Trying Not to Try

There are two Chinese concepts we need to understand: wu-wei (pronounced oooo (kinda like “ew”) way and de (one of the coolest words ever that is, unfortunately, pronounced “duh.”)

We’ll get to de in a moment. For now, wu-wei.

Although wu-wei directly translates as “no trying” or “no doing” it doesn’t mean that we don’t do anything and/or that we just check out of life.

It means that we do the right thing without having to even TRY to do the right thing. With wu-wei, this right action just naturally arises from who we are.

Wu-wei is: “the dynamic, effortless, and unselfconscious state of mind of a person who is optimally active and effective.”

Got it. That begs the question: How do we arrive at this optimal state of effortless awesome (that doesn’t require “trying”) without trying? We’ll get to that paradoxical question in a moment.

First, let’s take a quick peek at WHY we want to cultivate our wu-wei. It’s all about the de.

So, we cultivate our wu-wei so we can have our de.

Although we don’t have a good equivalent to either word in English (or any other language), de is translated as “virtue,” “power,” or “charismatic power.”

Think about that for a moment.

Virtue = power = charismatic power = the ability to radiate goodness that magnetizes people.

That’s A.W.E.S.O.M.E.

The power of de is why all ancient Chinese philosophers obsessed about how to best acquire it.

Slingerland also describes de as “moral charisma.” I love that phrase as well: “moral charisma.” When we’re naturally expressing the purest, best version of ourselves, people respond. They can *feel* our goodness and we’re evolutionarily programmed to respond positively to this.

We talked about some basic, more mechanical ways to dial up our charisma in The Charisma Myth (recall the Big 3 of charisma: Presence + Power + Warmth).

But I just love the idea of “moral charisma”—the power that comes from the moral “rightness” of a person.

In The Leadership Challenge, Kouzes and Posner tell us that the foundation of leadership (one could say the source of their de!) is credibility.

They tell us that the research shows: “Credibility is the foundation of leadership. Constituents must be able, above all else, to believe in their leaders. For them to willingly follow someone else, they must believe that the leader’s word can be trusted, that she is personally passionate and enthusiastic about the work, and that she has the knowledge and skill to lead.”

The four key attributes people look for in leaders they willingly follow?

They are Honest + Forward-looking + Competent + Inspiring. ← Great qualities to work on such that we radiate de via our wu-wei.

Alright, so wu-wei leads to de.

But what do we need to do to get to the point where we don’t need to do anything?

In short: How do we try not to try?

To help us answer this paradoxical question, Slingerland walks us through the four different philosophical approaches presented by four of the leading old-school philosophers of ancient China: Confucius + Lao Tzu + Mencius + Chuang Tzu.

Each of those philosophers gets his own chapter. Here’s a super quick peek:

• Confucius tells us we need to try *really* hard, following rituals and practices rigorously until we get to a place where they’re part of who we are and wu-wei flows. (Slingerland calls this “Try Hard Not to Try: Carving and Polishing the Self.”)
• Lao Tzu thought Confucius got it wrong and tells us we need to let everything go (literally—move out of town, check out, etc.) if we want to find wu-wei. (Slingerland calls this “Stop Trying: Embracing the Uncarved Block.”)
• Then there’s Mencius, who basically extends Confucius’s perspective and advocates trying but not trying *too* hard—telling us we need to basically tend the sprouts of our goodness but not yank at the roots. (“Try, but Not Too Hard: Cultivating Moral Sprouts.”)
• And, finally, there’s Chuang Tzu who softens Lao-tzu’s approach and tells us we don’t need to drop out of society and return to our primitive roots—we just need to tune into the Heavenly spiritual force and let *that* flow through us. (“Forget About It: Going with the Flow.”)

So, which approach is the right approach?

* insert Jeopardy music *

Short answer: Slingerland tells us they all have partial truths but no one approach is perfect for every person in every situation.

P.S. Note: “Where does this leave us? If the paradox is a real one, arising from basic structural features of human civilized life, it is unsurprising that none of our Chinese thinkers was able to come up with a single, surefire solution to it, and that people in widely separated cultures have struggled with the same tension. Indeed, that’s why we call it a ‘paradox’—if there were an answer, we’d demote it to a mere ‘problem’ or ‘puzzle.’ Paradoxes are not something that you solve, they are something that you learn how to live with.”

That reminds me of another book that features ancient Chinese wisdom: The Seventh Sense. I love the way Joshua Cooper Ramo differentiates “complex” vs. “complicated” challenges.

