Silence Is the Secret Weapon of the Successful

• Thank you for that beautiful patient silence. You see, you’re already practicing it. And some of you are already wondering, perhaps a little unsettled. Is this weakness? Is this surrender? Oh, my dear friends, I am here to tell you that what the world mistakes for emptiness is in fact the most profound fullness. What it calls a void is where all true power is born.
• They will tell you to find your voice, to speak up, to claim your space. And there is a time for that. Yes. But I want to talk about the time before that voice. The sacred strategic discipline that comes before the word is ever formed. I want to talk about silence, not as what you do when you have nothing to say, but as what you choose when you have everything to gain.
• Think of a deep wide river. On the surface there is noise, the chattering current, the splash, the visible rush toward an obvious destination. That is the world of constant speech. It is impressive. It is immediate. But beneath that surface, in the profound, silent depths moves a power that directs the entire current.
• It is undisturbed. It is unseen. It is unmoved by the storms that rattle the surface. That that is the silence I am speaking of. It is not an absence. It is a presence, a mighty gathering presence. When you stay silent, you are not seeding the field. You are conserving a strength that others are recklessly spending. Every word spoken is a coin from your treasury.
• Spend them all on petty arguments, on defenses, on gossip, on reacting to every little provocation. And what will you have left when the true moment of destiny arrives? You will be bankrupt of influence. But when you hold your peace, you are investing.
• You are amassing a spiritual and intellectual capital so vast that when you finally do choose to speak, it will carry the weight of a matured inheritance. Look at the narratives handed to us. The loudest voice wins. The fastest tweet dominates. It is a tyranny of noise and so many precious souls are exhausting themselves trying to be heard over the den. They achieve a sort of frantic everything.
• Attention, controversy, notoriety. But is that the everything your soul longs for? That hollow everything of the echo chamber. Or is it the everything of peace, the everything of purpose, the everything of a will that cannot be shaken because it was formed in the quiet? I remember a story of two carpenters.
• One talked ceaselessly of his craft, his tools, his methods, his brilliant designs. He held court, the other simply worked. His hands moved with sure, quiet rhythm. He measured twice in silence. He listened to the grain of the wood. When a challenging piece came to the shop, who was it they entrusted it to? Not the orator.
• They brought it to the silent craftsman because they knew his silence was not ignorance. It was a deep communion with the material and the task. His silence was expertise in reserve. His silence was trustworthiness embodied. He achieved the master’s reputation, not by claiming it, but by letting his quiet work claim it for him. This is the great inversion. You see, in the kingdom of the spirit, the principles are so often upside down from the kingdoms of this world.
• The last shall be first. The meek shall inherit, and the silent, the silent shall understand. They shall perceive what others miss in the clutter of conversation. They gain the strategic advantage of insight. When you are busy formulating your next defensive point, you are not truly listening. You are waiting to talk. But when you are silent, you hear everything.