| "Silence is a source of great strength." *~Lao Tzu*
! Post Written By Leo Babauta [1]. Follow Me On twitter [2] . !
It's a busy day, and you're inundated by non-stop emails, text
messages, phone calls, instant message requests, notifications,
interruptions of all kinds.
The noise of the world is a dull roar that pervades every second of
your life. It's a rush of activity, a drain on your energy, a pull on
your attention, until you no longer have the energy to pay attention
or take action.
It's an illness, this noise, this rush. It can literally make us sick.
We become stressed, depressed, fat, burnt out, slain by the slings and
arrows of technology.
The cure is simple: it's stillness.
!! Pause !!
Take a minute out of your busy day to do this little exercise: pause
in the middle of all you have to do, all that's going on around you.
Close your eyes, and sit still. Breathe in, and breathe out, and pay
attention to your breath as it comes in and goes out. Just sit still,
for about a minute.
This stillness might seem like inaction, which we're taught is a bad
thing. It's lazy, it's passive, it's against our Puritan work ethic.
And yet, this simple inaction can change our world.
Stillness calms us. It gives us a small oasis of quiet that allows us
to hear our thoughts, that allows us to catch our breath, that gives
us room to breathe at all. It is the antibody to the stress and rush
we feel daily.
| "Activity conquers cold, but stillness conquers heat." *~Lao
| Tzu*
!! The Strength Of Stillness !!
Stillness has a calming effect on the world around us as well. By
becoming still, we cause others to pause, to pay attention. Our quiet
also quiets others. We set the mood for those who work and otherwise
interact with us.
When we rush and set a frenetic pace, it stresses others and inspires
them to rush frenetically too. Stillness has the opposite effect. It
slows the world down, allows us to focus, gives us time for
contemplation, for what matters most.
It takes strength to be still when others rush. It takes courage to be
different, to go against the stream. But while others might think us
weird at first, that's OK. Sometimes it's the weird ones that make the
most difference. And soon, as our stillness inspires others to find
stillness of their own, we won't be the weird ones --- we'll be the
ones with wisdom.
It takes strength to find stillness when the world around us is a
chaos of activity, but it's a strength that's in us, and we need only
to find it. Paradoxically, it's stillness that will allow us to find
that strength. Be still, look within, and it'll be there.
!! Finding Stillness !!
It's pretty simple, really, and you don't need me to tell you to do
this: to find stillness, you just need to take the time to sit still,
every day that you can.
Find a time in the morning, when the world is still fairly quiet, to
sit still. Don't do anything, don't plan your day, don't check email,
don't eat. Just sit, and learn to be comfortable being still.
In practice, we'll gradually find that comfort, and we'll become good
at it. If mornings are no good, find time during your lunch break, or
after work, or just before you go to bed.
Find a place to be still. It can be a chair in your house, or a front
porch, or the roof. It can be a park bench, or the beach, or a path in
the woods. Let this be a ritual that you come to look forward to.
From this small place of stillness, calm will carry to the rest of
your day, radiating like a soothing force. You'll be calmer throughout
the day, and learn to find little pockets of stillness everywhere:
when you first start your workday, when you are ready to sit down and
create, when you're about to eat, when you are ready to exercise,
during a meeting, even.
Practice, regularly. Practice, and learn. Practice stillness, and the
stillness becomes a canvas upon which you can paint the masterpiece of
your life.
| "Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods."
| *~Ralph Waldo Emerson*
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*If you liked this guide, please bookmark it on Delicious [3] or share
on Twitter. Thanks, my friends.*
Links:
------
[1] http://zenhabits.net/about/
[2] http://twitter.com/zen_habits
[3] http://del.icio.us/post?url=http://zenhabits.net/find-stillness/&title=find stillness to cure the illness
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