The Importance of Stillness | 7 Tips for Creating Time for Stillness

Stillness.

Sitting on the beach.
Reading a good book.
Praying.
Sitting on our back patio.
Thinking while running or driving or working out.
Just doing nothing but thinking—being still. That’s a tough one for me, but I’m trying to get better at it.

These are some of the ways I’ve been trying to add more stillness into my life.

What is stillness?  Why is it so important? Why would we want to make time to just be still?

Dictionary.com defines stillness as silence, quiet, hush, the absence of motion.

Here’s another definition of stillness I love from Ryan Holiday’s book, Stillness is the Key:

“To be steady while the world spins around you. To act without frenzy. To hear only what needs to be heard. To possess quietude—exterior and interior—on command.”

So, based on this last definition, stillness can be something we can experience whether we’re moving or not. Which is a bonus in today’s often fast-paced, quickly-moving world.

Why is stillness so important? According to Holiday (can you tell I loved his book?), stillness is the key to so many amazing and necessary things, and this list is a direct quote from page 5 of his book.

Stillness is the key…
To thinking clearly.
To seeing the whole chessboard
To making tough decisions.
To managing our emotions.
To identifying the right goals.
To handling high-pressure situations.
To maintaining relationships.
To building good habits.
To being productive.
To physical excellence.
To feeling fulfilled.
To capturing moments of laughter and joy.
Stillness is the key to, well, just about everything.

I would add that, for me, stillness is the key to communicating with God. Yes, I believe He is with me always, but I hear Him best when I make the time to slow down, think, and just be. I tend to find Him more in the stillness.

Be still, and know that I am God. ~Psalms 46:10

So, with all of these amazing benefits, why is it so hard to make time for stillness, even for just a few minutes at a time? See if any of these reasons resonate with you:

• We don’t make it a priority. We might tell ourselves, “I’ll make time to be still later,” and “later” never comes or comes very rarely.
• It’s out of our comfort zone. We might even be afraid to be alone with ourselves.
• We’re afraid we’ll get behind.
• We think it’s a waste of time.
• We feel like we’re not doing anything or accomplishing anything. If this is a hang up, add stillness to your to-do list. That way, you can get in some important stillness time and still cross something off your list. #winwin
• We don’t think it’s important. Even when we have the time, we think other things are more important.

It can be difficult to make time for stillness, but it can be done!

7 Tips for Creating Time for Stillness

Here are 7 ideas you can use to incorporate more stillness into your life:

1. Take a walk or move your body in some way. If possible, unplug while doing so.
2. Journal. Writing things down—feelings, struggles, wins, experiences, anything—can create more space to experience the benefits of stillness. And we can learn a lot from what we write too.
3. Put stillness time in your calendar and treat it like your most important appointment. Because it just might be.
4. Take even a few moments wherever you are and be still. “[S]ome of the coolest experiences are to be in the busiest of places and to foster an internal and external stillness for yourself,” said Karin Lawson, PsyD, a psychologist and clinical director with Oliver-Pyatt Centers. Imagine if you could master the art of being still when everything is whirling around you? That’s a gold mine!
5. Manage your distractions so they don’t take precious stillness time. Do emails, social media, texts, etc., have to be taken care of right now? Any time spent on any type of distraction makes it more difficult to focus on what’s most important, including that time for stillness.
6. Get rid of stuff you don’t need, both physically and mentally. Clutter can affect us in some negative ways:  Increase stress, make it easier to procrastinate (it takes time and effort to dig through clutter, both physically and mentally!), make it harder to focus, cause isolation, make relationships more difficult, and so on.
7. Just slow down, enjoy the journey, and be grateful. This world and our lives are full of so many things that we tend to overlook when we’re super busy and hurried all the time. Creating time for stillness can help us slow down, see things we might miss otherwise, and remind us of all we have to be grateful for.

It can be hard to make time for stillness, but as I’ve learned more about it and tried to make more time for stillness in my life, I’ve learned just how important it is, and I’m going to continue to make stillness a priority.

Which tip will you try first? Just remember it’s all about making time…

For stillness.

To be still.