No one who was in the audience, who sat across from her, would ask such questions. For those souls lucky enough to see the performance in person, it was a near religious experience. To experience another person fully in the moment is a rare thing. To feel them engage with you, to be giving all their energy to you, as though there is nothing else that matters in the world, is rarer still. To see them do it for so long, so intensely?
Many viewers cried. Each one said the hours in line were worth it. It was like looking in a kind of mirror, where they could feel their own life for the first time.
Imagine: If Marina’s mind drifted, if she daydreamed, the person across from her could immediately sense that she was somewhere else. If she slowed her mind and body down too much, she might have fallen asleep. If she allowed for normal bodily sensations—hunger, discomfort, pain, the urge to go to the bathroom—it would be impossible not to move or get up. If she began to think of how much time was left in the day’s performance, time would slow to an intolerable crawl. So with monklike discipline and warriorlike strength she ignored these distractions to exist exclusively in the present moment. She had to be where her feet were; she had to care about the person across from her and the experience they were sharing more than anything else in the world.
“People don’t understand that the hardest thing is actually doing something that is close to nothing,” Abramović said about the performance. “It demands all of you . . . there is no object to hide behind. It’s just you.”
Being present demands all of us. It’s not nothing. It may be the hardest thing in the world.
As we stand on the podium, about to give a speech, our mind is focused not on our task but on what everyone will think of us. How does that not affect our performance? As we struggle with a crisis, our mind repeats on a loop just how unfair this is, how insane it is that it keeps happening and how it can’t go on. Why are we draining ourselves of essential emotional and mental energies right when we need them most?
Even during a quiet evening at home, all we’re thinking about is the list of improvements that need to be made. There may be a beautiful sunset, but instead of taking it in, we’re taking a picture of it.
We are not present . . . and so we miss out. On life. On being our best. On seeing what’s there.
Many of the people in line to see Marina Abramović’s performance accidentally illustrate this phenomenon. Rushing in as the doors opened, they zoomed past equally impressive pieces from her career so that they could be first for the “special” one. In line, they fidgeted endlessly and chatted with each other, trying to kill time as the hours ticked by. They napped, leaning up against one another. They checked their phones . . . and then checked them again. They planned what they would do when it was their turn and speculated about what it would be like. Some of them worked in secret on little stunts they hoped would bring them fifteen seconds of fame.
How much ordinary wonderfulness they closed their minds to.
It makes you wonder: After they had their transcendent experience with Marina—coming face-to-face with real presence—when they left the museum and walked out into the busy New York City street, did they breathe in anew the vibrant rhythm of the urban jungle, or, more likely, did they immediately resume their busy lives, full of distractions, anxiety, dreams, insecurities, and ego?
In short, did they do exactly what all of us do most of every single day?
We do not live in this moment. We, in fact, try desperately to get out of it—by thinking, doing, talking, worrying, remembering, hoping, whatever. We pay thousands of dollars to have a device in our pocket to ensure that we are never bored. We sign up for endless activities and obligations, chase money and accomplishments, all with the naïve belief that at the end of it will be happiness.
Tolstoy observed that love can’t exist off in the future. Love is only real if it’s happening right now. If you think about it, that’s true for basically everything we think, feel, or do. The best athletes, in the biggest games, are completely there. They are within themselves, within the now.
Remember, there’s no greatness in the future. Or clarity. Or insight.
Or happiness. Or peace. There is only this moment.
Not that we mean literally sixty seconds. The real present moment is what we choose to exist in, instead of lingering on the past or fretting about the future. It’s however long we can push away the impressions of what’s happened before and what we worry or hope might occur at some other time. Right now can be a few minutes or a morning or a year—if you can stay in it that long.
As Laura Ingalls Wilder said, now is now. It can never be anything else.
Seize it!
Who is so talented that they can afford to bring only part of themselves to bear on a problem or opportunity? Whose relationships are so strong that they can get away with not showing up? Who is so certain that they’ll get another moment that they can confidently skip over this one? The less energy we waste regretting the past or worrying about the future, the more energy we will have for what’s in front of us.
We want to learn to see the world like an artist: While other people are oblivious to what surrounds them, the artist really sees. Their mind, fully engaged, notices the way a bird flies or the way a stranger holds their fork or a mother looks at her child. They have no thoughts of the morrow. All they are thinking about is how to capture and communicate this experience.
An artist is present. And from this stillness comes brilliance.
This moment we are experiencing right now is a gift (that’s why we call it the present). Even if it is a stressful, trying experience—it could be our last. So let’s develop the ability to be in it, to put everything we have into appreciating the plentitude of the now.
Don’t reject a difficult or boring moment because it is not exactly what you want. Don’t waste a beautiful moment because you are insecure or shy. Make what you can of what you have been given. Live what can be lived. That’s what excellence is. That’s what presence makes possible.
In meditation, teachers instruct students to focus on their breath. In and out. In and out. In sports, coaches speak about “the process”—this play, this drill, this rep. Not just because this moment is special, but because you can’t do your best if your mind is elsewhere.
We would do well to follow this in our own lives. Jesus told his disciples not to worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will take care of itself. Another way of saying that is: You have plenty on your plate right now. Focus on that, no matter how small or insignificant it is. Do the very best you can right now.Don’t think about what detractors may say. Don’t dwell or needlessly complicate. Be here. Be all of you.
Be present.
And if you’ve had trouble with this in the past? That’s okay.
That’s the nice thing about the present. It keeps showing up to give you a second chance.
LIMIT YOUR INPUTS
A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.
