How to Find Stillness in Difficult Times
How do you find stillness in difficult times? You go somewhere the noise cannot follow you, you stop trying to fix anything for a few minutes, and you let yourself hear what you have been drowning out. Stillness is not the reward you get after you feel better. It comes first, and the feeling follows.
I am Danny Bader. On July 28, 1992, 8,000 volts went through my body on a job site. I was clinically dead for about six minutes. My friend and coworker Bruce did not come back. I have spent the years since telling that story to teams at Marriott, Ritz-Carlton, and Lincoln Financial as a keynote speaker.
But the moment that actually turned my life did not happen on a stage. It happened in a phone booth on the corner of a motel parking lot in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, in October, when I was 28 years old and had driven there with no intention of driving home.
Here is what that night taught me about stillness, and what I would tell you to do if you are somewhere dark right now.
What to Do When You Feel Like Life Has Beaten You
Life is going to knock you down. It is going to work to hold you down. It is not here to beat you. Regardless of where you are right now, that is not the assignment.
After the accident I went home. I had people all around me who loved me and wanted to help, and I would not let a single one of them in. Physically I was healing. People looked at me and said, you look good, you must be feeling better. That gap between how you look on the outside and how you actually feel on the inside is its own kind of exhausting.
If you are in that gap, the first move is not a plan. It is letting one person in.
Rock Bottom and the Valley of the Victim After a Near Death Experience
In my keynote I describe three places people live. There is a radical reverence for your life at the top, where there is passion, purpose, resilience, and presence. There is the functional fog in the middle, where people answer "living the dream" with the sarcasm dripping off it. And there is rock bottom, a dark place of disconnection from the gift of life, from the potential of life, and from your own spirit.
I did not visit rock bottom. I signed a long term lease. I lost my faith. I would not let my family help me. I was drinking far too much. There was no traction and no vision of anything better.
I also call this the valley of the victim. The walls are steep and the mud is deep. There is no accountability, no acknowledging the facts, and a lot of blame. In an organization you would call it a toxic environment. In a family it looks exactly the same.
Here is what I want to offer you about that place. It is okay to get there. Welcome to life. What is not okay is staying there.
The Phone Booth: What Stillness in Difficult Times Actually Sounded Like
I came up with a plan. I would drive to the Outer Banks of North Carolina with the intention of not coming back. My mom asked why I was going. The town is closed up, she said. It is quiet. There is nothing going on down there.
I said, that is why I am going.
One day down there I walked into a little hardware store and stood in an aisle looking at items that could help me do what I had come to do. A woman showed up. She was about five feet tall, with bright blue eyes, a bright white smile, and suntanned, wrinkled skin. I believe she was an angel. Not the kind with harps and halos. I believe some people cross your path exactly when you need someone to cross your path. She said something that snapped me out of my thinking, and I walked out of that store without buying anything.
So I did the next best thing I could think of. I went and got drunk.
Walking back to my room across a seashell covered parking lot, past an old one story motel made of cinder blocks, I saw a phone booth on the corner. I remember thinking it had not been there when I checked in a few days earlier. I was drawn to it.
I went in and called my mom. I am one of eight kids. She knew I was hurting and she did not know how badly, and she did not give me a hard time about any of it. She just said, when are you coming home? We love you and we cannot wait to see you.
I had a lump in my throat the size of a softball. You have probably been there, where you can hardly get a word out. I finally said, mom, I love you. I will be home in a few days.
That deserted, closed up beach town looked like the worst possible place to be alone. It was the only place quiet enough for me to hear what I needed to hear.
Be Still: The Back to Life Blueprint Principle I Lived Before I Named It
The Back to Life Blueprint is the framework I teach now, built on five principles: Vision, Know Yourself, Seek Support, Be Still, and Evolve. There is no sequence and no hierarchy. It is circular. Be Still is the one I lived in that parking lot years before I had a name for it.
When I walked out of that phone booth, something shifted. Two things happened.
The first was a small voice in my head that said, I wonder what it is going to be like when I get better. That was the first time since the accident that I had used my imagination to picture getting better, to picture being engaged in life again with some passion, some purpose, some productivity.
The second was a haunting question that had been following me. Why did I come back to life? Why me? Why did Bruce not come back? Over time that question was slowly replaced by a different one. What are you going to do with it?
Here is the part people do not expect. I did not walk out of there with a plan. I did not walk out with clarity. I walked out with a wondering. Recovery after a near death experience did not start with a decision. It started with a question I had not been willing to ask.
That is why I tell audiences that the ability to imagine what needs to be real is one of the most powerful and most neglected things we have.
How to Find Stillness in Difficult Times: Four Ways to Start
Life is a lawn mower of noise and it has no off switch. Email, texts, the calendar, social media, and yes, sometimes family. You cannot hear yourself over it. You have to create the quiet on purpose.
Four ways I practice it and teach it:
Breathing. A few slow breaths give you a physical reset. Your heart rate settles. Your breathing slows. Your body stops running at full alarm.
Journaling. Get the noise out of your head and onto a page where you can look at it instead of living inside it.
Meditation. Being still is not about having no thoughts. It is about welcoming your thoughts so you can do something with them, rather than them doing something to you.
Prayer. For me this is how I connect with spirit. You have your heart, your brain, and your lungs keeping your body working, and then there is a fourth energy. I know it is real because mine left my body. It wants only what is best for you, and it resides in stillness.
Then do the thing that mattered most for me. Call somebody. Right away. Call a family member or a friend and say, I need some help, I am really battling here. Cry if you have to. Holler and scream if you have to. Hit your knees and say some prayers if that is yours.
You have everything you need to move through it. You just have to connect with it.
If you are in crisis or thinking about harming yourself, call or text 988 in the United States to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, any time, day or night.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Be Still principle in the Back to Life Blueprint?
Be Still is one of the five principles of the Back to Life Blueprint, alongside Vision, Know Yourself, Seek Support, and Evolve. It means deliberately disconnecting from the outer world so you can connect with what is going on inside you. I teach it through breathing, journaling, meditation, and prayer, and I describe both a physical reset and a mental one.
How do you find stillness when your mind will not stop racing?
Stillness is not the absence of thoughts. It is the space to look at your thoughts instead of being run by them. Start with two or three slow breaths, then pick one thing to think about on purpose: your vision, your values, or one thought that is not serving you anymore.
What helped Danny Bader recover after his near death experience?
The turning point came in a phone booth in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, when I called my mother and heard her say they could not wait to see me. Walking out, I imagined getting better for the first time since the accident. The question why did I come back slowly became what are you going to do with it.
Can a closed up, quiet place really help when you are struggling?
It did for me. I drove to an Outer Banks beach town in October precisely because it was shut down for the off season, and the quiet let me hear what the noise at home had been covering. Stillness does not change the facts you are dealing with. It changes how you engage with them, and that changes everything.
The Question That Is Waiting for You
Stillness did not fix my facts. Bruce was still gone. The accident still happened. What stillness did was change how I engaged with all of it, and that created the first momentum I had felt in months.
Be Still is one of five principles in the Back to Life Blueprint, and it is the one I lean on hardest when things get loud. If you are in a trauma, a tragedy, a struggle, or a setback right now, sit down somewhere quiet and ask yourself what it will be like on the other side of this. Then call someone.
Bring the Back to Life Blueprint to Your Conference
Danny Bader delivers this keynote to corporate conferences, association events, and leadership meetings, for organizations including Marriott, Ritz-Carlton, and Lincoln Financial. If your people are running on autopilot and nobody is saying it out loud, this keynote gives them permission to stop, the language to name where they are, and five principles they can actually use on Monday.
