Effortless Success: Daoist Wisdom for Growth & Achievement

John Blue
4 days ago
10 min read

Hello friends!

Daoist wisdom has stood the test of time, shaping sages and healing lives for millennia. It's a study of growth and healing, learning to work with the laws of nature rather than trying to progress by forcing our will upon the world. By learning to follow these simple rules, life flows much more smoothly. These rules should feel obvious and intuitive, yet you will probably notice how you violate them constantly.

To enjoy this lecture: https://youtu.be/BryA_ZRBZfA

Imagine that you live in a place that is quite windy. In the morning, it blows to the west; in the evening, it blows toward the east. It's actually like this at the Daoist monastery where I live. Imagine how easy it would be to walk to work in the morning by going west, and then returning home with the wind at your back in the evening to get a good night's sleep. It's as if nature itself is helping you succeed. Now imagine if, instead, you walked to work at night, fighting the wind the entire way there. You worked through the night, only to struggle again with the wind all the way home, where you tried to get some poor sleep during the daytime. Sounds exhausting, doesn't it? Maybe it even somehow sounds familiar? Both examples include the same process, but the timing is different. The first example clearly leads to greater success and wellness than the second. One works with the flow of nature, and one fights against it. By paying attention to the cycles of nature and recognizing that we share those rhythms, we can benefit tremendously.

There are times for sleeping and waking for humans. Exhaling & inhaling. Times for rest and for work. In Daoist philosophy, we can recognize these cycles and group them into qualities of yin & yang. ( 陰陽) Work wears you down, and rest reenergizes you. Times when we should listen instead of speaking. Moments when we should follow instead of lead, or give instead of take. The more precise we are about these changes, the easier and more nourishing life becomes. When the inhalation is done, don't keep trying to inhale. Instead, let go and exhale. You'll feel a lot better. When you're done working, put that work aside and rest. If you're done sleeping, then get up and move around. When you have eaten enough, don't eat more. Stop when it's time to stop, and know when enough is enough. This wisdom sounds so simple, and it is, yet this ability is lacking in most of us.

Ask yourself, where can you clarify these boundaries between yin and yang? When you get home, do you stop worrying about work? When you go to work, are you still thinking about going home? What happens when those two worlds get jumbled together? Do you take enough time to sleep?

When you're done, do you hop out of bed and become active? Or do you lie in bed not resting, and then feel exhausted when trying to move?

Do you eat a meal and stop before you're full? When you send an email, do you take the time to compose it clearly, or are you rushing forward to the next thing on your list? And then, when you send the email, do you set it aside as completed, or do you continue thinking about it throughout the day? Can you feel how muddy and exhausting this way of living can become, and how it strips away your ability to perform and feel well?

Let's pause for a moment to notice the breath. Get comfortable sitting in a relaxed upright position. Inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth. As you exhale, relax your body. As you inhale, feel the sense of peace deepen in your system: exhaling and softening. Inhaling and becoming quiet and still. Pay attention to the shift in your body as you let go. How do the inhalation and exhalation support each other? If you were out of balance with any part of the breath, inhaling more than you exhale, or exhaling more than you inhale, you would become unwell. Everything in life is like this. Seek balance. You can't cheat the law of yin & yang; you can only damage yourself. Let that sink in.

Let's try another exercise. Lift your shoulders toward your ears and hold them there. A bit uncomfortable after a moment, isn't it? Many people live their entire lives with this tension, wearing away at their sense of wellbeing and comfort. Now, let's try two ways to get your shoulders back down where they want to rest. First, pull your shoulders down by tightening your lats and pushing your elbows down. Sure, it gets your shoulders back down, but it doubles the amount of tension you were experiencing before. Lift your shoulders back up, and this time, to lower them, simply let go of the tension holding them up.

Let them fall naturally into a position of good posture without effort. Things are happening, but it's happening because you are letting go of something. Getting out of the way and magically making progress by doing less. Clearly, one type of action is easier than the other. It's better for your health, mental wellbeing, and certainly for your shoulders. However, it's much more common that we do things in a more exhausting way, day after day, year after year, until we don't know any other way of living. By learning to let go and make space in your life, things become far easier, and you'll find room for even more good things. This is a fundamental principle that we have to learn, so I'll repeat it. Doing less is easier than doing more and is often twice as effective!

Daoism offers us this wonderful term, "Wei Wuwei" (為無為). It's a kind of effortless action—living without striving. Genuinely, it's worth exploring in every facet of your life. Like walking in the direction of the wind, we uncover ways to move with the flow of life instead of fighting against it.

Think of ways that you violate this simple rule of life. How often have you acted in a way that makes things far more difficult than needed? If you responded to fatigue by resting instead of pushing twice as hard, how much more energy would you have now? If you were quiet when you had nothing to add to a conversation, instead of saying something that caused problems or making assumptions? Likewise, how much healthier would your relationships become if you expressed yourself clearly instead of forcing down your true feelings or pretending to be someone you're not? These are all ways of doing less, yet clearly, they are a more skillful way to navigate the world.

Let's take another moment to watch the breath. Inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth. Notice your habitual tendency to control the breath by forcefully inhaling and exhaling.

