The Skill of Being Still

I’ve always found it hard to sit still. Even as a child, in fact as far back as I can remember, I get a buzz from being busy. This love for busyness has spilled over into my adult life; where I’ve sometimes judged the quality of my days by how much I can pack into them. For those like me, the notion of being still is a mystical fantasy that we eagerly anticipate, on the rare occasion there is a weekend with “no plans” or in the build up to a break-away holiday.

I don’t think I’m particularly unique in that respect. Many of us can relate.   

Similarly, in business and as a Marketer, being “always on” in terms of listening, monitoring and communicating over social platforms, comes with the territory.  Life is happening at warp speed and I for one, whether consciously or unconsciously, can get swept away in the momentum.  We observe this “busyness” all around us both in our business and every-day lives. We’re on our devices while sitting in traffic, over lunch, in the supermarket queue, while waiting for a friend or even while in mid-conversation with others. 

Being still is not a habit we see in ourselves or others very often. 

So, if we don’t consciously seek it out, where do we find the stillness and what lessons may we miss as a result? 

From doing to being

Stillness is defined as the absence of movement or sound. These days and more often than not, real stillness may only happen while we sleep.  I’ve always been curious about stillness, am especially curious about people who do this well and the calming effect they seem to have in any given situation.  

I remember coaching sessions where I was introduced to the concept of scheduling “do-nothing time”. This was easier said than done but the advice wasn’t lost on me. Eager to explore this idea further, I decided to do a week long Yoga Retreat abroad. I’d never holidayed alone before. In fact, I’d never done yoga before either. For me, Yoga was shrouded in mystery and I just didn’t get it. 

On the retreat, our group was guided through three, one hour classes of yoga a day, followed by meditation and stillness. Our instructor would repeat the word “stillness” throughout the practice. I enjoyed being still more than I ever thought I would. It also opened up a new perspective for me, that being still did not necessarily mean being motionless.

Following my experience at the retreat I wanted to keep going with yoga and to challenge myself I joined a Bikram Yoga Club. Bikram is a very specific 90 minute series of 26 yoga postures and breathing exercises taught in 40 degrees Celsius. Each pose is a challenge based on personal abilities. Each pose addresses a certain area of the body, bestowing specific and powerful health benefits. One such pose is called “Savasana” also known as corpse pose, or dead body pose. In the pose, you lay flat on your back chin slightly down to flatten the neck, heels touching, feet falling open to keep hips in alignment and palms up. You’re invited to stay still for 20 seconds without moving, with your eyes open, fully aware of your breath and practicing letting go of any distractions. Simple right?

How can laying still virtually doing nothing be so challenging? During this posture, however you’re not just lying there doing nothing, you are training your mind to stay in the moment, focus, draw the mind way from distractions and back to breath. 

The posture is a shift from doing to being. 

Should we keep busy or simply be still?

For many people not only those who practice yoga, this can be a very difficult thing to do. Not moving, not readjusting, not doing whatever it is that keeps our mind running and causing a reaction.   

With the virus outbreak, we’ve been home for 6 weeks now, forced to avoid movement outside of our homes and not beyond a 2KM buffer. At the beginning of the restrictions, my immediate reaction was to get busy; how can I fill this time? What things have I been long-fingering that I can do, now that I have this extra time stretching out in front of me? 

This is something we’re all grappling with in one way or another. We see it in the spike in purchases of personal exercise equipment, the massive purchases of flour for home baking, the increase in revenue for Zoom in just a few short weeks for both personal and business use.  In fact, the boom in Zoom Video Communication’s share price has turned its founder and chief executive Eric Yuan into one of the world’s richest people. Yuan, who owns 20% of the company’s shares, has seen his estimated net worth increase by more than $4bn since the COVID-19 crisis started, to $7.9bn.

Even during a pandemic, where getting through each day is an achievement - we continue to seek new ways to keep busy instead of perhaps, just keeping still.

The Art of Stillness

Stillness appears to be an enigma, not high on the agenda for the vast majority.  This also plays out on the TED platform. When I did a quick search on TED, I could find only one video dedicated to “The Art of Stillness” recorded by Pico Iyer in 2014.  

