This Chinese Philosophy Will Teach You How To Live An Effortless Life

And here are 4 ways to get started.

Image by Content Pixie from Unsplash

A bicycle is a great transportation tool. It’s supposed to make going to places easier with wheels instead of traveling on foot.

Now, try cycling your way up a slope. Almost 10 out of 10 you’d choose to walk instead of riding your bike since it’s no different than a gruesome leg workout.

Let’s try something different. If we go down the slope instead, it’ll take close to no energy for the bike to move, and it even accelerates if you don’t control the brakes. Traveling by bike now becomes almost effortless again thanks to the power of gravity.

Given the choice, would you choose to cycle up or down the slope? Living a life of cycling down a slope would be congruent with the concept — Wu Wei.

Wu Wei (无为) is a concept coined in Taoism. The literal meaning of Wu Wei in Chinese means to do something effortless. It is an ideal of living an effortless life.

However, in all practicality, Wu Wei seems to be more of a direction rather than a destination. Even breathing takes some effort, it’s just so little that it’s negligible.

So the main idea of Wu Wei is to minimize the effort it takes to do whatever we want to do instead of none. Now, where do we start?

Get to know yourself

We already know that Wu Wei is all about minimizing friction. Now we have to answer the following questions:

What exactly is your friction?

What is standing between you doing work that you are supposed to do?

Other than the work, you have to learn more about yourself. You can’t address a problem without defining it in the first place.

• What are your likes and dislikes?
• What time of the day do you function the best?
• Do you prefer working with people or working alone?

Without knowing your own preferences, you won’t be able to know how to optimize your life. Much like shooting an arrow in the dark.

There are some activities that you can do to get to know yourself better:

• Journalling;
• Meditating;
• Try things you have never done before;
• Asking for feedback;
• Seek professional help;

Self-mastery always starts with self-knowledge. Everyone learns about themselves differently so go crazy!

Knowledge is power

Have you ever tried to fix your car by yourself? You’d notice it takes way more effort and time solely because of one reason — you don’t know enough about how a car works.

The more you know about something the less effort it takes for you to do it.

Learning from others’ experiences is especially useful because you don’t have to go through mistakes others have already made for you. You also get to know what already works and what doesn’t. You can then focus on the important aspects instead of running around like a headless chicken.

Whatever it is that you want to do well, you need a system to learn. Clock in 30 minutes to an hour to dive deep into the topic of your choice every day. Join courses, read forums, articles, watch YouTube videos, anything that can help you learn more about the subject.

You need to know the game to play it well. So if you want an effortless life, don’t stop learning!

Trying hard at the right time

Although the core idea of Wu Wei is to live an effortless life, I believe there are times where you should put more effort so that life can be easier later on.

For example, you practice hard during soccer training so that it takes less effort for you to perform during competition.

The same goes for preparing for speeches, writing drafts, studying, etc. Trying hard during practice is less punishing. It’s also the perfect environment for you to test new things. And novelty will always take more effort.

On the other hand, when you’re facing the real thing, it’s all about muscle memory and reflexes. There’s no room for you to experiment or try new things when it comes to the actual thing. Trying too hard during interviews usually doesn’t end too well either. It’ll either make you look desperate or silly in the eyes of the interviewer.

So again, put more effort during practice and you’ll need less during the real thing.

Use your environment

Our environment matters a lot when it comes to designing an effortless life. When it comes to reducing the effort to do something, we need to pick the right environment so that it takes less energy for us to do something.

Try rowing a boat in the desert, it’s going to take a HELL lot of effort to move an inch.

On the contrary, if you were at the gym, it’s almost automatic for you to get on the treadmill and do some runs. The same goes for encouraging yourself to study by heading to the library. The environment was designed specifically for certain activities to take place, and our brains are very adaptable to these changes.

This is a psychological phenomenon name priming. In short, we are conditioned to react in a certain way when met with certain stimuli (it can be through our sight, smell, taste, hearing, touch):

• You’re more relaxed when the house has yellow lighting;
• You feel hungry when you smell something nice;
• You get pumped when you hear upbeat music;

So the same applies to when you expose yourself to an environment such as the library. Your senses determine the environment as “the library” which means “studying” is the natural thing to do, much like breathing. You wouldn’t need to convince yourself to study since your mind is already prepared to study.

In this case, the only effort you really need is to find the “right place” and get yourself there. The rest will take care of itself.

In Summary

Here’s how you can incorporate Wu Wei into your life:

• Get to know yourself;
• Knowledge is power;
• Trying hard at the right time;
• Use your environment;