Here’s how he puts it: “When Holland chose the word ‘complex,’ he was making an important distinction. Complicated mechanisms can be designed, predicted, and controlled. Jet engines, artificial hearts, and your calculator are complicated in this sense. They may contain billions of interacting parts, but they can be laid out and repeatedly, predictably made and used. They don’t change. Complex systems, by contrast, can’t be so precisely engineered. They are hard to fully control. Human immunology is complex in this sense. The World Wide Web is complex. A rain forest is complex: It is made up of uncountable buzzing, connecting bugs and birds and trees. Order, to the extent that it exists in the Amazon basin, emerges moment by moment from countless, constant interactions.”

Life is COMPLEX, not complicated. It’s full of paradoxes that we will never completely solve. Learning to live with these paradoxes is an essential aspect of wu-wei.

How’re you doing with that? :)

P.P.S. Check out the book for more, of course. And check out our Notes on Confucius’s Analects and Lao Tzu’s Tao te Ching. Notes on Mencius + Chuang Tzu coming soon.)

Zhuangtzi’s wu-wei exemplars are not bound by super strict values that make them rigid. They have a flexibility that allows them to act spontaneously to what the situation demands.

One of the metaphors Slingerland shares to bring this wisdom home is that of a mirror. Picture a mirror in your mind. Note that a mirror simply reflects whatever is presented in front of it. It’s not muddled by past images that once appeared on the mirror. It is always freshly responding to life. One could say that the mirror is “spontaneous.”

This spontaneity is a key aspect of wu-wei: Like a mirror, we spontaneously respond to what life presents—optimally expressing the best we’re capable of without even trying to do so!

Practically speaking, these sages have goals but they also maintain an openness that allows them to change directions when the situation demands, or to let go of something that has turned from a gift to a burden.

Let’s take a moment to reflect. Is there anything in your life that was once a gift but has become a burden? Something that you continue to pursue with a little too much rigidity and not quite enough “spontaneity”? What could you do to sprinkle in a little more wu-wei spontaneity?

Let’s be passionately committed to goals that inspire us AND stay flexible + spontaneous in our joyful, wu-wei pursuit.

P.S. Emerson comes to mind: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.—‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’—Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

Let’s not be hobgoblins. :)

P.S. We haven’t gotten into the cognitive science. Super short story: Our minds have a fast (or hot) and slow (/cool) way of interacting with the world. The wu-wei master has learned how to integrate them beautifully—effortlessly knowing when to apply the cool, rational, slow thinking system and when to let the fast, hot system take over.

Check out the book for more. For now, know that, in many ways, it’s like the trusting vs. training mindset we look at in Overachievement and the overthinking we talked about in Choke. We also explore the power of “letting it rip!” in Peak Performance 101. And, ultimately, it’s connected to the Ideas in Habits 101 + Willpower 101 that we want to use our willpower (cool system) wisely such that we automatically (hot system) do what is best for us.

One of the important distinctions Slingerland makes in the book is that wu-wei is grounded in a connection to something BIGGER than the individual.

It has a spiritual and social dimension that differentiates it from something like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow, for example.

Whereas the science of Flow is grounded in a Western, individualistic worldview and therefore emphasizes things like matching your challenges with your skills, wu-wei is rooted in something bigger than the self.

As such, it’s important to note that wu-wei isn’t about setting your new personal best Ironman time or crushing a new level of Tetris.

It’s about becoming an amazing human being, connected to something bigger than yourself who makes a beautiful contribution to the world.

To use the language of our work together, we optimize not so we can take a narcissistic, check-me-out selfie of our six-pack but so that we can be a more loving and present human being.

Here’s a little more on what we’re looking for: “It is this difference between skills and virtues that, at the end of the day, is driving the paradox of wu-wei. Although our Chinese thinkers used stories like that of Butcher Ding or Woodcarver Qing to illustrate aspects of wu-wei—as did Aristotle, incidentally—the kind of wu-wei that they are worried about is moral in nature. They want to foster cooperation and virtue, not efficient butchery. So the paradox exists because the kinds of virtues that people care about and value in others center on who you are, not necessarily what you do. They are about stable, inner states, not just outward behavior. They are about values, not merely actions, because it’s commitment to shared values that allows large-scale societies to function. So it’s not enough to perform generous actions, you need to become a generous person.

This is an enormously difficulty trick to pull off, which is why true wu-wei is both inherently hard to reach and such a great signal of trustworthiness once we’ve managed to get there. We’re attracted to genuinely wu-wei people—they have de—because evolution has shaped us to home in on signals of sincerity that are difficult to consciously simulate and even harder to experience on demand, and to do so in response to basic challenges inherent to human cooperation.”

Wu-wei is all about values + virtues. It’s about who we are.

If we want to shine with the radiant power of moral charisma, we need to live in integrity with our highest ideals in service to the world.

Let’s do that!