When in Doubt, Be Still. The Answer Will Come.
Why stillness is a strategy, not a symptom
Code VII of The Twelve Codes • Quietly Disruptive®
In the middle of my family court proceedings, fifteen hearings, two years, representing myself against barristers, I made some of the worst business decisions of my life. Not because I was incompetent but because I was panicking.
I took on clients I shouldn’t have touched. Said yes to projects that had nothing to do with the work I wanted to do. Made decisions from urgency rather than clarity. Every move was reactive, driven by the desperate need to do something, anything, to feel like I had control over at least one part of my life.
The best thing I could have done in those moments was nothing. Be still. Wait. Let the uncertainty exist without trying to fill it with action. I know that now. I didn’t know it then.
The cultural bias against stillness
Everything in entrepreneurship culture tells you to move fast. Ship it. Launch it. Iterate. The bias is always toward action, and the implicit message is that if you’re not acting, you’re stalling. Indecision is weakness. Hesitation is a missed opportunity.
But there’s a difference between hesitation (which is fear dressed up as caution) and stillness (which is discipline dressed up as nothing). Hesitation avoids the decision. Stillness holds space for the right one.
Quietly Disruptive founders understand this distinction intuitively. They know that not every gap needs to be filled immediately. That the pressure to decide right now is almost always artificial. That the answer you reach from stillness is almost always better than the one you reach from panic.
What stillness actually looks like in business
Stillness isn’t meditation (though it can be). It’s not a weekend retreat or a journaling practice. In business, stillness looks like this:
A potential client asks you to start next week. You feel the pull to say yes immediately, the revenue, the momentum, the fear of losing them. Stillness says: ‘Let me think about this and get back to you tomorrow.’ That pause, twelve hours, twenty-four hours, changes everything. It gives you space to assess whether this is alignment or just availability.
You’re considering a new offer, a new platform, a new direction. The excitement is real. Stillness says: sit with it for a week. If it’s still compelling after seven days, it’s probably real. If it’s faded, it was adrenaline, not alignment.
Your revenue dips and the impulse is to slash prices, launch something new, send fifty more outreach messages. Stillness says: look at the data first. Is this a pattern or a blip? Is the response to do more, or to do differently?
The answers that come from stillness
I’ve made my best business decisions from moments of stillness. The decision to specialise in coaching established founders, not startups, not everyone. The decision to hold my pricing firm when every instinct said to discount. The decision to build a portfolio career instead of putting all my energy into one income stream.
None of these came from brainstorming or strategy sessions. They came from quiet moments, morning walks, usually, when I stopped trying to figure out the answer and let it surface instead. The answer was always there. I just needed to stop making so much noise to hear it.
It takes more courage to sit in the uncertainty than to fill it with noise. And the answers that come from stillness are almost always better than the ones that come from panic.
When stillness isn’t the answer
A caveat, because this code can be misused. Stillness is not avoidance. If you’re using ‘I’m waiting for clarity’ as a reason to never make the hard decision, that’s not stillness, that’s hiding. And there’s a difference.
Genuine stillness has a quality of openness to it. You’re not avoiding the decision. You’re holding space for the right one. You’re actively listening, not passively deferring. The difference is subtle but critical: stillness leans in. Avoidance leans out.
If you’ve been ‘still’ on the same decision for six months, you’re not waiting for clarity. You’re avoiding discomfort. And that’s a different code entirely.
This is Code VII of The Twelve Codes: 12 Principles for Building Your Corner of the World. Read the full Twelve Codes or explore What is Quietly Disruptive®? for the definitive guide to this philosophy.
Onwards and Upwards,
Becky :-)
About the Author: Becky Benfield Humberstone partners with Quietly Disruptive founders to build businesses that change their corner of the world, on their terms. If you started your business because you believed things could be done differently, and you're ready to make that vision real, she gets it. Based in the UK and working globally via Zoom and in-person, she's done this work herself, more than once.
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