Or is that inaction?

Wu Wei can be a complicated principle in Taoist philosophy, because it can be translated in different ways, presenting various meanings to English speakers.

Wu Wei can be translated as “non-action.”

Or as “actionless action.”

Or as “not doing.”

The overall sense is that something is not being done, even when something is being done. That's close to the truth, for Wu Wei signifies the opposite of how many Westerners attempt to accomplish their goals...we tend to grit our teeth and roll up our sleeves and grunt our way through an activity, attempting to physically force our way through mental activities, and to mentally force our way through physical ones.

The logic behind Wu Wei is very simple: Life is natural, and what arises from the universe arises naturally. Insofar as everything is natural, there is little reason to rely on much force (except when that force is also natural) to push things, or to make events happen in unnatural ways. If something is meant to be, it will occur on its own.

The human body is the best example of this, for the lungs act as a bellows and without our effort they provide the body's cells with oxygen and remove impurities from the blood. The brain operates without our forcing it to, and in fact works best when relaxed—as if it was a muscle—and exerting too much force in thought is often counterproductive to thinking. The muscles, and bones, and ligaments, too, operate efficiently and do what they evolved to do without our forcing them to do anything. Simply letting the body work in its own way is usually the best way for it to work.

If we let go of controlling our bodies and let them react to the world around us, we will find that our bodies are better prepared for survival and growth than “we” are—the we that is poorly designed for survival and growth is the Ego that insists only It can do things right, and that it needs to be there pushing everything else to do better.

This is likely what the ancient Chinese observed: that stopping the Ego did not stop the body, or even the mind, but that both mind and body operated more efficiently without the Ego barking orders at it.

On another level:

On another level Wu Wei is a trust in the process of the Universe. It is trusting that through practice, mastery will naturally be achieved, and once mastery is achieved, there is no need to do anything else, anything outside of the task at hand.

If one has mastered something, it's not the conscious mind that has mastered it, but the subconscious. That knowledge is not necessarily visible to us, but comes to the conscious as an intuition to rely on when needed. We can react in the best way in every situation, so long as we let intuition guide us and not second-guess the process.

Wu Wei is trusting that everything will work out if left alone, that the grass will grow, that the sun will shine, that society will function, that children will grow up.

If I study, I will learn. I do not have to over-think my actions, but simply read and learn.

If I am human, I will have relationships. There's nothing special that I need to do, no special effort I must put forward to attract people to me, or to keep them by my side, other than being myself. I don't have to “put on airs” to impress anyone.

Efficiency:

Not only is Wu Wei about trusting that the world will work itself out, it's also about finding the most efficient course of action. Wu Wei is sort of a law of conservation. Like water seeks the lowest place, flowing with gravity, but never fighting itself or attempting to go over (or through) mountains it can go around, human beings can also find the easiest route through a task.

If I wash the dishes, they will become clean. There's no trick or special effort that I must put into washing them. Gentle, consistent strokes with a rag will clean dishes better than intense effort, pressing the rag as hard as I can against the glass. The difference is in the energy I've saved.

This is true of much of what we try to do in life. There's an efficient way to do anything and everything, and this is “not doing.” It's simplicity in action. It is practical.

When we run, it's best to move as little as possible (a simple motion instead of flailing) and in a straight line. It's best to relax the body so that it flows fluidly, to smile instead of frown in intense effort.

This benefits us by giving us more energy to sustain activities for longer periods of time. In athletics, in intellectual pursuits, in the daily grind of work, in relationships, in parenting, in politics, and in every other aspect of life we devote ourselves to. Finding the path of least resistance to a goal—not the path of least resistance away from adversity—is what Wu Wei is. This is embodied by the story of the butcher who never sharpened his blade because he always cut between the spaces where the meat connected to the bone.

The Universe goes its own way, and Wu Wei suggests going with it instead of trying to carve our own canyon out of it. Wu Wei is about accepting what exists before us now and working with what the Universe has given us, rather than to try to take what isn't there, or to manipulate reality into something unnatural—something that will not last despite our efforts.

Wu Wei goes hand in hand with our knowledge; not our conscious knowledge of facts and figures, but the unconscious knowledge of ways, of roads, of Tao.

My recovery from anxiety continues.

I've gotten over three phobias since arriving in Louisiana.

I drive now, I use public restrooms, and I talk on the phone. All three were restrictive in their own way, and now that they are gone I am capable of doing much more in life.

I'm not working yet, but I take risks each day and with each risk I take I feel more confident and open to the world around me. It's like being freed from a prison cell.

~*~

I've overcome the above phobias through in vivo exposure therapy, and there are four reasons exposure therapy is working better now than a few months ago.

First, I'm out of a bad environment. Last spring/summer I was motivated to work on my anxiety. I was making progress, but as the weather began to cool in autumn, so did my attitude. I suffer from Seasonal Effective Disorder. When it gets cold or cloudy, my mood bottoms out and I often get depressed. I stopped taking risks and growing, becoming a hermit as August gave way to September. My life spiraled out of control, and by October I could no longer cope.

Second, I am now in an environment where I can build on each individual success. In Iowa I only had myself to depend on, and the location was so small that it could be two or three weeks between exposure opportunities. Here my mother is helping me when I need help, there are more people and more opportunities, and the weather is better. Just seeing the sun shine every day and feeling the warm air in January lifts my spirits to the sky. People here in Louisiana are relaxed, calm, helpful. This atmosphere has given me something to stand on to reach for my goals.

