Doing Nothing To Achieve Something And Other Taoist Tricks

I don't often approach writing a piece with a topic in mind. I tend to allow the blank space to reveal its hidden jewel and then just type to fill in the space with whatever message reveals itself.

When I approach it as a moment of fun, playing with letters, words and sentences, rather than as an exercise in conveying a message, the result is always more refreshing and potent.

And this applies as a useful metaphor for everything there is to do.

Approach it as a process of innocent discovery without achievement agendas driving your actions, simply loving the actions for the actions themselves rather than for the results they could produce, and you paradoxically achieve far more.

And it's the same with that bedfellow of achievement-driven agendas: competitiveness. Rather than compete to be the cleverest, best, brightest and most important, use the incredible amounts of energy you'd normally use competing for being fully in the moment attending to the action at hand. This will make you more excellent at what you do and that excellence will lead you to achieve more.

This is what the ancient Taoists called investing in loss - lose self-important, egocentric thinking and gain important victories.

A modern Taoist like me might just call it messing about with the text edit app on my phone and sharing a thought from the road as I do.

I wish you effortless achievement the whole day long, which leads to a result beyond all previous expectations.

Love, D