This video is sponsored by masterworks.
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We will talk about Masterworks at the end of the video and for now let's get on with
how to simplify your life from the philosophy of Lao Tzu.
Lao Tzu, literally translated as old master, is a Chinese legendary and historical figure
who is considered to be the founder of Taoism.
Taoism is a philosophy which preaches that the secret to a simple life is not force,
fret or struggle to control and manipulate reality, but to relax, smile, and go with
the flow, allowing things to unfold naturally.
At the core of Taoism is the concept of the Tao.
The word “Tao” is defined as a path or way that if followed, leads to a life of simplicity
and harmony.
Taoists believe that the tao is the driving engine of creation - both the source and essence
of all things.
It encourages us to be in touch with our inner selves, for it is when you know who you really
are that you become one with nature, doing things in a natural way with no unnecessary
complications - thus achieving the truest simplicity in life.
Lao Tzu is also credited as the writer of Taoism’s most sacred text, the Tao Te Ching.
It is packed with his remarkable wisdom and messages of peace, resilience, and living
cohesively that reminds us what really matters in life.
He is a central figure in Chinese culture, but his words can apply to people all over
the world which is why in this video we bring you 4 ways to simplify your life from the
wisdom of Lao Tzu.
Cultivate the three treasures of Taoism
Lao Tzu says “Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.”
Lao Tzu outlines what he calls the three treasures - three values, or qualities of mind, that
are key to living a simple life of virtue, integrity and living in natural harmony with
the Tao.
These three treasures are compassion, moderation and humility.
As simple as it sounds, cultivating all the three jewels does not come easy.
The first of the Three Treasures is Compassion, which also means love or kindness, and is
one of the most prominent beliefs in Taoism.
It is selfless love for all others which includes giving others happiness as well as removing
their suffering.
Most people have love and compassion that is very conditional in nature and the transaction
goes something like this - “If you behave the way I like, I will treat you well; if
you don't, then I won't treat you well”.
When you put such conditions in place, you feed off judgment, greed, competition and
negative comparison.
When this happens, compassion goes out the window and we become disconnected and alienated
from our fellow man, which almost inevitably leads to isolation, conflict, and potential
disaster.
The compassion called for by Taoists is impartial, expects nothing in return, and is not possessive.
People who only have conditional love are selfish, and they tend to have frequent conflicts
with others.
One can practice compassion in many ways, starting from the simplest day-to-day activities.
It could be as simple as remembering to smile and say hi to your colleagues after entering
your workplace, or holding the door open for the person behind us, etc.
Every morning thinking about how we can help the people around us, how you can practice
compassion by your speech, actions and thoughts, without any expectations.
If we are more compassionate, we find more happiness and less conflict in life.
The second jewel of Taoism is moderation.
Taoism believes that everything in life is connected, and thus allowing ourselves to
focus on our fear and greed causes imbalance and will adversely affect our deepest selves
and everyone around us.
When we want something expensive, we tend to get stressed and work harder than we normally
do to attain it.
After we attain that thing, we then need to work even harder to maintain it or the lifestyle
it allows, and then we become stressed about losing that, too!
On the other hand, adopting a moderate lifestyle breeds simplicity.
Simplicity is all about knowing exactly what you want, and critically, what you don’t
want.
When we live in moderation, when we recognize our needs are few, we can relax and be present.
The best way to practice a moderate lifestyle is by being more mindful of how much we spend
and how many resources we use.
Once we have an estimate, we can then find ways to be more frugal.
It could then mean doing the simplest things like not wasting your food or not throwing
away unused clothes but instead donating or recycling them, by not leaving the tap running
while brushing your teeth or cleaning your car with a bucket of hot, soapy water instead
of driving to the car wash.
People who live in moderation tend to use little for themselves but are happy to spend
lots on others.
Humility is the third jewel of Taoism.
In Chinese, this jewel of humility is translated as "dare not be first”.
Not concerning oneself with being the first to do something is the Taoist way to avoid
premature death.
Competing will not only shorten your life but often requires too much risk and energy
which will only increase unrelenting stubbornness, which in turn can create conflict and even
ruin relationships.
On the other hand, when we yield, meaning when we let go of what we want and let others
have what they want enables us to choose a content and quiet life over a competitive
and difficult one.
So a humble person is a person who is happy to yield to others.
