3559: Seeking Stillness by Keith Wilson on Inner Peace and A Meaningful Life

[00:00:00] Before we start, I want to share a super powerful practice I use called NSDR or Non-Sleep Deep Rest. In just about 10 minutes or so, this Yoga Nidra practice leaves you feeling as refreshed as after a nap without actually sleeping. Experience it for yourself on our guided podcast. Search NSDR and look for the one from Optimal Living Daily.

[00:00:23] This is Optimal Living Daily, Seeking Stillness by Keith Wilson of KeithWilsonCounseling.com and I'm Justin Malik. I'm going to jump right into today's post as we optimize your life. Seeking Stillness by Keith Wilson of KeithWilsonCounseling.com

[00:00:45] Most feelings seem like wild carnivores that ambush you, jump out of the bushes, seize you in their jaws, carry you off, and consume you till there's nothing left. Stillness is not like that. Stillness is like a rare flower, easily overlooked, but if you find it, you'll want to collect and grow it in your garden. By stillness is like a rare flower, easily. By stillness is like a rare flower, easily overlooked, but if you find it, you'll want to collect and grow it in your garden.

[00:01:08] By stillness, I mean serenity, equanimity, calmness, tranquility, peace, quiet, repose. It's the opposite of agitation, hyperactivity, hypervigilance, spastic, crazy, hectic, chaotic, nervous, excitable, frenetic, and troubled.

[00:01:30] The Greeks called it Hezekiah. The Buddhists, Upeka, Hindus, Samadvam, and the Arabs, Aslama, related to the name of their religion, Islam. It's cherished by everyone almost as much as it's avoided. Correction, I don't think stillness per se is avoided. Simplicity and inactivity are. But simplicity and inactivity are often the path to stillness.

[00:01:56] You might be afraid of simplicity and inactivity if you believe you always need to be productive and have an answer to everything. Or if you don't want to listen to your relentless thoughts that just get louder when you're not busy. No, we value stillness. We just don't know how to get it. Stillness is that rare flower you find by accident. It must be cultivated if you want to make it a regular part of your life. Remember a moment in your life when you were captivated by beauty.

[00:02:27] It could have been a sunset you couldn't take your eyes off of, a beach that filled your senses, or music that reached into your soul. It might have been chocolate. Those are instances when stillness was like a rare flower. Take that specimen and cherish it. Develop that memory of that moment, keep it handy, and reimagine it when needed. The body is not necessarily still when you experience stillness in the wild.

[00:02:55] Athletes talk about a sense of stillness when they make a brilliant play. Their subjective sense of time slows down, and everything is easy while their bodies are in motion. Musicians say the same thing when their egos evaporate while their fingers are busy on the keyboard. Walking along the beach does not prevent you from attaining stillness, and dancing or playing doesn't keep the music out of your soul. However, for stillness to be achieved, your mind must be quiet.

[00:03:23] If you can't remember a moment where you came upon stillness by accident, you'll have to go out and find one. You have to be like an explorer seeking orchids in the Everglades. Slow down and try not to worry about the alligators. Look, listen, and feel carefully wherever you are, and see if you can find that beauty I was talking about. The trick is you can't try so hard. It can't be a competition. You can't force stillness.

[00:03:51] If you can't find any stillness, then you'll have to make it from scratch. Take up meditation or yoga. These are activities in which stillness is the product. The other option is drugs, but if you do that, you'll need more drugs if you ever want to find it again. I tend to cultivate stillness in the places where I need it most. When I'm in a hurry and must stop at a traffic light or wait in a line, that's my cue to cultivate stillness. It's not as if I can do anything else anyway.

[00:04:20] When I catch myself needing stillness, I tell myself I'm already doing everything I can. There's nothing more expected of me. Therefore, I will be still and do nothing until I can go. Almost immediately, I feel my heart rate drop, my blood pressure lower, and the sweat on my palms dry up. I often clasp my hands, look around, and discover something beautiful I would not have seen had I been frantic. The second place I cultivate stillness is when I'm with clients.

