This is my first book from Holiday and boy do I feel like I've missed the boat somewhere along the way. I've already picked up one of his older ones and anticipate getting the other in this series too.

This book is packed with so much wisdom. Holiday really breaks down useful practices for mind, body, and soul to help us all achieve the stillness we should in order to be our best selves. But it's not just Holiday spouting out what to do, it's real world examples from well-known historical figures as well as wisdom from countless spiritual and political leaders. My only criticism is just a note for me to remember to keep a highlighter next to the bed so I don't ruin the book by earmarking so many pages for reference/re-reading. **sigh** ( )

Basically, one guy's interpretation of what other people have written, and in some cases, what he thinks they might have been thinking. Followed by unsuccessful attempts to tie it all together into one overarching concept. Formulaic, and in some cases pretty obvious and banal.

Don't read him, or take his interpretations as gospel. Read the works he references instead. ( )

I picked up this book not knowing anything about it. It looked like one of those spiritual airy-fairy self-help books, judging by its title. I started browsing through it, and it looked sort of interesting. I decided to read it and was most pleasantly surprised by a nice personal stillness guide book. In this age of anxiety (and I suffered a lot during the pandemic and associated political upheaval in the past few years), I found this to be a helpful book indeed. It centers on personal calm, how to be grounded, and gives practical advice how to achieve this.

I think that if one would read this book again from time to time, a different chapter would stand out with each reread. At the particular time I was reading this book, the chapter about anger made the most sense to me and gave me the best advice.

I like that the author used multiple credible sources of information from olden times to present day to supply the reader with facts and quotes. His writing was done so well and was so inspiring that I would seek out other works by him in the future. ( )

In bite size chapters, Ryan Holiday doles out a lot of wisdom on "stillness". At times I impatiently wanted to rush through this book ... and often I was frustrated because the topic changed just as my interest was piqued.

Nothing was truly mind-blowing or new. However, I did subscribe to his newsletter afterwards so he's doing something for me. He has some really great nuggets of wisdom which I would prefer in a different format. ( )

I am a fan of Ryan Holiday's work. I tell my students in my leadership and politics classes, "Be like Ryan". Read, write, think about your future. Develop a philosophy - rules to live by. Establish your purpose - what a colleague calls one's ikigai.

Ryan Holiday reads books. He is well-read. He writes books. He lives on the land. He is doing in his early thirties what I am still not quite able to do in my fifties. But that's not the point.

As Theodore Roosevelt warned, "comparison is the thief of joy". I know all about my own circumstances, not somebody else's. Better to judge myself by my own principles and standards.

I have read many self-improvement books and I take something away from each one I have read. But I am also conscious of the marketing behind such works. I recall accompanying one of my in-laws to an event. It turned out to be Amway. I bought Dale Carnegie's famous book but I was wary of every time a colleague asked me, "I'd like to talk to you about a business opportunity".

I found myself becoming a little wary of Holiday's approach to this book about one third of the way through. I felt it was formulaic and repeating old ground from his earlier works. But I have been following his work from the early days of the simple Reading List email newsletter, so I acknowledged my concerns and pushed on.

I think it is the way the book builds. The end of each chapter gives a few short sentences of encouragement. I was experiencing the elevation at the end of each chapter much like one does when reading Carnegie. Frowning often while reading, it wasn't until the last few pages that my faith in Holiday was restored.

In "Act Bravely", one of the final chapters, Holiday discusses Albert Camus' The Fall. I am nodding in agreement and I thought, "I know this story, I've read most of Camus". I had to check my blog and there it was, "La Chute".

It struck me again that Holiday is really well-read. My faith restored, I went back and examined what had been going on for me.

To cut a long story short, I suffer from self-doubt in the way of Steven Pressfield. It can be crippling. Writing this right now is part of my preparation to write something else that I wish would just go away. But it won't and I have a job to do.

Holiday discusses the idea of stillness in the context of looking after oneself. I noted that many of the tips and tricks he mentions for maintaining stillness in one's life, I have used since I can remember.

Albert Camus struck me the same way when he discussed suicide. (I am not advocating suicide but I went through the philosophical exercise as the Stoics do without realising it had been done by others. This is a major reason to read according to Harold Bloom and Italo Calvino.) Ryan Holiday introduced me to the Stoics and they had the same view of suicide as a legitimate philosophical option.

Reading Stillness is the Key revealed to me the extent of my self-doubt. Not only about myself and my academic work, but also about the processes I use and how I defend my inner citadel from nonsense, how I do things like writing this blog post as a hobby and how I might prioritise doing so on this long weekend holiday instead of doing other work that is always there and can take up all my time when I let it.

And there it is - Ryan Holiday has done it again. All writing follows a formula, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is formulaic. Indeed, Aristotle's formula was original once!

It brings me back to a quote from Jack London's To Build a Fire on my blog post from last Sunday:

The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances.

To be formulaic in writing is to lack "the significances". In these, Ryan Holiday lacks nothing. ( )