In honor of Presidents’ Day next week, I’m sharing several posts this week on Abraham Lincoln, one of my favorite leaders of all time.
1: “In the early days of the American Civil War,” Ryan Holiday writes in his terrific book Stillness is the Key, “there were a hundred competing plans for how to secure victory and whom to appoint to do it.
“From every general and for every battle there was an endless supply of criticism and dangerous passions,” Ryan notes. “There was paranoia and fear, ego and arrogance, and very little in the way of hope.”
With this as the backdrop, President Abraham Lincoln assembled a group of generals and politicians in the Oval Office at the White House.
“Most people at that time,” Ryan writes, “believed the war could only be won through enormous, decisively bloody battles in the country’s biggest cities, like Richmond and New Orleans and even, potentially, Washington, D.C.”
As those in attendance argued and talked over one another, Abe laid out a large map across a big table. He had taught himself military strategy by immersing himself in books he checked out from the Library of Congress.
Abe pointed to Vicksburg, Mississippi, a small city deep in the South.
“’Vicksburg is the key,’ he told the crowd with the certainty of a man who had studied a matter so intensely that he could express it in the simplest of terms.
“The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket,” he said.
“As it happened, Lincoln turned out to be exactly right,” Ryan observes.
“Not only did Vicksburg control navigation of [the Mississippi River],” he notes, “but it was a juncture for a number of other important tributaries, as well as rail lines that supplied Confederate armies and enormous slave plantations across the South. . .
“Every other important victory in the Civil War,” Ryan writes, “from Gettysburg to Sherman’s March to the Sea to Lee’s surrender—was made possible because at Lincoln’s instruction Ulysses S. Grant laid siege to Vicksburg in 1863, and by taking the city split the South in two and gained control of that important waterway.”
Abe’s insight highlights his ability to step back and reflect on the situation.
“Without being rushed or distracted, Lincoln had seen (and held fast to) what his own advisors, and even his enemy, had missed,” Ryan explains.
2: Life is busy.
And complex.
“In our own lives, we face a seemingly equal number of problems and are pulled in countless directions by competing priorities and beliefs,” Ryan observes.
Obstacles and enemies are everywhere. Externally and internally.
“We have car horns, stereos, cell phone alarms, social media notifications, chainsaws, airplanes,” he writes. “Our desks pile high with papers and our inboxes overflow with messages. We are always reachable, which means that arguments and updates are never far away.”
What else?
“The news bombards us with one crisis after another on every screen we own—of which there are many. The grind of work wears us down and seems to never stop. We are overfed and undernourished. Overstimulated, overscheduled, and lonely.”
3: There is, however, a different way to live. We can choose to cultivate stillness in our lives.
“The stillness required to become master of one’s own life,” Ryan writes. “To survive and thrive in any and every environment, no matter how loud or busy. . .
“Stillness allows us to persevere. To succeed,” he notes. “It is an attainable path to enlightenment and excellence, greatness and happiness, performance as well as presence, for every kind of person.
Not only that. It also “sharpens perspective and illuminates connections,” Ryan explains. “It slows the ball down so that we might hit it. It generates a vision, helps us resist the passions of the mob, makes space for gratitude and wonder.”
Stillness is not “some soft New Age nonsense or the domain of monks and sages,” Ryan observes, “but in fact desperately necessary to all of us, whether we’re running a hedge fund or playing in a Super Bowl, pioneering research in a new field or raising a family. . .
“It 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,” Ryan writes.
“Stillness is the key to, well, just about everything. To being a better parent, a better artist, a better investor, a better athlete, a better scientist, a better human being. To unlocking all that we are capable of in this life.”
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: In the middle of my own noisy, busy life, how often do I actually slow down enough to see the “Vicksburg” in front of me—the one key decision or focus that changes everything?
Action: Set aside one quiet block of time this week—with my phone off and no interruptions—to reflect on my current commitments and identify the single most important “key” I need to focus on in this season.
What did you think of this post?