[00:04:50] In this case, I'm not usually frustrated as I am when I must wait, but I'm needing to pay attention. I could be preparing an answer, making a diagnosis, putting together a formulation, or dreaming of lunch. But if I did any of those things while you were speaking, I wouldn't be listening in the way you expect me to listen. In those moments, it's important for me to give myself over to your story the way you see it and understand it as if I were you

[00:05:18] before I go messing around with my own interpretations and interventions. I don't believe listening this way is the only thing a therapist should do, but I do believe it's an essential component of our heart. Also, when a client has seen me be still, the stillness gives my words gravity when I finally do speak. The third place I cultivate stillness is when I feel challenged or out of my element. This is the hardest plot of ground to cultivate stillness for adrenaline is running,

[00:05:48] but being still is the most sensible thing to do. Being still eliminates much of the noise in the situation, the confounding factors of my own actions, and permits me to learn much more about what I'm facing. Being still, then, is a period of study that makes any subsequent action I take all the more effective. Another obvious place for stillness is in preparing to go to sleep. That's a bad time for agitation, hyperactivity, hypervigilance, spasticity, craziness,

[00:06:18] nervousness, excitability, and trouble. It's a good time to chill. It's a great time to remember those rare moments of beauty if you have them, or practice meditation if you don't. I wouldn't try yoga, though. And if you use drugs, you'll get to where you always need drugs to go to sleep. It's possible to practice a partial stillness where one part of you is still while the rest is working. That's what athletes and musicians are doing when they still their minds so their bodies can perform beautifully.

[00:06:47] It's also what I do when I write my first drafts. I still the part of me that wants to criticize my work prematurely. I tell myself to write for a first draft as long as I write. The editor in me agrees to be still because it knows it can always change things later. If all of me was still, I wouldn't write at all. I'd be in a hammock contemplating the sky. Stillness is also a great thing to cultivate for when those other feelings carry you off in their jaws.

[00:07:16] If you can be still, play dead, so to speak, carnivorous anger, fear, and confusion will pass you over and leave you alone. You just listened to the post titled, Seeking Stillness by Keith Wilson of keithwilsoncounseling.com. And I'll be right back with my commentary. This show is sponsored by Liquid IV. Staying properly hydrated isn't just about drinking water, it's about absorption.

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[00:09:42] Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash old. Go to shopify.com slash O-L-D. Shopify.com slash old. Thank you to Keith. He talks about relationships a lot, so you can hear more of his articles narrated over on Optimal Relationships Daily. It was really interesting to hear how different cultures have their own words for stillness and have for thousands of years because they're universal concepts,

[00:10:12] which means probably things we should think about. I could definitely relate to what he was saying about avoiding simplicity and inactivity, even though those are often the path to stillness. That's what makes sitting meditation so difficult. It's kind of doing nothing. You're just focusing on the breath, and then when the mind inevitably wanders, you catch yourself thinking, gently let go of those thoughts, and come back to focusing on the breath all over again. It sounds easy, but it can be very difficult to do,

[00:10:40] especially when we're feeling overwhelmed. It's really easy to feel like we always need to be productive or busy, especially these days with our phones constantly sending us notifications, pulling our attention in a million different directions. He had a good suggestion before bed. It was a great time to practice stillness. And if you want to hit two birds with one stone, we actually have a newer podcast that's really all about this state of stillness and ultimate relaxation without falling asleep.

[00:11:09] It's called NSDR. That stands for non-sleep, deep rest. It's also known as yoga nidra. It's different than the yoga we typically know. NSDR or yoga nidra is something I do in Tai Chi every single class because it's that powerful to repeat a few times a week, if not daily. It's incredibly restorative, I've found. Like if I'm tired that day and I do just a few minutes of it, I can feel like I took a nap, which is awesome.

[00:11:38] So I highly recommend trying that to feel stillness and a boost of energy and restoration. We have guided audio on the podcast titled NSDR. You can search for that. Just make sure you're picking the one from Optimal Living Daily. And let me know if it works for you. Thank you for checking it out and for being here every day. It means a lot and I couldn't do this without you. Have a great rest of your day and I'll see you tomorrow where your optimal life awaits.