What Is Wrong with You?
The Concept of Ziran & Wu Wei
Ziran
Let me tell you about ziran (自然). Ziran is a concept in Chinese Taoist philosophy that describes a certain inherent naturalness. It’s what things are when allowed to be themselves — when they are not being interfered with, corrected, improved, or forced.
A tree growing crooked because of the wind is ziran.
A person speaking plainly because that is their nature is ziran.
A river following the land instead of engineering itself straight is ziran.
Why We Buck Against Ziran
If you spend any time on social media (especially LinkedIn), or you have a development plan at work, you will be acutely aware that the self-improvement industry is alive and well.
How enticing.
First, seeing others strive, which is couched as “motivation”, subtly sends clues to us that we, too, should strive. After all, we do as our peers do, and we model ourselves after people whom we admire.
To not strive would be to waste your potential. Others may infer that you’re lazy or smugly self-satisfied. But that doesn’t have to be the case.
While you may not feel down on yourself, per se, something about the mania around self-improvement is the implication that you are a problem that needs to be fixed.
Optimize your habits!
Hack your personality!
Max out your productivity!
Rebrand your weaknesses!
Every aspect of your life can and should be optimized. How many click-bait videos have you seen labeled, “You’re doing it wrong”?
Wu Wei
Wu wei (無為) is the concept of not struggling against the naturalness of the world.
While I naturally want to improve in many things I do, especially as a recovering highly driven person and perfectionist, I have recognized just how mentally taxing it is to try to improve myself all the time — especially with things I don’t give a spider’s knuckle about.
Besides, some things are a losing battle and are features of myself that don’t need to be changed.
The biggest one for me has been getting up early. So many influencers and “successful people” out there express that one of the biggest keys to making a billion dollars a year is getting up at 5:00 AM. It’s so cliché at this point that it’s almost a joke. Unfortunately, I viewed it for years as a social prescription in order to be seen as a serious person at work.
I struggled immensely with the 7:00 AM calls with Europe, and when I told my boss that I’d always been a night owl, she tilted her head and smiled gently in the way a teacher looks pityingly at a child with a lisp. I got the feeling that she simply couldn’t believe that other circadian rhythm chronotypes exist, and that if I really cared about my career, I’d “get over it”.
So, I did my absolute best to go to bed at 10:00 PM every night and wake up at 6:00 AM the next day. Even after three weeks, I awoke each pitch black morning feeling like I had been hit by a truck, often queasy and disoriented for hours, only to blossom at 1:00 PM. I changed the timing of my medications, took an iron supplement, drank more water, stopped donating blood, altered my coffee intake, got a C-PAP machine, and on and on — and nothing changed this reality.
At some point, I recognized the farce for what it was. I was not meant to get up before the sun did. Full stop.
And so, I started to go with the flow.
Embracing Ziran with Wu Wei
Did I start missing my 7:00 AMs? No, but I changed the rules — sleep until 6:45, no camera on before 9:00, and absolutely NO calls any earlier. I also started declining meetings in which I was optional or my input was obviously unnecessary.
After a while, the calls became fewer as my colleagues recognized that I am someone who prioritizes their sleep. My French colleagues, unsurprisingly, completely understood this compunction and knew to (mostly) leave me alone until 8:00. Agreements were struck, not just with me, but the whole team — and we outlined days of the week where the French would work late and we would work early.
We’d watch them eat duck and drink wine, and they’d watch us… keep our cameras off. They all knew were weren’t wearing pants. No need to show them.
By drawing this line, I was honoring the ziran about myself — what is natural, “what is so” — and stopped fighting it (wu wei). As I honored that, I rewrote the rules on how I interact with the world in a small way that allows me to restore myself and go into work with a clear head.
And that, my friends, was a little bit of wu wei… “in action”.
Burnout reduced by two points (ploink ploink!)
Life Hacks
Here come the reels again. Life hacks.
They present themselves as useful tidbits, what we used to call “tips and tricks”. But are they actually asking, “What else are you doing wrong? What else could you improve?”
Life hacks are not meant to be so personal.
Life hacks are meant to be crap like tying the bird feeder shut with a twist tie so the squirrels don’t bust it open when they’re hanging upside down eating suet like fat, distended bats (MINE; ALL THE CREDIT GOES TO ME; I WILL NOW ACCEPT MY NOBEL PRIZE).
Life hacks aren’t meant to be personality changers, maniacally collected and stacked like Pokémon cards.
Have You Considered…
Have you considered that you’re fine just the way you are?
That you aren’t a project that needs improvement?
That might be a reach too far right now if you’re stuck in self-improvement mode.
And there’s nothing too wrong with wanting to improve in something. That’s how we grow.
But we can also grow by being wiser about what is natural for us and when it’s not worth fighting against the grain, trying to row up river, when that energy can be utilized in much smarter ways for much more enjoyable things.
Set down your oar and let the river carry you downstream.
I know that many of us spend lots of time and effort trying to row up stream to be something we aren’t, myself very much included. Sometimes the worst thing that could happen is succeeding. Now you’re stuck being something you aren’t. Fascinating piece and I loved the Taoist references.