This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Stillness Is the Key" by Ryan Holiday. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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How do you heal a troubled soul? What are the signs that your soul is hurting?
To grow spiritually, you should first address the negativity you hold in your soul. According to Ryan Holiday, the author of Stillness Is the Key, to heal your soul, you must work on resolving your childhood trauma and releasing toxic emotions such as anger, desire, and dissatisfaction.
Here’s how to reclaim your soul from toxicity and agitation.
Heal Your Soul From Toxicity
Holiday says that everyone has residual pain from childhood experiences and that you should learn to recognize and heal that pain through self-reflection, self-love, and therapy. We often react to life’s situations from this wounded place, so understanding the roots of our childhood pain will help us avoid that. One way to think about breaking generational patterns of trauma, Holiday suggests, is to think about what you didn’t get as a child, and commit to giving more of that.
Another problem we have in the realm of the soul is toxic emotions. Holiday says it’s important to heal your soul from these toxic emotions:
- Desire: Lust and desire enslave us. We’re never really free if we can’t control our urges. Envy is the most common type of desire that entraps people. When you face temptation, take time to think about the consequences of giving in. Noticing your temptations and resisting them develops spiritual strength and will help you avoid regret.
- Dissatisfaction: Know when you have enough and be content with it so you’re not always chasing “more.” You can’t have peace and stillness while craving more wealth, material possessions, power, and other worldly pursuits.
- Anger: Anger is a destructive force. People who are angry can’t be happy and at peace. We don’t need to just avoid anger—we need to totally defeat it within ourselves. Calming anger requires responding differently to situations. Slow down, take time to process, and react with stillness and clarity instead.
| Tame the Tiger Within You Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh discusses dealing with these kinds of toxic emotions in his book Taming the Tiger Within. He offers some techniques for “transforming” negative emotions, which he likens to taming a tiger that might otherwise kill you. He says you should not deal with anger and frustration by aggressive methods such as hitting things or yelling. This would only be feeding the tiger, as it’s essentially training yourself to deal with anger through aggression. Rather, Hanh says you should transform those negative emotions into positive ones. One way to transform your emotions is to observe and alter your physical state and allow the inside to follow. When you’re feeling toxic emotions, look at yourself in a mirror. Note how unpleasant your face looks. Use this to motivate yourself to transform your face into looking more calm, peaceful, and beautiful. Take slow, calm, deep breaths and smile at yourself. Keep mindfully breathing and smiling until you have calmed your energy and transformed your feelings and your face into a pleasant state. Doing this regularly will begin to tame that tiger within you. |
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Here's what you'll find in our full Stillness Is the Key summary:
- Why stillness is not just the absence of motion
- How to cultivate stillness in your mind, body, and soul
- Why you should start ignoring the news
