“Everything that’s created comes out of silence. Your thoughts emerge from the nothingness of silence. Your words come out of this void. All creativity requires some stillness.” ~Wayne Dyer

One thing that undermines peak performance is lack of recovery time. This is as true for everyone as it is true for athletes.

Yet, we expect our “leadership athletes” to perform at peak levels, at all times of the day, with little break from the busy-ness of business.

There is a lack of silence and a void of stillness in our daily lives. This is very likely one of the biggest reasons for the increase in Yoga devotees: quiet. A time to catch our breath and let ourselves just be.

To replenish our spirit requires some stillness.

I blogged about my friend last week, the man ready to meet his maker.

When I visited him recently, he gave me a book I have found powerful in its simplicity: Pico Iyer’s The Art of Stillness, a TED Talk publication.

Iyer, a successful travel writer, draws on his time spent with Leonard Cohen and the Dalai Lama (among others) to present a point of view with which I agree. As Goodreads writes, “A follow up to [his] essay “The Joy of Quiet,” The Art of Stillness considers the unexpected adventure of staying put and reveals a counterintuitive truth: The more ways we have to connect, the more we seem desperate to unplug.”

Smart phones are dumbing us down, and filling our minds with constant chatter.

We long for peace and quiet, but will not find it in a cacophonous world.

Until we stop, put down the phone, push away from our desks, and go sit under a tree.

Watch squirrels at work, or children at play, or stare at some flowers.

And breathe.

We don’t need to go far to find stillness.

It travels with us—or not—wherever we go.

If you want to become more effective, everywhere, take time for some stillness, anywhere.