Third, I want to do well. These little successes are opening me to a wider world and I'm actually interested in what's going on around me. I haven't felt this fascinated by life since before I was a teenager. When I was that young I wasn't self-conscious and nothing really slowed me down. I'm finding that I again have a very limited self-consciousness, and it's a boon to my recovery. I closed up as a teenager, as I became aware of myself, but as a young boy I remember always wanting to be grown up, and I feel all grown up now.

Fourth, I'm trusting my spiritual evolution. I owe success to the hours of study in Zen and Taoism, and listening and reading Alan Watts and Ram Dass. The study I did throughout the summer of 2012 is paying dividends now, nearly a year later. I've gone so deep into the practice of meditation that I've lost many of my ego-inhibitions. That is vital. It's laid the groundwork for healing my anxiety, and has also provided the fuel for continued growth.

~*~

Anxiety can be a very complicated thing to get over. It takes understanding, acceptance, and hard work. But anxiety can also be a very simple thing to get over, as it is now. I take that with a grain of salt because I realize how easy it is to fall off the wagon and start closing myself off from the world again. I've already gone through the difficult task of figuring myself out, understanding what makes me happy, what relaxes me, and what I need to change about my life and myself. That's the growth that an anxiety disorder can induce, and as a catalyst to change, to living a better life, I am very grateful for my fears.

Whether or not my recovery continues depends on my attitude going forward. Each day, can I look at myself, at others, at life, without preconceptions? So much of anxiety is steeped in our judgments about the world and ourselves. So much of the Zen and Taoist lifestyles are about living without judgment, without critiquing the world, but letting it be what it is—not fighting against it.

Understanding why a thing happens isn't necessarily going to fix it, especially when it's something that has been happening all your life and you've only recently realized the source of the problem. Given time and proper conditions, I think I could have done better in Iowa, but I wasn't going to have a chance with the bad weather. I would not have been able to deal with the level of frustration I was experiencing (with family), and the resulting anger, while fending off my annual seasonal depression and my reemerging anxiety symptoms.

It took a lot for me to move on from Iowa. I needed to hit escape velocity and that was very painful, very tumultuous. I had to be so pissed off at myself and with my life that leaving was easier than staying. My comfort zone had to stop being so comfortable. For people who are in a bad situation but have to work full time, have children to take care of, or have nowhere else to go—no family or friends to flee to, as I had—the opportunity simply isn't there.

But for exposure therapy to be successful, it's important that we do seek a better environment, even in the one we're already in. We need better relationships with our loved ones, and to ground ourselves in something concrete. That concreteness for me was meditation. For someone else it may be a group of friends, a career, exercise, or music. It can be anything. I manifested it as a spiritual practice but it can be anything for anyone.

Even if someone cannot pick up and move away, there's still hope. I recognized things that I could have done better in my situation in Iowa. In hindsight I wasn't communicating enough with my family and friends. This may seem difficult for anyone with anxiety, but opening up and communicating can and should be the first step in exposure therapy—for it is itself an exposure.

Stabilizing relationships.

A change of scenery.

Getting grounded in activity.

These changes can work only if we're motivated to change. We have to want something bigger than ourselves, something to grow toward. It may require painful soul searching, but once you've found the sun in your life, growth can come suddenly, overnight.



Further Reading:

Tao of Anxiety: Series

I recently asked myself the question “What am I?”

The answer I came up with was two-fold. When I get down to the barest of possibilities I am Awareness and Emptiness. They are a sort of binary reality but the code is merely a representation of two sides of the same coin. They are the same.

Void manifested as Matter (physics may show this through theories such as the Big Bang and virtual particles forming spontaneously in a vacuum), and matter manifested as awareness (as can be seen by human consciousness arising naturally in nature), and awareness has the ability to manifest as emptiness (that state of meditation that leaves us empty of our preconceptions). Through emptiness humans are able to see their true nature, that they are Matter, and that Matter is Void.

Void = Matter = Awareness = Emptiness = Matter = Void

Each of these terms is one way of defining the others. We know what Matter is by the contrast of knowing what Void is and vice versa. Awareness and Emptiness are just two other terms for Matter and Void, for to be Aware is to be aware of Matter and to be Empty is to become like Void.

~*~

I am awareness.

I am an awareness of events, not my attempt to define or interpret events, which happen after and only to memories. I am no label, no preconception, no concept, no other identity. I am not my thoughts, nor am I others' thoughts about me.

When I push aside everything that is not absolutely necessary to my nature, all that I have left is my awareness, my consciousness.

Awareness does not exist where I have already mapped out what I intend the world to be. When I'm not really looking at a tree but thinking of my idea of what a tree should be.

Awareness can only exist in the present moment, and though it is always present, I may not be. I must empty myself first.

It is necessary for me to be Empty in order to be Aware, as Awareness flourishes when preconceptions don't exist, when I am free to observe without judging good and bad.

When I have grown empty, removing the excess me, I become aware of my ideas for what they are—chemical phenomenon. I still have thoughts, but I do not cling to them or judge them. I observe them as I observe external stimuli. I understand that memories are happening right now, not in the past. I am no longer identified with them, but let them go as quickly as they come or as soon as they wish to depart. The habit of thinking is gone, replaced by consciousness.

When I am empty, I am aware; when I am aware, I am empty.

