The Law of Reverse Effect: Striving Versus Effortless Action

Striving and effort can hinder success; letting go and not caring often yields better results.

### The Law of Reverse Effect: Why Results Come When We Stop Caring
* 📝 The writer experienced a creative slump, but when she stopped trying so hard to find inspiration, an **idea unexpectedly came to mind**.
* 🧠 Author Aldous Huxley described the 'Law of Reverse Effect,' stating that "**the harder we try with the conscious will to do something, the less we shall succeed**."
* 💡 Striving and effort do not always lead to what we want; in many cases, they can **work against us**.
* 🧘 Professor David Clark's 'Mental Control Paradox' suggests that trying too hard to control our mental states often backfires, leading to **increased negativity**.
* 🎨 Julia Cameron emphasized the importance of **surrendering to the creative process**, stating that we often experience creativity blooming when we're **not actively seeking it**.
* 🏹 The ancient Taoists observed that **caring too much about the outcome** often sabotages our performance.
* 🌀 The Taoist concept of 'wu wei' or 'effortless action' suggests that **optimal performance often emerges when we don't strive for it**.
* 🚗 Philosopher Dr. Woei-Lien Chong emphasized the importance of **openness in wu wei**, stating that it is the **ultimate receptive and responsive way of action**.

Once, there was a writer who happened to specialize
in crafting thought-provoking essays on various subjects. Through hard work and seemingly endless creativity,
she managed to publish numerous pieces that captivated her readers. However, one day, she found herself in a creative
slump, unable to find any inspiration for her next writing endeavor. She contemplated
different topics, but none seemed to resonate. She scoured her bookshelves and searched the
internet, but to no avail. A sense of panic crept in as she feared she
had exhausted her ideas or fallen victim to writer’s block. Yet, after taking a deep breath, she made
the conscious choice to let it go for a while and divert her attention to other pursuits. Strangely enough, while strolling through
a serene forest without any intention of conjuring up a subject (or even thinking about her writing
aspirations), an idea unexpectedly came to mind. And thus, she came to realize that when she
ceased trying so hard, what she was looking

for arose effortlessly. The writer experienced a curious paradox. She wanted to be productive, but the more
she tried, the less she could. Only when she ceased caring and lifted the
enormous pressure of needing to be productive off of her shoulders was she able to write
again. So, striving and effort do not always get
what we want. Moreover, these things can work against us. What’s going on here? Author Aldous Huxley first described the ‘Law
of Reverse Effect,’ saying that, and I quote: “The harder we try with the conscious will
to do something, the less we shall succeed.” End quote. So, could it really be that when we stop consciously
trying to succeed, we increase our chances of success? Will results come once we stop caring? This video explores the law of reverse effect,
also known as the law of reversed effort. Long ago, in ancient China, a merchant met
a sage who, he heard, was one of the wisest

people alive. The merchant tried to impress the sage by
telling him how much money he had made in his latest trade deal. The sage nodded, but didn’t seem too impressed. Then, he invited the sage to visit him to
see his enormous house and all the riches he had accumulated over the years. But the sage still wasn’t impressed. Instead, he asked the merchant why he wants
to impress him so much by showing off his stuff. As the merchant didn’t understand the question,
the sage reminded him of the words of Lao Tzu, saying: Those who try to outshine others dim their
own light. Those who call themselves righteous can’t
know how wrong they are. Those who boast of their accomplishments diminish
the things they have done. End quote. We’ve been taught accomplishment requires
effort. But, with many things in life, ‘effort’
can also be counterproductive. As for the merchant, he wanted to obtain the
sage’s approval, but the more he tried,

the less he could impress him. The sage reminded us that the more we force
our accomplishments upon others, the less we shine. If we accomplished so much, why must we continually
remind others? People grow suspicious of individuals who
need to boast, brag, and take the spotlight as much as possible. What are they trying to prove? Are they compensating for something? It seems that they need to convince the world
of their value. Paradoxically, the more we feel the need to
convince the world how valuable we are, the less value we believe the world thinks we
have, which probably shows. If the merchant hadn’t been so eager to
impress, he could have let his accomplishments speak for themselves when the moment of their
revelation arose, which would have impressed the sage more, not just because of the achievements
themselves but also because he doesn’t need to brag about them says something about the
merchant’s character: that he’s humble.

