The Art of Not Trying - Wu Wei - Providence Life Coach

There’s a phrase in Chinese, “wu wei,” that describes how I felt. In English, its translation is “non-doing,” but not in the sense of doing nothing. Non-doing is not about escaping anything or being lazy but instead refers to a deep level of connectedness with the world. The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote about this more than 2,500 years ago in

“The ideal of ‘effortless action’, or wu-wei, refers to the dynamic, unselfconscious state of mind of a person who is optimally active and effective. People in wu-wei feel as if they are doing nothing, while at the same time they might be creating a brilliant work of art, smoothly negotiating a complex social situation, or even bringing the entire

wu-wei is understanding that you don’t have to push.

Lao-tzu’s essential teaching of wu-wei, on the other hand, illustrates the futility of our attempts to control life. He emphasizes that it is only when you give up forcing or controlling anything that you begin to get the kind of control you always wanted, but never knew existed.

Understanding and following the mystery of wu-wei does not mean that you lose your intellectual faculties. Instead, your intellectual life and the apparent use of force begin to be refined into a changeful openness toward life. Actually our intellectual life begins to thrive when we relinquish the habit of force.

Wei Wu Wei can be translated as ‘doing, non-doing’ or rather ‘doing until we reach the stage of non-doing’.