~*~

My “self” is essentially “Emptiness” (also called Void, or Nothingness) and “Awareness” (or consciousness). They are Yin and Yang. The Universe itself can be viewed as Material and Vacuous. There is no in between, no “not Matter and not Void,” yet we shouldn't assume that Matter and Void are opposites. They are in fact One. Matter is a manifestation of Void. Awareness is a manifestation of Emptiness.

And so the way to get to Awareness, to be “me,” is to reduce conceptual thinking. I must empty myself of labels, concepts, expectations, and preconceptions in order to be “Empty” and “Aware.” Achieving this is as simple as breathing deeply from the abdomen.

In this Awareness I and the world cease to exist as an idea, but exist as a reality. I am not fixed to ideas, and so I am free. I am not influenced by external experiences because I am not judging or defining the world around me. This may go on for a split second, five minutes, weeks, or a lifetime. It depends on my level of focus on the simplest human activity, breath, no matter what other activity I am participating in.

This is being alive.

This is Satori.

Knowing this, can I waste a moment of my time on anything but awareness? When Awareness is all I am materially, and spiritually I am Emptiness, should I spend thoughts and emotions on things that I am not?

The labels I give myself, the labels society gives me, the labels family, friends, and coworkers give me, the judgments I cast on others—none of these concepts are worth a single moment. If I trade even a second of life for an “idea” of how the world is, in-lieu of what life actually is, naked, free, infinite, I am only a fool being hoodwinked by a robber.

The robber is me, but not the real me.

There was a time in my life when I was content to be “normal.” I worked, I socialized, and for the most part I lived in an unconscious vacuum. I did things out of habit, lived without thinking. If ignorance is bliss, I was happy. Except that I was wearing myself down. I noticed and ignored little things at first: small stresses.

At this time I experienced tension headaches and severe sciatica. It was harder to wake up in the mornings and to stay awake in the afternoons. I was always agitated. Instead of slowing up, I worked harder. I wore myself down. 

I thought my problems would go away, then the dam broke and my stress was finally too much to ignore. My panic attacks from earlier in life returned as I found myself in new and uncertain circumstances (having moved to another state), and for months I reeled from my phobias and anxiety.

I was forced to look into myself to figure out what was wrong, because nothing on the outside was helping. To me, this meant venturing on a spiritual path.

When I was 18 I stumbled upon Taoism. I lived in Florida by that time, was in counseling, but living in a cocoon. I had always had an inclination toward the spiritual, but my attempts at studying major religions like Buddhism and Hinduism were coming up short. Nothing I read—mostly commentary from modern practitioners—made sense to me or seemed practical at the time.

I needed to go to a source and I finally found it in a short book of poetry called the Tao Te Ching (the Way and its Power, written by Lao Tzu around 500 B.C.E.), the preeminent book of Taoism. Taoism was not a major religion—it has just 30,000 followers in North America, and only a couple of million throughout the world—but it was just what I needed at the time and what I continue to use today.

Taoism is a philosophy/psychology of ancient China brought to a small prominence in the West during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by scholars like Alan Watts, Huston Smith, and James Legge—the first translator of many Chinese works into English.

What immediately drew me to Taoism wasn't necessarily what the Tao Te Ching said, for I didn't understand much of what it was saying the first time I read it, but the sense of quiet peace that I fell into as I read it. This relaxed state was something I had never felt before, as if years of tension were released all at once and I was calm for the first time. Today, I can still pick up a copy of the Tao Te Ching and read it and experience this peace.

It was an easy jump from there to deciding to take up Taoism on a deeper level. Anything that made me feel calm, when finding calm was like finding the fountain of youth, must have been worth more than a cursory glance.

This put me on a journey to using Taoism as a way to cope with my panic and generalized anxiety disorders. In the coming years I have completely overcome generalized anxiety, something that was a great burden throughout my teenage years, and though I still have occasional panic attacks, I can shrug them off like so many dried leaves from a warm coat.

If the Tao Te Ching contains a theme, it is simply that the world is what the world is, and that instead of fighting against what happens to me, I should flow with it (this was new to me, as I had always fought against everything, making life a constant struggle). It took me years to verbalize this theme, but at the time I understood it intuitively.

The Tao, the way of the world, is often compared to or symbolized by water for water's ability to overcome hard objects by seeming passivity—though in reality water's virtue is that it does not give up or turn back, but seeks the easiest path against difficulties, never forcing its way through rock, but overcoming it in time to form great canyons.

As someone in a state of constant worry, this new worldview was enlivening. As I searched deeper into Taoism, studying Chuang Tzu (a near-contemporary of Lao Tzu) and Alan Watts (a twentieth century philosopher), I found more meaning and deeper explanations of what I was reading in the Tao Te Ching.

There were many stories and parables explaining what it was like to simply be. Chuang Tzu expresses the idea that we can live without outside influences effecting our emotional state of mind. This is not unlike Western cognitive psychology—except 2,000 years older. Reading and listening to Alan Watts, I learned to find unity with the world.

I realized that as a teenager I lived closed off from “others.” That I was living in a vacuum, where I could not connect and feel like I was part of anything. This lead eventually to my phobias, exacerbating my anxiety symptoms. What I found in Taoism was a way of life that desired unity—that went a step further and showed why unity was not only possible, but was the way of the world.

~*~

It's difficult to put it into words exactly how Taoism effects anxiety, because I “live” it more than I “think” it. It's a feeling, an intuition, and the right words are seldom there for me to describe the experience. But it has worked for me and continues to work for me today. I'm no longer a worry-wart, my anxiety attacks have all but vanished, and I hope that some day this will help me overcome my phobias.