Iyer ponders whether in our insatiable desire to fill time, we’re missing the gift that stillness can offer. In Iyer’s book of the same name, he investigates the lives of people who have made a life seeking stillness: from Matthieu Ricard, a Frenchman with a PhD in molecular biology who left a promising scientific career to become a Tibetan monk, to revered singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, who traded the pleasures of the senses for several years of living the near-silent life of meditation as a Zen monk.

Iyer also draws on his own experiences as a travel writer to explore why advances in technology are making us more likely to retreat. He reflects that this is perhaps the reason why many people—even those with no religious commitment—seem to be turning to yoga, or meditation or seeking silent retreats. These aren't New Age fads so much as ways to rediscover the wisdom of an earlier age. Growing trends like observing an “Internet Sabbath”— turning off online connections from Friday night to Monday morning—highlight how increasingly desperate many of us are to unplug and bring stillness into our lives. We have more time saving devices, less and less time and in our quest to constantly connect with each other, we can lose contact with ourselves. 

Although one definition of stillness is defined as the absence of movement or sound – the notion of stillness doesn’t necessarily mean not moving. Let’s look at another perspective, that of Lao-Tzu, the Chinese philosopher credited with founding the philosophical system of Taoism. His philosophy was that being still does not mean don’t move, it means move in peace. Stillness for you could be going for a run, travelling to new places, having a meal with a loved one, hanging out with your best friend, reading a book, walking on a beach. Stillness will mean different things to different people but the outcome of a feeling of inner peace or being "in flow" seems to be the common denominator. It can be felt by living in a state of presence where we remain connected to ourselves and are completely present in our body.

Our aversion to stillness at work

Does this hold true in business life as well? How does our aversion to stillness show up in how we behave or interact at work? 

I guess it can show up in meetings when we’re not present, when we talk over each other. It’s when we check our phone for messages or while engaging in multiple conversations at the same time, with no-one really practicing active listening. It can manifest in the priority we give towards blue-sky thinking. It may show up in how we manage our diaries, squeezing in meetings almost back to back – forcing both ourselves and our colleagues to change “mental” gears multiple times a day, not giving near enough time for reflection.   It can manifest in how we fail to be still and savour our own personal work achievements, be they big or small. Why not be still in these moments, knowing that we’ve done our best and really take in the good, before ploughing full steam ahead into the next project or initiative.

In the same way, when we have an off-day, contemplation in stillness to figure out why, can help us learn and grow from these experiences.   In the stillness there is clarity of mind, thoughts, actions and behaviour. There’s calm in how we handle stress and unfavorable moments because we’ve been practicing letting go of the distractions, disturbing nuances or whatever it may be that comes our way in life daily. 

Stillness is a choice

During the last six weeks I’ve found being still a challenge. What this time has highlighted though, is that I’m not alone in feeling this way. From my conversations with others and their experiences during imposed restrictions, most of us have gravitated towards filling our time, instead of making space.

What is this teaching me?

At Esri Ireland, we’re actively encouraged to read, to take time for reflection and thinking. I’m consciously doing more of that now. I’m asking questions of myself on how to bring more “stillness” into life at work. Can I practice a few minutes each day and build on it little by little, over time?  By practicing stillness through yoga, I’ve noticed I’m less reactive outside of the studio. I know for a fact, it’s been instrumental in giving me the clarity and stillness of mind to make some important life decisions and in dealing with a series of pretty challenging life curve-balls that have come my way.  As the time at home stretches on though and for those of us fortunate to work from home - we’re finding our work groove and a new routine. And as many of the house & garden chores are done, the pace of our busyness is beginning to wane. 

Maybe that’s a good thing.

Bringing It Full Circle

Being still helps you to stand back and handle adversity differently. The skill of being still is just that – a skill, which means we can all practice it. We can learn it to benefit our working relationships, our home life and most importantly the relationship we have with ourselves. 

Pico Iyer captures it brilliantly when he says;

“In an age of acceleration nothing can be more exhilarating than going slow; In an age of distraction nothing is more luxurious than paying attention; In an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.” 

Perhaps Eckhart Tolle had the insider track on a glimpse into the future when he said; “It is inner stillness that will save and transform the world.” 

Given our current global shared experiences and before we go seeking out something new to do, imagine taking the time to get to know ourselves a little better. Imagine choosing stillness......to just be and tap into a primal skill that’s always been within our reach - one we’ve developed through time and evolution - The Skill of Being Still.

ENDS