Learning Not to Try

So, you’re working on a novel, and it’s a struggle. It feels like you’re running a marathon with no end in sight. But you’re determined. You make charts of the plot. You talk it through a teacher or coach. You set goals (1,000 words a day! or Finish Chapter Four by the end of the month!). You grit your teeth and sit down every day determined to get that thing written.

It might not be a novel. A memoir. A screenplay. A story or essay or poem. They can all feel this way. Like giant boulders we’ve got to move up that hill—and that we can move up the hill if we just plan enough, think positively, and workworkworkworkwork.

Whew! Let’s stop a moment and re-assess. Maybe all this boulder pushing isn’t the way to get our novel (or memoir or essay) finished. Maybe what we need to do is something else entirely.

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“We too often devote ourselves to pushing harder or moving faster in areas of our life where effort and striving are, in fact, profoundly counterproductive,” writes Edward Slingerland in Trying Not to Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity. Slingerland writes that we need to let go of our focus on will-power and self control and start focusing on what he calls “getting your mind to let go of itself.” In other words, we need to stop trying so hard.

Slingerland is writing about wu wei, a concept from ancient Chinese philosophy that has made its way into the work of some contemporary psychologists. Wu Wei literally means without action. It refers to a way of acting that can be called effortless action or creative stillness. In Writing as a Sacred Path, I call it “a kind of spontaneous, natural, and accepting way of living” that helps us “stop our never-ending struggle to create the perfect existence.”

We Westerners are taught from the cradle that the most important thing we can do is try hard. We are deluged with messages that tell us to strive and struggle, give it our best shot, go for that brass ring. We believe that happiness comes from success, and success comes from ambition, goal-setting, willpower, positive thinking, and hard work.

Yet, as Slingerland suggests—and he backs his ideas up with a lot of evidence—all that struggle often means we just get in our own way. We get blocked. We get frustrated. And we end up feeling like we’ve been on a treadmill—expending a lot of energy without getting anywhere.

So how do we stop? How can we practice wu wei? This is a complicated question, partly because wu wei is paradoxical. As Slingerland’s title suggests, it’s about trying not to try. But there are some steps we can take that will help us get there.

For one thing, we can relax. We can start approaching our writing with an attitude of calm and serenity, rather than the feeling that we simply must finish this work now! We can learn to write slowly. We can take the time to be tranquil.

Simply relaxing isn’t enough, however. We also need to come to our writing open to what is happening. We need to let go of our preconceived notions of what we hope or expect to have when we finish and allow our work to materialize. When we accept what is emerging on the page without trying to make it into something else, our creative juices begin to flow. Wu wei is all about spontaneity and freedom.

Imagine your writing as a stick you’ve thrown into a stream. The stick doesn’t try to swim upstream or make it back to the shore. It doesn’t fight the current or struggle to go any place in particular. It simply floats. It goes with the flow of the water, bobbing, turning, tumbling as the current moves, and it always goes downstream.

I often find myself striving in my writing, my teaching, and other aspects of my life. I find myself with clear ideas of what I want and a feeling of steely resolve. Sometimes I succeed. Sometimes not. When I don’t, I virtually always discover that letting go of the ambition and striving is what allows me to move forward.

While I certainly believe there is a place for ambition, goals, and hard work in life, I also think there is a place for the freedom and ease of wu wei. Many times, I’ve found that it is when I let go of the struggle that my work is at its best.