But perhaps Taoism's advantage is not what it has given me itself, but how it has worked in tandem with cognitive psychology. It fits everything behavioral psychologists have to say about anxiety. As a tool alongside cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) Taoism is an excellent gift.

Each has given the other a different, fascinating perspective. I feel that, in light of Taoism, I understand CBT better; how it works, why it works, what it can accomplish for me. And in light of CBT I understand Taoism better; why the ancient Chinese latched onto it, and that it is an accurate and practical way of thought and life.




Further Reading:

Tao of Anxiety: Series

My beloved but sucky Dolphins lost on Sunday. I wasn't surprised by that, because I knew Houston has our number, but I was disappointed by the catastrophe that was the end of the second quarter. I was hoping for a more competitive game.

But I've been thinking about the loss, bad teams, and sports in general.

Houston fans are pretty stoked after Sunday. Their team played great—doing what they needed to do to win—and the fans get to celebrate for a week.

Sports is entertainment. Objective fans hope for nothing more than a competitive game. I am not a fan of Denver or Pittsburgh (though I love Peyton Manning), but I was very happy after Sunday night's game between these two teams because it was a close, exciting game. I got what, as a fan, I hoped for.

And I can relate to Steelers' fans. My team lost, too. There is no upside to losing. It hurts. Period.

Yet I realized something interesting. In order for one team to win, the other team obviously has to lose, but teams that lose play a vital role in sports. The Miami Dolphins and Cleveland Browns, perennial losers, are just as important to the game of football as the New England Patriots and Pittsburgh Steelers, perennial winners.

Enter Taoism.

To have a positive, you must have a negative that coincides with it for contrast, or you really have no way of knowing what you're seeing. Alan Watts described this phenomenon well by comparing a hand placed against a white, blank background. The background gives birth to the hand because it is different from it, and vice versa. Another great analogy for this is the magnet. It has a positive and negative, but neither is better than the other, and for a magnet to exist at all it must contain both charges. 

Positive and negative, up and down, good and bad, and winners and losers are neutral ideas until humans start tossing expectations around. “People should be good. My team should have won that game.”

In football, we root for the winners, but if we didn't have the losers, there would be no game!

And so I contented myself this week knowing that my team at least made a good portion of Texas happy. At least someone is happy.

To lose is a virtue. It means that we've given someone else an opportunity to win, and with that comes celebration and elation.

No one remembers the losers, but they're at least as much a part of the game as the winners are. They are bonded. Inseparable.

I wrote a couple of drafts of what I hoped to have posted yesterday. The words seemed lacking in exact meaning, and I failed to express my feelings in any way appropriate to my current state of mind. But I've been here before, many times before, when life converges, then diverges again in a watershed moment.

I must no longer identify with “I am an author.” The experiment is ended—for now. I won't stop writing (it's too much fun and too interesting to give up), but I think for the foreseeable future, writing will not be my main priority as it's been for the better part of a year.

Fact is, I have a problem with perfectionism, with this feeling that I must be a “somebody.” I do a pretty good job about not caring about being anyone important, but I've worked writing up so much in the last several months that every time I sit down to write, or even more, when I don't sit down to write, I am reminded that I am not somebody. Such a burden on my mind, and I do not care to have it. If success means tormenting myself for not living up to society's standards of fame and fortune, I'll gladly do something else.

Anything else, but not try, not force myself to write for money, for fame, for success.

Call this my “fuck it” moment.

Now it's out of the way, and I can talk about positive things! Like the fact that I do not plan on quitting writing. I'm going to tone it down a bit, but I still hope to be consistent (an hour a day, a little for the blog, a little for a story, a little poetry or whatever). My main focus will turn to LIFE.

Right now the most fun I'm having with anything I'm doing is my studying of the Spanish language. I've been studying it on and off for several years, and I have a pretty solid understanding of the language and a pretty basic vocabulary, but I want to push myself for the rest of this year to reach some sort of mastery.

The main difference between spending most of my time writing, and most of my time studying Spanish is that Spanish is tangible. They're both dealing with language, with words, which I absolutely love, but with Spanish I can open more doors in my life than I can with writing. They're not mutually exclusive of course, but I need something concrete, practical. Learning Spanish, I'm a stone's throw away from more career options, not to mention the fact that my beautiful girlfriend's entire family speaks Spanish as their native language. I see in Spanish a quicker, more effective way to gain some success, because it's something I can actually show people, and do.

Another focus in my life at this time is in my spiritual development—and this is directly tied to my anxiety disorder.

I'm a very phobic person (very neurotic), and for as much confidence as I have in my abilities and in myself as a human being, I have an equal amount of doubt and hesitation to actually unfold myself and enter back into society. Yet that is exactly what I've been doing for the last couple of months, breaking out here or there, doing this or that, unfolding as the flower unfolds in the morning sun after a long, damp night.

I've been helped along tremendously by a friend who has moved back to town recently, and by my girlfriend who continues to support me even though her own fears are evident. Recently we (my girlfriend and I) even plotted out a possible career path in counseling. Getting a masters degree in counseling seems like an intuitive thing to do (I talk a lot, am a reasonably good listener, love psychology even more than I love writing, and love even more helping people), but it'll take many years, and will be a goal that will have to be worked on piecemeal, part of which includes overcoming my social anxiety disorder.