Think of that habit of control as a kind of tight muscle that we want to learn to relax. This breath meditation is an effective and straightforward way to practice letting go of the tendency to push harder than you need. Instead, fall into a quiet, open space, allowing the breath to happen naturally, on its own, just as when you are asleep. When your mind wanders away, gently let go of the distraction and return to the breath, over and over. Getting softer and softer each time. The part of you that habitually overdoes things, overreacts, or overcontrols parts of your life is the same part that wants to control your breathing and your focus. Learning to relax that part of your nature here in meditation will also help you throughout your life. Let me repeat that. The way we do anything is the way we do everything.

Learn to let life flow at its own pace, and your life will become more effortless and carefree.

Ask yourself what obstacles you can let go of to make your life easier. By making a change through release rather than adding more effort, life becomes far simpler and less exhausting.

I love to garden and to grow my own food. Imagine if I wanted my plants to grow more quickly, so every day I go out into the field to pull up on the tops of the plants. "Hurry up and grow!" What would happen? I certainly wouldn't get the result that I'm hoping for during harvest. It sounds funny, but people often act like this, which ruins their lives! The fact is that things can only move as quickly as they move. Whether it's traffic, your team during a project, or the number of days until your next payday. Sometimes the best thing to do is a relaxed nothing. Sure, you can enrich the soil in your garden, remove harmful weeds, or add some water.

But should you dump a year's worth of water onto your plants all at once?

Again, you're doing something, but it's only making everything worse. Should you yell at your working companions to make them move more quickly? Or, are there ways to help them perform at their best and to enjoy their job? Can you avoid hours of traffic by traveling at a different time? Or, you can find ways to turn your commute into a peaceful meditation and preparation time. This is another example of a simple change in perception that will change every experience in your life. The river flows as quickly as the river flows. Trying to get behind it and push the river, or to jump in front of it to pull, doesn't accomplish anything except your own eventual burnout. Learn to feel the flowing movement of life and time, and your resistance to that quality of nature. Things happen as they do, on their own, and we call this quality ziran (自然).

Where in your life are you living with this unnecessary tension and expectation upon the world's speed? Are you a cook who stares at the pot of water, holding your breath until it boils? Do you wait for a phone call with your fists clenched and your mind spinning? It's a massive waste of energy and time. Learn to recognize when you've done all you can, and let things move at their own pace. Stop trying to push the river.

In my clinic, I've treated people for exhaustion by recommending a change in their schedule. There are morning people, like me, who stay up too late to get something done. If they rose in the morning to do the same thing, they would feel much better. The same is true for night owls who do much better with an evening schedule and the chance to sleep in a bit. By following their nature, they get much more done with half the effort. If I watered a cactus and an apple tree the same amount, one of them would definitely die. Following your nature allows you to heal more easily, recover your energy levels, express yourself fully, and perform at your very best.

Ask yourself, what makes you or your needs a bit different than the other people in your life? How would honoring those special qualities help you feel more at ease?

One more time, let's follow the breath. You may notice that you're not able to settle your awareness in one place for more than a few seconds at a time. If that's the case, you might be someone who spends too much time multitasking than is healthy for your attention span.

Multitasking is a kind of constant, rapid task-switching. This may condition your nervous system to become agitated, unsettled, and always seeking new stimulation. Learning to single-task with profound clarity and awareness will raise your performance level by leaps and bounds. It's also clearly beneficial for your mental-emotional wellness. By gently focusing your awareness on your breath, you are retraining your mind to pay closer attention and notice small details.

If you tried to take a minute's worth of breaths all at once, it would be like dumping a year of water on the garden. Luckily, you don't need to try. Simply allow yourself to take one breath at a time. Similarly, don't try to do all of your work at once. Do the single task in front of you, and then do the next thing. Inhale. Exhale. Each task is easy on its own, and only the habit of trying to do everything at once feels overwhelming. One click of the mouse, one sentence in an email, one simple step at a time. Like following your breath, it becomes effortless and even peaceful as we learn to let go.

Inhaling and exhaling, becoming a little clearer with each breath. Perhaps you are getting more practiced at letting go while paying attention. Notice how the quality of the breath changes each time. It is occasionally big and occasionally small. You will breathe a bit faster and a bit slower when your body needs to. Notice how there is a tiny suspension of the breath at the top and bottom. It feels natural unless you get involved with controlling it again, which will make you feel as though you are suffocating. The breath isn't some mechanically steady or robotic experience. We are alive and part of nature, and the breath reflects that.

Imagine a mountain stream. It flows effortlessly around rocks, bends with the curves of the land, never hurries, never stops. And yet, over time, it shapes entire landscapes. Our breath does that for our body, mind, and emotional landscape. Now imagine bamboo. It grows slowly at first, sometimes seemingly not at all, but when it's ready, it may shoot up several feet in a matter of days. It's flexible, resilient, and rooted, yet doesn't follow a set growth schedule. That's what progress looks like when it doesn't burn out. If we can release the breath to flow organically, we can learn to allow that same flow into our work and home life.

Ask yourself, How do you define success? Does it include your mental wellness, physical health, and natural self-expression? Where can you let go, make space, do less, and yet achieve more?

Effortless success is like this. It doesn't mean doing nothing. It means doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, aligned with nature. It's a skill you can cultivate and will transform your life in every conceivable way.

Thank you for joining me, and enjoy your practice!

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