Episode 24, The Art of faking it til ya make it

 In Daoism there is the idea of Wu Wei, of getting things done the right way, by not stressing, by not trying too hard, but just being natural and at ease. It's about slowing down and getting things done with minimal effort. Wu Wei does not mean doing nothing, it means taking things lightly, and easily, and playing loose. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

I'm Anthony Alvarado, and this is the Rough Draft. Quick announcement. Uh, happy Beltane coming up this Friday, May 1st is May Day, one of the oldest holidays in the world. It's the halfway point between the beginning of spring and the start of summer. The Celts celebrated uh this actually a lot of people celebrated this particular day as a return of the life force after winter. So yeah, get outside, maybe light a bonfire, dance around the Maypole, and enjoy yourself in spring. So today I wanted to talk about this concept of in it's been called fake it till you make it in uh Alcoholics Anonymous and in uh Taoism it's called Wu Wei. Let's start there. In Taoism, there's this idea of Wu Wei, which is getting things done the right way by not stressing, by not trying too hard and just being natural and at ease. It's about slowing down, getting things done with minimal effort. How many times do we become our own worst enemies by striving too hard, by overdoing it? I can think of examples in my own life pretty easily, and you probably can too. But it's the person who is relaxed and not pushing things too hard that tends to get it done right. This is true in sports and solo sports and team sports. It's really visible in things like tennis and golf that are kind of more psychological. If you're relaxed and loose, you play better. It's true in dance, you know, like that saying dance like nobody's watching. That's what that's about. It's getting, I think, at this idea of woo-way, of just letting go, of playing it loose. It's true in conversation, you know. You can tell when somebody's trying too hard in conversation, trying to impress, trying to dominate space. It's not very fun to be on the receiving end of that. It's true in most art. It's even true in how you live your life in general, whether you give yourself the space and ease to enjoy yourself or to have an attitude of strain and stiffness. So woo-wei does not mean not ever doing anything. It means taking things lightly, playing them loose, playing it easily. You can really see it. I've been watching a lot of basketball lately. You can see when a basketball team is playing woo-wei, when they're playing light and loose and easy, and they start to gel. And you can see when a team gets into their own heads and starts psyching themselves out and playing stiff and overthinking. Another way to look at woo-wei is it's simply a way of talking about flow states, but it's a much older term. It's been around since before we had the idea of a flow state, which is now a widely recognized idea in psychology. We might associate flow states with arts, sports, stuff like dance, performance, elite musicians. But the original concept of Wu Wei is that it's universal. It can be applied to everything in life, to approach one's life with ease and relaxation, a sense of spaciousness without striving. I just think it's a really nice concept to think about in spring, because there's like an easiness to spring, you know. Wu-wei is also an antidote to the modern illness of like a strive culture of obsessing with the grind. Uh looks maxing is like the funniest version of that, taken to really crazy extremes. But it's also just like a reminder to let go of stress and anxiety and overthinking because they don't really serve you. But then, you know, you might be thinking, well, how can this be done? Isn't stress and anxiety simply a part of modern life? Can it simply be let go of? Can you just opt out? And how do you step into that? One of the most insightful modern applications of Wu Wei is actually from Alcoholics Anonymous. In AA, there's a saying, act your way into right thinking. They also call it fake it till you make it. AA recognizes that hard-fought battles of addiction, or in battles of addiction, that it's easier to change your actions until they start to affect your thinking than it is to change your thinking until it affects your actions. You can't think your way out of a serious problem or a big time addiction. Thinking won't do it. The mind's amaze, the ruminations of how to mentally solve a serious problem, like a life-wrecking addiction, are basically it's it's not something you can think your way out of. The trick is don't think. Just start doing the right actions and let your brain catch up. And this is also, by the way, uh, the way out of depression and uh a cure for a bad mood as recognized by modern uh CBT psychology. So I think there's a lot of different angles that you can come at this concept, this kind of Taoist concept of looseness, of lightness, of spaciousness. One of my uh heroes of I guess thinking, of ideas is William James, a pioneer of psychology, who said that if you want to be cheerful, you simply have to act as if you're cheerful, and then before long, you are cheerful. And this is I think a wisdom that's understood uh by modern psychology that actions change moods. You can't change your mood from the inside so much as just get moving in the direction you want to go towards, and it will follow. And so a lot of times we'll get this backwards. We think, oh, I feel sad or happy or lazy or manic or whatever. And so then I did this or I did that. And it's important to understand that just as often it can flow the other way. And in fact, modern psychology is starting to understand that more and more, and maybe philosophies like Taoism understood that a long time ago. We can behave a certain way, and then the mood, the emotion catches up. The key phrase or another key phrase is as if. Act as if you are happy, cheerful, in a good mood, and you can trick yourself into actually feeling in a good mood, or you know, any other direction that you'd like to act as if. Act as if you're confident or charismatic or totally fine with getting up in front of a bunch of people on a stage, and you can trick your neurobiology into playing along. The as if principle is also a really central idea in magic and esoterica. Kind of more commonly known version of it is manifestation, and it works. If you act like you're confident when you walk into a room, people believe you, and that creates feedback loops. If you behave as if you're super lucky or blessed or things are going your way, reality has a way of playing catch up, of going along with the mood that you're bringing towards it. One of my favorite studies that illustrates this was really simple. A psychologist had people meet at a coffee shop to fill out a questionnaire. And one of the things they rated themselves on in this questionnaire was they rated how lucky they thought they were. What they didn't know was that as each person left the coffee shop, there was a$20 bill placed on the ground on the sidewalk right in front of the door. Like you had to step over it to leave. Now the people who rated themselves as unlucky walked right past the money without seeing it. The people who saw themselves as highly lucky all spotted the free money, thus confirming, hey, I must be lucky. Behave as if a certain thing is true, and reality has a way of meeting you halfway. This way of looking at things, that you can change your mood from changing your actions, and that then your actions change the world itself is a subtle idea, but it works really well. To tie it back into embodiment, which is an ongoing theme of this show. I think that you become more present, more here and now, more living your actual life, more yourself as yourself, as you are really meant to be or would like to be, by simply starting, by thinking, what would I like to be more like, and then shifting one small thing at a time. For example, if you're fighting a bad mood, a good place to start is simply make a small change. You're fighting depression, they say that the act of making your bed every morning can be a great place to start. So it's these little things, and the fake it till you make it advice. It sounds simple until you try it and realize that this simple idea can be a lever to affect almost change that almost any change that you wish. That's the idea for today's show. I thought I'd share it as we're approaching spring here, and uh I hope you are having a lovely spring season and get out there and get some sunshine. I'm Anthony Alvarado. This is the Rough Draft, and thank you for listening. You can check out other stuff that I'm up to at my website, AnthonyAlvarado.net, until next time.