Writing has always been my crutch; most specifically my dream of being a published, paid author. My dream of writing for a living and my desire and need to let go of my anxieties and live a well-balanced, fruitful life are mutually exclusive. If you were to ask my mother or my girlfriend what they would rather have me do, be a reclusive, malfunctioning writer or be a well-rounded and sociable human being, I think they'd both pick the latter—and so would I, because I know that I will not lose my ability to write by taking more risks with my life.

I want to be a published writer because I don't want to go out and get a job, go to college, or otherwise interact with large groups of people (which is ironic, because to succeed in writing one must be able to socialize). Yet I've been doing a lot of spiritual cultivation lately, finding my true self and all that jazz. I've realized something important. There's a difference between writing and writing. Writing is a physical act of putting ideas down on paper, and in that, is a perfect exercise of what a Zen monk would call “Drawing water and carrying wood.”

But writing is totally different. It is a matter of wanting, of craving, of possessing, identifying, and reaching for something wholly intangible, abstract, and unreal. “Success.” This wanting to be somebody.

Having a job, working, especially if it's something completely menial, would be perfect for me because it's just practice—drawing water and carrying wood.

And so as I reach out to the world around me, join in it, however painful this is (and it's been quite painful), I must let go of the intangibles I've cultivated toward writing. Now when I write, as I'm doing here, I will treat it as practice. I will write for writing, and not for anything else. I will publish for publishing, and not for anything else.

I don't care where it takes me, if it takes me anywhere. I have a goal, but I'm not attached to the outcome. The goal is to make the words, focusing always on making the words (as well as editing and publishing the words, but in their own time and place).

Hopefully I will not put down my dream of being a published writer only to pick up another crutch. I must guard against that. But also, I'm in no way denying success. I'm not sitting here saying “I don't want it.” I don't not want it, either. If I wake up tomorrow with a million dollars in my pocket because of something I wrote, I'll put it to good use!

:)

Much of my anxiety is a head game. Someone asks me to do something, or tells me to do something, or encourages me to do something and I respond: “I can't.”

I don't always respond to them verbally, but even if I only think “I can't,” it is debilitating.

“I can't.” Not even “I won't.” “I can't.”

If it were “I won't” then it would be a choice, either laziness or assertiveness, but my decision.

“I can't” is saying it's not my choice, that it's out of my hands, that I'm doomed, fated to what I am.

While meditating I was thinking about the opposite of “I can't”: “I can.”

“I can” is pregnant with possibility. It's not quite as dominant as “I will” (the opposite of “I won't”) but it's quite powerful in its own right. I realized that so much of my anxiety is saying “I can't,” and believing it! Then someone says “do this,” and I think, “I can't,” and this thought pulls me in the opposite direction of where that person is leading me. It's a tug of war that causes much unneeded stress, fear, worry, instability, uncertainty, anger, and guilt.

It creates pain in the brain. But when I exclaim, “I can,” I may not ever do the thing in question, but I no longer feel the pain. I am free.

I also realized (though I'm not going to take credit for it, because any cognitive psychologist should be able to tell you the same thing) that the more I say “I can't,” the more I won't. And the more I say “I can,” the more I will. Each leads to its own conclusion, and giving up and saying “I can't,” is like closing a million doors of possibility all at once. “I can,” does not close doors. It may not necessarily shove me through any (“I will” will do that), but it leaves all opportunities open and acclimates me to facing the world.

This is the mind game then: If I leave these doors open and believe that a thing is at least possible, it makes that thing easier, and therefore less daunting. If I close these doors, I must face the reality that everything is too difficult—and so everything will be daunting.

If this was advice to give I would say just this: “Do yourself a favor. You don't have to go through any of these doorways, but at least don't close the doors. Don't lock yourself out of life. Don't give up. Keep the door open, even if it's only ajar, and wait. Practice, repeat over and over that you can, and wait. Sooner or later an opportunity will arise that you will want to take advantage of, an opportunity that you would be forced to miss if you closed any one of these doors.”

I of course need no guinea pig for this. I have myself. The advice is for me. But take it if you want it. I bet it will work for many things, not just anxiety. Leave these doors open in your education, in your vocation, in your personal life.

Live as if all the world is your playground.

When I talk of spontaneity to those hard-set in the ways of Western culture, the door is often slammed in my face. Of course this is no real door, but the door to their minds, because in our culture spontaneity is synonymous with idleness and a life without goals, and many people have already closed their minds to other possibilities.

To let things be what they are, to let come what may come, and to ride the wind conjures visions of bohemians, hippies, gypsies, and bums.

Not someone with goals, with a plan, with motivation, passion and drive to get from point A to point B.

I find myself spending a lot of time refuting this concept of spontaneity. I refute the claim because it's not true. Or, more specifically, it does not have to be true. In fact, spontaneity may lead to even more goals, plans, motivations, passions, and drives—for the right person.

What do I mean by the right person? Some of us go about success in the wrong way. We try to force it. We work very hard, living on our to-do lists, and expecting to get as much out of the system as we put in. When things don't go our way, we end up frustrated and dejected because this way of operation is cold and offers very little satisfaction—it merely turns real life into an assembly line procedure. We continue on with our to-do list, but with less motivation, more than likely losing the spark we began with.

The surest way to avoid this inevitable let-down inherent to our system of “productivity > enjoyment” is to venture from the regular path, to trust that we will fly when we do.

I feel as though I live a very spontaneous life. I still have goals, but I am not tied down to them. I am free to leave my feet when the spirit takes me, to go headlong into the unknown. If I were simply living life by my to-do list I would not venture. I would stick to the list.

