Monthly Archives: November 2019

Mastering Stillness and Speed

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“Stillness is what aims the archer’s arrow. It inspires new ideas. It sharpens perspective and illuminates connections. It slows the ball down so that we might hit it. It generates a vision, helps us resist the passions of the mob, make space for gratitude and wonder. Stillness allows us to persevere. To succeed.”

Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key, (2019)

Stillness is vastly underrated. Although with mindfulness this is now slowly changing.

There is an amount of speed that is optimal when doing and working that allows us to get a lot done without too much stress. At some point additional speed doesn’t help to get more done. That’s where more mistakes creep in, thinking jumbles, creates drama and the effort creates more costly maintenance and wastes time.

Conversely, there is an optimal stillness level. Where things slow down, get into focus, thinking clears, more intelligence and creativity are freed up and new ideas and solutions are hatched. At some point any additional stillness creates complacency, laziness, disengagement, over drifting and stuckness as momentum grounds to a halt and direction is lost.

How do you make sure you stay in that optimum range? Also how do you make sure you don’t stay stuck in speed or stillness too long? You need the alternating flow of both, in that optimum range for the best productivity and best use of your time and energy.

We have been culturally stuck in that high gear speed for too long and not nearly spending enough time cultivating the power of stillness.

Stillness allows you access to your depth and to more time in the present moment, within which everything gets done.

It is very important to make some stillness a priority in your day. It will sharpen your mind and help focus more of your doing and its speed.

Persistence always beats Talent

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“As any coach or athlete will tell you, consistency of effort over the long run is everything.”
Angela Duckworth, Grit – The Power of Passion and Perseverance, (2016)

This is a great book, a massive best seller a few years ago (it remained on the New York Times best sellers list for 20 weeks. She also has 18 million hits on her TED talk on this subject.) This is great research on why some people succeed very well and become masters and experts in their field and why others with talent do not.

The key is finding your passion in a a field and then having persistence to keep practicing, learning and correcting (even when you fail or get it wrong) over many years.

Angela has created a grit scale test that can show you or a potential hire if that person will succeed in their field or job. Just having a high test mark from school or University doesn’t correlate with success on the job. But having perseverance and not giving up, does.

In order to not give up you must home in on your passion. The passion will give you the drive to persist, especially through the rough and down periods when things are not going well.

She summarises mastery into two equations:

Talent x Effort = Skill
Skill x Effort = Achievement

The more you practice and don’t give up, the higher the chance of achieving mastery in a field or job. Talent can help but it is the effort that really does it. In fact you can have very little talent up front but with persistent effort become a master in your field.

A lot of experts and geniuses in their fields actually got that way through huge long term effort and yet only had average talent in the beginning, if that.

The same with Mindfulness practice – the more you practice, the more you will learn and correct, and in the long run, mastery will be there.

The balance your body needs in a revved up world

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“in 1990, 49 per cent of Europeans felt their work schedule was too strenuous. By 2000, that had increased to 60 per cent – and those who felt themselves to be rushed were almost twice as likely to complain of classic stress disorders, such as back pain, or tight shoulders and necks.”

Robert Colvile, The Great Acceleration – How the World is Getting Faster, Faster, (2016)

A study was conducted in the early 1990s of 31 countries and then repeated again with the same countries in 2006 to measure the pace of life. What psychologists found was that the pace in 2006 had gone up by 10%. World wide, people were covering the same stretch of ground on the street in 10% less time.

So you are not imagining it when you feel like people are running around faster than ever before. It is actually happening. And more so in the more advanced and industrialised countries.

This type of speed is often good if it helps us get more done in less time, and it is tied into technology advancements. But when we get caught up in it and cannot switch off regularly, is when the body begins to feel the type of stress that can lead to problems. Problems personally and problems with others.

Psychologist Stephanie Brown says ‘for many people, their relationship to technology and speed has become more important than, or even replaced, human relationships.’

A body mindfulness practice can help bring our stress levels back into balance. So you can enjoy the benefits of the speed, (getting more done in less time,) but also enjoy the ability to switch off by choice without getting trapped in that high revved up state.

The Stress and Trauma of Modern Times

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“Mindfulness involves paying attention to something, in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally….You actually have to tell your brain that is your intention. It won’t know what you’re doing, and it will priorities its activities based on your emotions or your mental energy or your physical needs.”

Stan Rodski, The Neuroscience of Mindfulness, (2019)

Another good book released earlier this year on mindfulness. A psychologist/cognitive neuroscientist, talks about the basics of mindfulness.

Unless you take control of your thinking mind, it will run you. Your conscious awareness needs to direct your thinking mind to stop. It doesn’t need to stop for long to de stress your over cluttered thinking thoughts. But stop it must.

Without conscious attention to stopping, your brain will run on auto-pilot and continue to rehash all the unresolved traumatic events of your past.

This fast paced period of time in our history is stressing your fight/flight emergency system out. Most of our stress is from past traumas where our nervous system has not fully come down from the high alert state, created by one event or the high level of continued pressure from many events, in our current environment.

TV news is traumatic to your body. Video and satellite crosses and instant transfer of bad news from any part of the globe was never there one hundred years ago. Now it is on tap, through TV, social media, radio, newspapers etc. And your body responds as if it is a secondary traumatic event happening to you now.

Witnessing a traumatic event can be just as traumatic to your body as actually being in the event.

So it is very important to consciously each day have the awareness to switch off and stop at some point, or at a number of points.

De stressing daily is vital to your health.