A yielding person will not only give more to others and take less for themselves, but
will also never show off or step on others.
Instead, they praise others' goodness to raise them up.
They are not interested in fighting for the top spot.
If there is someone else who is more worthy of the position, they would happily yield
to them.
They care about benefiting all things without conflict.
These three invaluable treasures - Compassion, Moderation and humility are gifts from Lao
Tzu and when we cultivate each of the jewels, we will not only bring simplicity, happiness,
love, and success into our life but we also bring peace and prosperity to the world.
2.
Go with the flow
According to Lao Tzu, “When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.”
One of the most important aspects of Taoism is the idea of 'going with the flow.'
This teaching is best explained with the concept of wu wei, which can be translated to ‘inexertion’,
‘inaction’, or ‘effortless action.’
A more accurate translation, though, might be ‘non-forcing’ - for wu wei urges you
not to fight against our life-conditions and instead allow things to happen as they naturally
would.
Imagine life as a river.
When you do nothing, the current of the river will effortlessly take you along, moving you
forward without you breaking a sweat.
Doing nothing does not result in being stuck in one place - instead, the river takes you
along to new places and situations.
This is an effortless way of living life, and the way by which you can enjoy the ride
the most.
If you give in to impatience and try to swim with the current to get there faster, you
will only waste more energy reaching what you would have reached anyway.
Or, worse, if you fight against the path of life and swim against the current, it might
well take all your energy only to lead to limited and disappointing results.
The concept of wu wei, then, urges you to simply go with the flow of the river.
In our current day and age, we want a lot of things and more often than not we want
them to happen right now.
The most encouraged and thus most common mindset when it comes to life stresses on working
hard and taking action, no matter how difficult life is, to get where you need to be.
When following this advice it is no wonder that we wear ourselves out, risk burnouts
and exhaustion, and have a tendency to rush things to get them to the finish line.
When we rush through projects and force ourselves to work on them through setbacks and hardships,
they rarely turn out as good as we want them to.
Plus we are so often focused on getting through our tasks, we often deny ourselves the rest
in those times we need to keep going afterwards.
When we try to meet every deadline imposed on us regardless of our circumstances, it
eats away at both our wellbeing and the quality of our work.
Additionally, when we are encouraged to push through unfavorable circumstances, we are
at increased risk of making errors and compromising quality.
It is clear that pushing yourself to work irrespective of the circumstances is one of
the hardest and most exhausting ways to live and often brings limited results.
Taoism instead suggests that we give up this rush and surrender ourselves to the natural
flow of life, the Tao.
Now, this does not mean that we refuse to work or sit back lazily and never do anything.
Indeed, understanding wu wei as ‘laziness’ would be a gross misinterpretation.
Wu Wei does encourage you to take action, but to do so only when it will be effortless
rather than forceful.
Wu Wei encourages you to turn away unfavorable life circumstances, and encourages you to
embrace favorable ones, whenever they may come.
If the opportunity for a project, like a job offer in a new city, arises, and you feel
calm, prepared and even excited - Go for it!
Imagine yourself in this position.
If the prospect of a new job does not stress you out and the move to a new city is a welcome
change, then you would be acting without effort if you took it.
Opportunities such as the job offer, that makes you feel calm, prepared and even excited
are the kind of actions you want to embrace.
Those are the kinds of actions that will breathe life into you instead of sucking it out of
you.
By taking action at the point in your life where it will be the most impactful and efficient,
you truly ‘become’ an act instead of merely ‘doing’ it.
In other words, at the right time an action can take hold in the most meaningful and defining
way.
On the other hand, when an opportunity or obligation feels too stressful for you to
keep up with, take a step back.
For example, when a promotion at work comes up at a time where you feel unable to handle
the extra responsibilities, deny it.
Take a step back.
When you do not know what to do, just keep doing what you already are doing.
New opportunities will come when life presents you with a chance that you believe will be
good and fulfilling for you to take on.
When you are unsure of what you want when it comes to work, just keep working where
you are and your feelings will figure themselves out in time.
And when life presents an opportunity to you, like a promotion or job offer, that makes
you feel good and excited and feels right - take it!
When we learn how to embrace the concept of wu wei and learn how to go with the flow,
we reach achievements in the simplest way possible.
To simplify your life, don’t force action, let action come to you.
By flowing along the river you will get where you eventually need to be, just without the
struggle.
3.