Living a spontaneous life means living in a way that the list, if you have one (and I almost always do), is not the end-all, be-all of reality. It's accepting our human need for creativity and exploration. Yet spontaneity is not completely discarding the old forms.

When we have passion for a thing, it is very easy to spend time with it. I have passion for exercise. I do not need to keep a detailed to-do list when it comes to running. I just run. I do so often when I have passion. Many times in my life I have found that when I try to control how I run, the distance, the time, and the harder I control these things, the less joy I get out of running—and therefore the less I run. Despite detailed goals, I am less motivated. When I just run, I run farther and faster than I would if I approached running as a chore. I still carry a stop-watch with me, and I still try to improve from one run to the next, but I don't grow moody if I don't. I don't make myself. It happens of itself.

Spontaneity increases passion because it does away with our culture's have-to's. With more passion, we do not have to guard our steps. We can trust ourselves to do what we love, because we love doing it, and there are few things we'd rather do otherwise.

The argument against this tends to be “What if I find I don't have the passion, even if I live spontaneously?” My response: “Then why do it?”

We need money to survive in this world. We must eat, clothe, and house ourselves. Yet how we make that money is entirely up to what we enjoy doing. If you don't want to work in a cubicle, don't. If you don't want to be ABC, but would rather do XYZ, do what you must to get to that point. But do so spontaneously. Don't try to out-think life. Don't try to trick the system. Don't do a thing for any other reason than that you find joy in doing it.

When there is joy—joy borne of spontaneity—there is a way, a living, a life.

I started a sort of “game” when I was a teenager that I've always gone back to whenever I find myself adrift in slothfulness—if I need extra motivation.

I have always been a sports fan, for as long as I can remember. One of my first memories was of a baseball, though it was just a random object then. I was at one time (though not anymore) a statistics junkie. I wasn't satisfied reading the stats in the paper. I watched the games and kept track of the stats for my then favorite player, Andruw Jones.

I was also an avid goal setter and it did not take much thought to connect the two together—goals and stats. I devised a points system. I would get so many points for doing something, and lose so many points for not doing something, and at the end of each day I would write down whether or not I “won” the day according to the difference in points. This is probably not an original idea, as ideas go, but for me it was groundbreaking.

What this did for me, other than to please my perfectionist tendencies, was to give myself an idea of what I was getting done. I could judge whether a certain week was good or bad based on my record. 7-0 was a great week. 0-7 wasn't.

It's been a few years since I've used this method, but I'm now putting it back into service. I've been in a funk lately, ever since I published “Rising”. That was over a month ago, but in the last week since I've begun my method, I've noticed very positive improvements. I've only had one day, and really only a single night, in which I wasn't directing my attention toward one of the goals on my list, motivated by having a positive score.

This is arbitrary, and I don't win anything other than personal pride. I'm not even promising myself incentives (I'll buy myself X if I complete Y for a month). But using this method has a positive effect on my mood. Not only does it keep me motivated, but it gives me a record by which I can remind myself how well I've been doing.

An example of what I'm talking about:

If my goals are “Play guitar. Write. Read.” I will give myself a point for accomplishing each for the day, and if I fail to spend any time on these activities I'll write down a -3.

So it's +1 or -3. If there are 10 things on my list, and if I do most of them, I can get away with not doing two of them, and still let myself write down that I won. My score will have been 8-6. I write down a W and turn my focus to tomorrow.

~*~

This is really nothing more than a game I play with myself, pinning motivation against sloth. Sometimes sloth wins, tallying more points than motivation did, but usually I'm eager enough to win that motivation will go the extra mile. I don't cheat, but I don't enjoy giving myself a Loss, and so I will often do whatever is necessary to put myself over the top.

The biggest advantage I gain is in consistency. I've been trying to learn Spanish for years, and though I can read it okay (so long as I have a dictionary ready), I cannot understand or speak it. My main problem is consistency, as it is with most of the things I try to accomplish. I'll study one day, then I won't study again for two weeks.

By breaking things down into statistics, I'm now sufficiently motivated to study every day. This goes for writing, reading, playing guitar, working out, meditating, etc.

You may ask “if you enjoy doing these things, why do you give yourself points?” Or even “if you're a Taoist and your ideal is to live spontaneously, why do you give yourself points?” The simple answer to both questions is that I enjoy watching TV as much as I enjoy doing anything else, let's say writing stories. Sometimes writing stories becomes a bit like a chore, and I need some way to sit down and do it anyway. This is a method that works.

It may not in and of itself be spontaneous, but I find the direction it gives me to be spontaneous. I'm not glued to schedules and I “flow” through my day knowing that I can do what I want, when I want to do it, so long as I am more motivated than I am lazy.

It's a bit of pressure off my shoulders.

And it's fun kicking sloth around!

If you're a football fan like me then you likely watched the Super Bowl last night, unless work or some serious emergency kept you busy.

Highlights are streaming, the news is still talking, and I'm sure Patriot fans are Monday Morning Quarterbacking.

Since everyone else is discussing the game today, I don't have to, nor will I (much). Instead, I want to talk about other people who talked about the game.

I didn't want to watch the Super Bowl. I admit I was disgruntled that Baltimore lost, and my favorite NFL player—Ricky Williams—missed perhaps his last opportunity to go to the biggest game of his career.

Why did I? Because it seemed everyone else was. My Facebook page blew up with posts about the NFL, and it's hallmark game, Super Bowl XLVI, or in layman's terms Super Bowl 46, or Super Bowl 2012.