—HERBERT SIMON
As a general, Napoleon made it his habit to delay responding to the mail. His secretary was instructed to wait three weeks before opening any correspondence. When he finally did hear what was in a letter, Napoleon loved to note how many supposedly “important” issues had simply resolved themselves and no longer required a reply.
While Napoleon was certainly an eccentric leader, he was never negligent in his duties or out of touch with his government or his soldiers. But in order to be active and aware of what actually mattered, he had to be selective about who and what kind of information got access to his brain.
In a similar vein, he told messengers never to wake him with good news. Bad news, on the other hand—that is to say, an unfolding crisis or an urgent development that negatively impacted his campaign—was to be brought to him immediately. “Rouse me instantly,” he said, “for then there is not a moment to be lost.”
These were both brilliant accommodations to the reality of life for a busy person: There is way too much coming at us. In order to think clearly, it is essential that each of us figures out how to filter out the inconsequential from the essential. It’s not enough to be inclined toward deep thought and sober analysis; a leader must create time and space for it.
In the modern world, this is not easy. In the 1990s, political scientists began to study what they called the “CNN Effect.” Breathless, twenty-four-hour media coverage makes it considerably harder for politicians and CEOs to be anything but reactive. There’s too much information, every trivial detail is magnified under the microscope, speculation is rampant—and the mind is overwhelmed.
The CNN Effect is now a problem for everyone, not just presidents and generals. Each of us has access to more information than we could ever reasonably use. We tell ourselves that it’s part of our job, that we have to be “on top of things,” and so we give up precious time to news, reports, meetings, and other forms of feedback. Even if we’re not glued to a television, we’re still surrounded by gossip and drama and other distractions.
We must stop this.
“If you wish to improve,” Epictetus once said, “be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters.”
Napoleon was content with being behind on his mail, even if it upset some people or if he missed out on some gossip, because it meant that trivial problems had to resolve themselves without him. We need to cultivate a similar attitude—give things a little space, don’t consume news in real time, be a season or two behind on the latest trend or cultural phenomenon, don’t let your inbox lord over your life.
The important stuff will still be important by the time you get to it. The unimportant will have made its insignificance obvious (or simply disappeared). Then, with stillness rather than needless urgency or exhaustion, you will be able to sit down and give what deserves consideration your full attention.
There is ego in trying to stay up on everything, whether it’s an acclaimed television show, the newest industry rumor, the smartest hot take, or the hottest crisis in [the Middle East, Africa, Asia, the climate, the World Bank, the NATO Summit, ad infinitum]. There is ego in trying to appear the most informed person in the room, the one with all the gossip, who knows every single thing that’s happening in everyone’s life.
Not only does this cost us our peace of mind, but there’s a serious opportunity cost too. If we were stiller, more confident, had the longer view, what truly meaningful subject could we dedicate our mental energy to?
In her diary in 1942, Dorothy Day, the Catholic nun and social activist, admonished herself much the same. “Turn off your radio,” she wrote, “put away your daily paper. Read one review of events and spend time reading.” Books, spend time reading books—that’s what she meant. Books full of wisdom.
Though this too can be overdone.
The verse from John Ferriar:
What wild desires, what restless torments seize
The hapless man, who feels the book-disease.
The point is, it’s very difficult to think or act clearly (to say nothing of being happy) when we are drowning in information. It’s why lawyers attempt to bury the other side in paper. It’s why intelligence operatives flood the enemy with propaganda, so they’ll lose the scent of the truth. It’s not a coincidence that the goal of these tactics is casually referred to as analysis paralysis.
Yet we do this to ourselves!
A century and a half after Napoleon, another great general and, later, head of state, Dwight D. Eisenhower, struggled to manage the torrent of facts and fiction that was thrown at him. His solution was strict adherence to the chain of command when it came to information. No one was to hand him unopened mail, no one was to just throw half-explored problems at him. Too much depended on the stillness within that he needed to operate to allow such haphazard information flow. One of his innovations was to organize information and problems into what’s now called the “Eisenhower Box,” a matrix that orders our priorities by their ratio of urgency and importance.
Much that was happening in the world or on the job,
Eisenhower found, was urgent but not important. Meanwhile, most of what was truly important was not remotely time-sensitive. Categorizing his inputs helped him organize his staff around what was important versus what seemed urgent, allowed them to be strategic rather than reactive, a mile deep on what mattered rather than an inch on too many things.
Indeed, the first thing great chiefs of staff do—whether it’s for a general or a president or the CEO of a local bank—is limit the amount of people who have access to the boss. They become gatekeepers: no more drop-ins, tidbits, and stray reports. So the boss can see the big picture. So the boss has time and room to think.
Because if the boss doesn’t? Well, then nobody can.
In his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius says, “Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’”
Knowing what not to think about. What to ignore and not to do. It’s your first and most important job.
Thich Nhat Hanh:
Before we can make deep changes in our lives, we have to look into our diet, our way of consuming. We have to live in such a way that we stop consuming the things that poison us and intoxicate us. Then we will have the strength to allow the best in us to arise, and we will no longer be victims of anger, of frustration.
It’s as true of food as it is of information.
There’s a great saying: Garbage in, garbage out. If you want good output, you have to watch over the inputs.
This will take discipline. It will not be easy.
This means fewer alerts and notifications. It means blocking incoming texts with the Do Not Disturb function and funneling emails to subfolders. It means questioning that “open door” policy, or even where you live. It means pushing away selfish people who bring needless drama into our lives. It means studying the world more philosophically—that is, with a long-term perspective—rather than following events second by second.
