miguel-se7

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone” -Blaise Pascal

Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday is the third and final book of the trilogy comprised by The Obstacle is the Way and Ego is the Enemy, (both of which are really good books that you should check out).

Now, I'm a pretty lazy guy, so when I heard that there was a book out there telling me that being still would be the way of solving my problems, I was instantly interested and decided to give it a read.

The book is divided in three sections: Mind, Spirit and Body, each one consisting on small easy to digest chapters about a certain form of stillness, or application of it, that we should bear in mind in order to improve our lives. The opening quotes on each chapter are usually pretty good and give you a good sense of the overall topic of the chapter.

Ryan makes use of historical figures (Buddha, Kennedy, Anne Frank, and even Tiger Woods) to present us with some dilemmas or difficult situations, and the way in which Stillness can help us hurdle through the different obstacles that life may throw at us.

Maybe it's because I have already read some books by Ryan, or because some of the anecdotes told in this book were already shared on his daily stoic meditations, but I wasn't as impressed with this book as with the previous ones.

But don't get me wrong, there's plenty of useful advice here: from understanding what are the things we should care about; Knowing how to organize yourself to deal with what's really important, not what seems urgent at the moment, not what social media tells you you should be worrying about; to learning to create moments of silence in your life, so you can think about what really matters.

I sincerely believe that you will get something of value from reading this book, specially if this is your first piece by the author.

You can find the rest of my reviews here. In case you haven't heard about it, I'm currently running a giveaway be sure to check it out, you can find all the details on this tweet.

See below for some of my favorite quotes from the book:

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