Records were broken last night. Apparently during the final 3 minutes of the game there were an average of 10,000 tweets a second. A lot of very excited people.

Yet not all posts were football friendly. Some of what I saw was negative. Some people were annoyed that their Facebook pages were being taken over by fanatics. I feel for them. I did my best not to post anything football related last night, and did a good job except for a few quotes I heard on TV.

These were obviously not football fans. And it is very interesting to me that there can be so much love and enjoyment for a certain thing, and yet so much distaste.

It's amazing to see just how many varied opinions there were last night.

Why does something like this matter? I think what I saw last night is echoed in many other areas of life. In writing, for instance, or in life in general. We can never expect every last person to like us, or like the stories we write, or like the music we play, or enjoy our paintings or religion or politics.

Yet we shouldn't expect no one to like us or our work, either, if we are genuine and passionate about what we do. I mean, there are still neo-Nazis running around and people actually watch and “enjoy” the NBA, so you can get at least one person to like just about anything.

When people get together to discuss something, not everyone will agree. Some of the best comments I read last night weren't in favor of the Super Bowl, but were in favor of everyone shutting up about it. These contrary opinions (a few anyway) were well thought out.

They of course got me thinking. We live in a world where Twilight was a best seller, and yet seems to be one of the most made fun of creations in years. How can so many people like and hate something at once? How can something like a book, a story, meant to offend no one and really containing no morally offensive material at all, be so polarizing?

Is it successful because it's polarizing?

Maybe...I watched last night's game to see the Patriots lose. I'm sure others watched to see the Giants win, or to lose, or the Patriots to win. Some watched for the commercials, and some watched for the half time show, and some watched just because it was football. Others watched not at all, but had something to say about the game anyway.

Everyone involved had an opinion, either a yes or no, an up or down. Is that what we want? It's like the saying “Any publicity is good publicity.” If you tell a person not to do something, they'll do it just to find out if you were right, or to prove you wrong.

It's an interesting world we live in. We communicate with each other in strange ways, and bond together in even strangers ways. I have no doubt that today there are a few more Patriot and Giants fans in the world. I'm sure many friendships were kindled online or in a bar over beers. Perhaps even a few friendships were lost, as were more than a few bets.

And every one of us has an opinion. Every one of us has a point of view. There are more ways to look at the world than there are ways for Eli Manning to win a Super Bowl. That's two, if you haven't been counting at home.

And in my opinion, both were exciting.

I took four days off from writing. It was nice to get away, and it's just as nice to be back. In that time I made some goals, broadened my perspective and focus (I'm not so zeroed in on my novel now that I can't see the forest for the trees), and regenerated my power cells.

So I'm going to focus more on blogging.

Build my friends and circles.

Give Twitter the time of day.

Write at least one short story.

Dig one of my old novellas out of the closet, er, flash drive, and see what I can do with it.

Work on my highly secretive non-fiction (it's philosophical and far from done).