and secure within himself, and also detached,
to a certain extent, from external objects like wealth and status. So, the Law of Reverse Effect struck again:
he sabotaged his desired results by caring too much about the sage’s opinion. Regarding our psychological well-being, the
Law of Reverse Effect also seems to be at work, as we experience that by trying to control
our mental states, we mostly just stand in our own way. In his blog, The Runaway Mind, Professor David
Clark shares how too much effort causes difficulties in overcoming emotional distress. He asks the reader if we ever “choked under
pressure,” for example, during a contest, exam, or job interview. He stated: “You may have spent a long time preparing
for this moment. You reminded yourself over and over that you
had to do your best. You could feel the intense pressure; all your
attention and energy was channeled into your performance. With great effort and determination, you stepped
forward, but then disaster struck.

You blew it! You messed up and experienced one of the most
shameful moments in your life.” End quote. According to Clark, this so-called ‘Mental
Control Paradox’ also applies to overcoming emotional distress. Trying too hard to stop negative thinking,
for example, often backfires, only increasing our negativity. When we fall prey to the Mental Control Paradox,
we experience that the more we try to control our thinking, the less successful we are in
doing so, which coincides with the Law of Reverse Effect. Clark points to scientific research showing
that humans aren’t good at thought suppression as opposed to thought creation. We’ve explored the experiment of the pink
elephant a couple of times on this channel, showing how difficult it is not to think consciously
about a pink elephant. So, when it comes to mental control, we could
say: “what you resist persists.” Only when we stop trying, when we stop caring
about the presence of the thought of a pink

elephant in our minds, it eventually disappears. But the Law of Reverse Effect also seems to
work the other way around, referring to the story at the beginning of this video: the
flow of creativity and mental control often don’t mix. Although people are good at generating thoughts,
forcing ourselves to evoke a creative solution, idea, or inspiration to progress our creative
endeavors further often doesn’t work. And the more we try, the less successful we
are. The versatile artist and teacher Julia Cameron
wrote in her book ‘The Artist’s Way:’ All too often we try to push, pull, outline
and control our ideas instead of letting them grow organically. The creative process is a process of surrender,
not control. Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise. End quote. We often experience our creativity blooming
when we’re not asking for it, for example, during a relaxing moment in the shower, during
a forest walk, and just before bed.

During those moments when we have ceased caring
about it, the idea we were looking for comes forward spontaneously. The ancient Taoists observed that when we’re
too occupied with the outcome, we’re likely to sabotage our performance. The story in the Taoist scripture Zhuangzi
about the nervous archer who shot perfectly during practice but couldn’t perform during
a tournament when competing for a prize shows how caring too much about the result works
against us. When we care too much about the outcome, whatever
we’re doing, we feel tense. Even though we’re usually perfectly able
to perform the task, a sense of emergency is involved. Our minds are occupied with the future and
may even dwell in the past, contemplating, for example, past mistakes. We’re not present. We might believe that the more we worry about
the task and its consequence, the more control we gain and the more chance we have to succeed. But the opposite is true; the more we worry,
the more we try to control, the more likely

our performances will suffer. Here’s where the Law of Reverse Effect comes
to fruition again: the more we care about achieving success, the more it eludes us. When we care too much about the outcome, we
will likely push ourselves in ways that eventually obstruct our progress. The ancient Taoists knew how people could
stand in their own way when striving to achieve something. Instead of striving, they proposed ‘wu wei’
or ‘effortless action.’ Athlete Christopher Bergland explains in an
article in Psychology Today how the state of optimal performance, also known as “the
zone,” paradoxically emerges when we don’t strive for it. I quote: It may seem counterintuitive, but a non-striving
mindset (also known as wu-wei) increases an athlete’s chances of getting “in the zone,”
performing effortlessly, and winning. The paradox of wu-wei is that striving less—not
trying harder to win at all costs—often

