Friday Thoughts #3: Tenacious Stillness

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I don’t know if it’s the snow falling calmly outside my window or simply feeling the effects of the week that is coming to an end, but I think we all need a better ability to hit “pause”. Last Friday I wanted you to think about approaching your life with tenacity and not accept the weekend as a time to lose track of your goals and halt all progress. This week, I want you to keep living with tenacity for love, integrity, fellowship, and excellence but in a new way. In this case, tenacious stillness.

People have always described me as some version of “tightly wound”. My fourth-grade teacher had a serious conversation with my parents about possible anxiety disorders (now as an educator, I have more than one problem with her playing doctor, but I digress). My parents have a picture of me, around 9 years old, crouching next to the outfield fence of a baseball field nose-to-nose with my coach, tears on my cheeks. He wasn’t causing the tears; nothing was. I was anxious about striking out and not being good enough – a lot for a 9-year-old but I guess I’m an old soul. My wife is the angel God knew I needed because to this day she is the only person I’ve ever met that can recognize my anxiety and help to curb it which she still does on a near-weekly basis. It’s been a lifelong battle.

What has helped in my toughest moments has varied throughout my life. The first real help came when I found training. Exercise was about more than being a better ball player or looking good right from the beginning. I remember the first time I trained legs with a mentor of mine who showed me what real hard work in the gym looked like. I left tired and a little wobbly but I loved it. I felt stronger physically and mentally. In college, I found my faith and felt a peace I hadn’t before experienced. You mean every single thing in the universe isn’t in my control and it shouldn’t be?! Mind-blowing.

In fall 2019, my anxiety that had been fairly dormant for a while, came roaring back. The day before Thanksgiving, I had a full-blown panic attack in my living room and spent the day going in and out of sleep on my couch before I could manage to face the day at around 6:00 pm. In the two months prior, I had gotten married (I love my wife more than anything but the wedding itself came with stressors of planning and pleasing family) and we had bought our first home. For someone who is anxious most often about money, these two events in close succession overwhelmed me.

That day, a workout wasn’t going to happen and I struggled to find comfort in scripture because my mind wouldn’t slow down enough to even read the words. My mind had to slow down before I could do anything else. It was a lightbulb moment for me. My wife has always loved yoga and has gotten me into a few classes with her so the idea of mindfulness and slowing down wasn’t foreign but I had never taken it to heart.

I’m an academic so I needed a book to help me out. Luckily, I found two right away. I picked up John Mark Comer’s The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry and Ryan Holiday’s Stillness is the Key (I highly recommend both). John Mark Comer is a pastor in Portland, OR and spoke right to my faith while Ryan Holiday has a gift for learning from ancient wisdom to apply to our lives. Here are some of my major takeaways from both combined that I hope you can find meaning in too:

  1. Stillness really is key. Our society awards the fast-movers who hide from their lives behind “busyness” but finding the ability to be still with your own thoughts is the only place you can truly begin to know yourself and your principles.   
  2. Most of your busyness is self-inflicted by wasting time. For high-achieving men, this is difficult to think about and admit but, how many hours a day do you waste? Be honest. Comer cited Philip Zimbardo to make the point – by age 21, the average American male has spent 10,000 hours playing video games. That’s equivalent to 1,250 workdays, 24 weeks, or 2 years. Play your video games here and there, if you must but let’s agree that there’s a limit and it is way before 10,000 hours. 2 years of your first 21? Time. Wasted. If you’re not into video games, you’re not off the hook. The average American spends 705 hours per year on social media and 2,735 watching TV. Imagine what else could be done with 2 years of your life. That language you want to learn? Get it! Want to be in shape? Two years of working out would get you there. O, you don’t have time to go visit your friend to champion some fellowship? I think you might be able to find some. Don’t get me wrong, when I read these books I felt as guilty as anyone but we can do better.
  3. Stillness of body and stillness of mind tend to go together. Pause reading right now, close your eyes; take a deep box breath all Mark Divine style (4 seconds inhale – hold for 4 – 4 seconds exhale – hold for 4). Feel that? You were still for a whole minute! Repeat it a few times and you’ll start to notice your thoughts slowing down too. Your thoughts transform from cars on an 8-lane highway at rush hour to a Midwest county road at 2:00 am. You can actually notice your thoughts in this state and recognize if they are positive or negative. You can discard the ones you don’t need and celebrate the ones that lift you up.
  4. Your stillness affects everything and everyone in your life. Can you think of someone in your life who always seems to be on the go? Sometimes it amazes us – “whoa, they are so productive”. If you ask their closest friends what they see, you might hear a different story. “They’re really hard to get time with” or “I barely ever hear back from them and when we do get together they can’t put their work aside” might be common. I want you to be productive but not at the expense of your life. If you can’t watch your daughter’s hockey game without checking email or sit through a movie with your wife and not be thinking of that deal you have to make, you might have a problem and I promise they can sense it too. You’re not fooling anyone (I always thought I was).

There are so many more takeaways for me but I’ll trust you to go get one or both of the books and read for yourself. This weekend, I want you to try to be tenaciously still. Here are some simple and actionable ideas from Comer and Holiday on how:

  1. Drive the speed limit and full stop at stop signs. Sounds easy but it forces you to literally slow and stops when we often speed everywhere and despise people who actually follow the law and stop at a stop sign.
  2. Keep your phone away until you spend 10 minutes quietly in the morning. Spend your first 10 minutes reading, meditating, watching the sunrise, or staring at the wall, whatever. I recommend reading and journaling (see the next tip) some of your favorite lines from the pages but no matter what, do not make your phone screen the first light you see all day.
  3. Start journaling. Before you go to bed tonight, grab a piece of paper and write down 3 things you’re grateful for and one goal you have for tomorrow. Boom. You just became a journaler. If you want more (and I hope you will), Holiday just created an amazing guide to everything journaling that you can check out here (The Timeless Art of Journaling)
  4. Actually, notice the world around you. At some point this weekend, try to get by yourself for 2 minutes. Wherever you are, close your eyes and do a “sense check”. First, pay attention to what you smell, try to name it. Then, notice anything touching your skin and describe how they feel – your clothes, the air, etc. Next, feel your breath – is it short and choppy? Finally, open your eyes but don’t just look around. Look for the colors around you, what are they?
  5. Say “no”. At least one time this weekend, I want you to say “no” to someone who asks you for something. Big bonus points if they are asking you for time. We are in an age of people pleasing but sometimes saying no is the best. Just think, every time you say “yes” to one thing, you just said “no” to thousands of other opportunities.

Start with those five small things this weekend and begin to feel the benefits of slowing down. End the hurry in your life and peace will surely follow. This post is for me just as much as it is for you. For some, this will be much harder than doing an intense workout or scaling a mountain. You’re good at moving and looking busy but can you be ok with looking slow? Your relationships require the best and most present version of yourself. Find the courage to be still and the tenacity to get there.

*I truly hope you go and pick up at least one of the books in this post. Both are on Amazon and are worth the money. Both are also offered as audiobooks. If you’re not quite a book person, here are a couple of resources from each author to give you some more of their insights that are far more developed than mine.

Featured image credit: AlainAudet via PixaBay

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