And read through the completed third draft of “Rising” and figure out where to go next.

~~~

Goals are very important to me. I'm an avid goal setter. I've always got at least one list of goals lying around, usually something pertaining to writing or exercise. There are times when I throw the goals out the window and live spontaneously, and sometimes my goals are as simple as “write, exercise, meditate”, but I've always got some sort of direction to go in.

My father was a goal setter, and he was the one who got me hooked on them. I remember listening to his Zig Ziglar tapes as a ten-year-old. My dad didn't give me much else in my life, but he taught me how to plan, how to reach higher, how to do better. That's the one lesson he drove into me. He taught me that I can always do better than I've done in the past.

My father is living proof that simply setting goals and wanting to do better isn't enough to actually be better. For all the goals he set when I was a child, he rarely accomplished any of them. I've discovered that I have similar problems with reaching the goals I set, though for different reasons.

So why do people like me fizzle out before the finish line? And does it even matter that we do?

Philosophically, the answer may lie in Zen and Taoist thought. Taoist sages “preached” a spontaneous lifestyle. Taoism can seem at times to be anti-goal setting (though this isn't necessarily true).

Zen is very similar. In Zen, unlike other Buddhist sects, the idea that one can “work to achieve” nirvana is pure bologna. Zen teaches that nirvana cannot be sought after, that to do so would be like catching the moon in the still waters of a pond. Impossible.

Goals have value, but not in what they help us achieve. Their value lies in the road we travel as we follow each goal.

The value of an exercise goal isn't looking good and being healthy, but the active process. It's the running, the weight lifting, the swimming. It's not the gold medals or six-pack abs.

So does it even matter that goals are achieved, if setting them guides us and keeps us in the moment? Life is about “doing things”, not “having done things”. Can overlooking the path of a goal for its conclusion work? Can it sustain us? Is it effective?

When I see successful, goal-oriented people, I don't see people who reached for the stars, but people who were caught up in what they were doing.

In Eastern philosophy, the end of any goal is a natural side effect of living that goal.

But not everyone finds success. This is where I see the true wisdom of what Taoism and Zen teach me. Life is full of random chance. Even talented people never have the opportunity to do the one thing in life they want to do. There's a time and place for all things.

I set goals, but I'm not a perfectionist about the goals themselves. I'm rarely concerned with completing them. The fun is in the doing. I realize that some of my goals will never be completed, and some will not be completed for many years. This is beyond my control because many of my goals depend on other people as much as they depend on me.

For instance, I want to make a living writing stories, but this depends on people buying my stories. I can do everything right, write the best story, meet the best people, and still fail. That's life. But that doesn't mean I won't live to write. I choose to write instead of doctoring, soldiering, or building.

I know one thing about my father. He was very concerned with the end result. He was an excellent artist, but he never drew to draw, he drew to make money. His heart was in the money, not in the beautiful works of art he created with nothing more than a graphite pencil and a mushy eraser.

I'm much more concerned with the road than the end. I see every end as a dead-end, and am in no great hurry to leave the road I enjoy, for then I'd have to find another path.

I've done a terrible thing! (Other than using alliteration in my blog title.)

I've once again bucked rest and relaxation to push myself a little harder than necessary. As a result, I've spent much of today banging my head against a wall. I haven't been as productive as I had been throughout the week—a frightening concept in and of itself, as my mind twists this against me and screams: “You're getting blocked!”

Why, on one hand, do I demand that I work seven days a week (this is the sixth day in a row that I've written), and yet on the other hand I know that I cannot keep this pace?

Hit the panic button, right? Bad idea!

I have to step back and take a deep breath. Everything is going to be fine.

Consistency counts, but consistency doesn't necessarily mean writing daily. For the last few weeks I've taken weekends off. On the following Monday I'm refreshed and ready to get back to work. On Mondays I'm super productive, if a little rusty. On Tuesdays I'm super productive and the rust is gone. After Wednesday I begin my weekly creative decline.

This week I was a little more enthusiastic so I decided to work through the weekend. Well, here I am, it's 1:30 on Saturday afternoon and I'm very negative about everything. I cannot see the forest for the trees. Kudos to me for realizing it. Acceptance is the first step.

I believe I can get more done writing every other day than five or six days a week. But do I listen to myself? No, of course not. I get excited and write until my head feels like it'll blow up. Maybe it wouldn't matter if my plans hadn't been dashed, if the writing was still easy for me.

Last Sunday I thought I'd have my second draft finished by Friday. Friday came and went, and despite spending 20+ hours on the draft this week, I still have another week to go before it'll be complete. 

(The second half of the novel is sloppier than the first half, requiring more rewriting, which subsequently slowed my pace. Problem identified, nothing to worry about, calm down!)

This is why I do not like to plan, for life will laugh and throw me under a bus. It's times like these that I fully understand the logic behind the Zen and Taoist mentality of living intuitively. Just flow with it. Right now the flow of life is carrying me away from writing. Perhaps I'll take tomorrow off. Perhaps I'll wake tomorrow and begin writing.

Who knows what I'll do until I've done it?

All I do know is that, sitting here writing this, I'm a bit scared. I've made writing into a big competition. Write as much as I can, for as long as I can, each day, and for as many days in a row as I can handle it. I've created a situation in which now I'm the loser. I'm competing against the past, against days I wrote 10,000 words or edited 10 single-spaced pages.

I'm creating my own stress, my own pressure, my own downfall.

So why don't I knock it off?

Let me throw another non-writing topic at you today.

Did you know that being relaxed is a better indicator of longevity and health than what we eat or how much we exercise? They've done studies!

Social drinkers live longer than binge drinkers and alcoholics, but even more interesting, they live longer than non-drinkers. It's not the alcohol which increases life expectancy, it's the lifestyle social drinkers lead. They're less stressed because they have a way to unload after a busy week.

If you want to die, just tense your body day after day. You'll destroy your organs and your muscles. Stress and tension in the form of anxiety is devastating to many millions of people. It trumps bad diet as a form of suicide.

I enjoy eating healthy foods because I know I'm doing the right thing when I eat well, but also because of the way food affects my brain chemistry. Too many processed carbs and I get depressed. Too much meat and I get nervous. It's the way I am—not everyone is the same as me.

I'm aware of the movement towards healthy diet. I'm aware of the disease statistics in our culture. I'm aware of the foods that cause cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.

But I'm not sure the facts matter, not entirely. I think what is even more important than eating healthy, is being happy. And food, good or bad, plays a role in happiness.

One of the coolest things growing up was eating McDonald's when we traveled, and eating pizza at lunch at school on Fridays. Food has major satisfaction value. Food has always been a trigger for happiness for me, and I'm not the only one.

As an adult I enjoy cooked lentils with rice and beans more than I enjoy a Big Mac, but even though the type of food has changed, the fact that I get enjoyment from eating hasn't. After a short fast, I still to this very day get a rush of emotions when I think of food. These emotions made being at school just before lunchtime one of the best times of the day.

The health nut in me wants to encourage everyone to eat healthier. The Taoist in me encourages me to step back and look at the bigger picture. Changing what we eat isn't going to fix society. Having compassion would accomplish more than getting people to eat their vegetables. And we can eat all our vegetables and still be stressed out.

Food, for many, is the one thing they can indulge in that takes the edge off of life. I'd rather them have food than nothing at all.

And it's not like people don't know what is healthy. Americans simply eat what tastes better. And because unhealthy foods taste better, even if it's for a moment, it also makes them feel better.

There's a fine line to walk with health. It's the line between eating to live forever and eating to enjoy yourself right now. We can't live forever. We can't always be happy. But that line, it's pretty fat. There's a lot of middle ground. Consider it the waistline of common sense. Have a hamburger, but balance that with a salad.

Despite studies, despite personal experience, there is no “right” or “wrong” way to eat—unless you try to digest your food through your skin. So dare to have variety. Why eat healthy if you'll still give yourself a heart attack in the process?

Relax about it.