generates more success. End quote. When examining the mental state of effortless
action, or being “in the zone,” we discover that this state of being (or state of doing,
for that matter) is characterized by a lack of discursive thoughts about the past and
the future. Even though Wu-wei most likely leads to ‘something’,
we call results, these results are not the focus. The desired results may be in the back of
our minds, but our attention is immersed in the task at hand. The task even ceases to be a task, as if the
pianist becomes the musical piece, the writer becomes the novel, and the soccer player becomes
the game. When there’s no worry about one’s future
achievements or rumination about one’s failures in the past, then one’s performance won’t
be disturbed by these thoughts, which, so it seems, enhances it. Hence, we could say that once we stop caring,
results come, as in the mental and physical

obstacles we lay in place for ourselves as a consequence of “caring” about the outcome disappear; they don’t obstruct pure and responsive action in the present, meaning, action that effortlessly interplays with present circumstances. For example, we must be responsive to our environment to drive a car. Everything that happens in the environment is unprecedented and uniquely belongs to that specific moment. There are patterns and generalizations, of course, but when we look at the details, then what’s happening on a particular highway, the cars present, the people in those cars, what these people do and think, and how they react, is a unique, unprecedented symphony that we cannot cognitively predict. We can only rely on our driving skills and ability to respond well to everything that happens. But instead, our minds tend to try to control the future by creating detailed predictions and then constantly repeating these fantasies and our responses to them.

But when the moment we’ve prepared ourselves
for arrives, we find out that our detailed blueprints have become pretty useless. Moreover, all these thoughts and mental preparations
prevent us from responding to what’s actually happening. However, if we let go of this firewall of
thoughts, we create space to let the environment come in, so we can respond to what happens
instead of what we think would happen. Philosopher Dr. Woei-Lien Chong emphasizes
the importance of openness regarding wu wei, saying: No matter if it’s about politics, governance,
diplomacy, or any other activity: what Zhuangzi calls wu-wei is this ultimate receptive and
responsive way of action, from a crystal clear openness in yourself, one with the breathing
of the cosmos. End quote. Whether we look at the mental control paradox
or the Taoist idea of wu wei, these concepts show how our own thoughts can stand in our
way.

The more we care about something, the more we tend to worry and ruminate about it, and the more these thoughts obstruct the ability to act in ways that eventually lead to success, which corresponds with the Law of Reverse Effect. By letting go of worrying about the outcome, it’s more likely that we get the outcome we desire. Results don’t come by repeatedly thinking about them or desiring them fiercely; they come through actions. And the more we let ourselves be carried away by the desired results, the less we tend to act in ways that contribute to achieving them. Caring too much about the results makes the archer in Zhuangzi’s story tremble, a soccer player miss a penalty, and a writer unable to write. Thank you for watching.

Once You Stop Caring, Results Come | The Law of Reverse Effect

Einzelgänger

A writer struggling with a creative slump discovers that letting go of the pressure to be productive is what allows inspiration to flow.

This experience reflects the "Law of Reverse Effect," which suggests that the harder we consciously try to succeed, the less likely we are to do so.

An ancient Chinese sage's wisdom also illustrates the concept that trying too hard to impress others can be counterproductive.

The Law of Reverse Effect: The Pitfalls of Trying Too Hard

Trying too hard to impress others can actually make us less impressive, as the sage in the story is unimpressed by the merchant's need to boast.

The Law of Reverse Effect also applies to mental well-being, as trying too hard to control our thoughts and emotions often backfires, increasing negativity.

Scientific research shows that humans are not effective at thought suppression, and the more we try to control our thinking, the less successful we are.

Forcing creativity and mental control don't mix well, as the more we try to evoke creative ideas, the less successful we are.

The ancient Taoists observed that caring too much about the outcome can sabotage our performance, as seen in the story of the nervous archer.

The concept of "wu wei" or effortless action is proposed as a way to achieve optimal performance, suggesting that striving less can lead to better results.

The Mental State of Wu-Wei and Its Impact

Wu-wei is characterized by a lack of discursive thoughts about the past and the future, with a focus on the present task.

The state of effortless action is achieved when one's attention is fully immersed in the present, without worry about future achievements or past failures.

Wu-wei allows for pure and responsive action in the present, free from the mental obstacles of caring about the outcome.

Overplanning can hinder our ability to respond to real-life situations.

Woei-Lien Chong emphasizes the importance of being open and receptive to the environment in order to take action.

The more we obsess about the outcome, the less likely we are to take the actions that lead to success, aligning with the Law of Reverse Effect.