Let go
In the words of Lao Tzu "If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will
try to hold on to.
If you are not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve.”
Taoism teaches us that nothing in life is constant, permanent or forever.
When the caterpillar learns to get rid of how it is used to living, it can transform
into a butterfly.
Just like the caterpillar, humans are in a constant state of change, and so is everything
around us.
To keep life simple, Taoism tells us to embrace change and impermanence by learning to let
go.
Change and impermanence generally scares us.
We spend most of our time trying to avoid having to face change and we tend to want
the things we enjoy to last as long as possible.
When life, then, inevitably does not work out the way we want it to, we feel powerless.
In order to ignore this feeling, we tend to focus only on what we think we can control.
This often results in clinging onto those things that we pretend to control, like a
job that's making you miserable or holding on to a fading relationship and so on.
We are incredibly attached to life and its temporary circumstances, to the point where
we do not even acknowledge the fact anything could be different in the future.
This attachment results in a lot more difficulty and pain in life, for when the inevitable
change or even, end of something does come, we are entirely unprepared to deal with it.
For example, Imagine you are in an unhealthy relationship.
You fully realize that you do not enjoy living and spending time together any longer - but
you have been together for so long, you barely know how to be alone.
The possibility of having to find a new place to live and figuring out how to manage by
yourself is daunting enough for you to try and deny your feelings instead.
You look for any sign that love is still there and refuse to let go of a relationship that
you know in truth is already long over.
Thus, when the time inevitably comes when your partner ends up breaking up with you
first, you will feel more unprepared than ever.
Because of the fact that we are afraid of change despite its inevitability, we tend
to deny it instead of embrace it.
And when the change comes, it leaves us feeling caught off guard, distressed and sometimes
even hopeless.
Not only that, those negative feelings often distract us from any new opportunities that
might arise.
But change needn't feel like a punishment.
Instead, letting go and embracing the change might be the answer to many of our problems
and leave us freer than we could ever imagine.
Every change or end comes with a new beginning.
Those who have not mastered the art of letting go, tend to be preoccupied with the doors
that have already closed, trying to pry them open again, to walk back through them… and
getting nowhere as a result.
This refusal to let things go and move on is like swimming against the current of a
river instead of accepting where it will take us.
To let go, on the other hand is going with the flow, it means to be able to accept the
closing of doors and look forward to new, open ones.
Like how after a relationship is over, you can look forward to having more spare time,
more individuality, a newfound focus on personal life goals, and eventually a possibility of
a new, better relationship.
Letting go means to embrace the freedom that changes and ends might bring you, and look
for new opportunities whenever you can.
Letting go is the gateway to living our most harmonious and simplest life possible.
To live our life in the easiest, happiest and most free way we can, we have to acknowledge
that change and death are the only constants in life.
We need to avoid forming unhealthy attachments to our desires and learn how to appreciate
what we have in our present moment without clinging onto the idea that it is going to
be there forever.
4.
Find your balance
In our final quote from Lao Tzu for this video, he says “Tao engenders One; One engenders
Two; Two engenders Three; Three engenders all things.
All things carry the yin while embracing the yang.
Neutralizing energy brings them into harmony.”
One of the most important concepts within Taoism is the concept of yin and yang.
Yin and yang stand for two opposing forces.
Yin represents a negative or passive force, also seen as the feminine force, and yang
represents a positive, active force, also seen as the masculine force.
The symbol of yin and yang represents yin as a dark, or black droplet, and yang as a
white droplet.
Together, they make the circle perfectly whole.
Their balance as seen in the symbol is perfectly harmonious, with just as much yin as there
is yang.
Neither one is superior to the other.
These forces can be found everywhere and in everything, as everything in nature tends
to be a bit of both in order to thrive.
Think of day and night, wet and dry, cold and warm, dead and alive, et cetera.
All things need their opposite in order to exist, and all things have aspects of both
yin and yang, with nothing being inherently one or the other.
Yin and yang changes with time; as one of the forces increases, the other decreases
- and vice versa.
As nature is a constant balance of opposites, so are you.
Sometimes, we use one side of our personality to excess, at the expense of the other.
This makes life unnecessarily hard and tiresome; the easiest lives consist of balance and harmony.
We are used to perceiving opposites as one being 'good' and the other being 'bad' - such
as preferring light over dark or active over passive.
As a result of this view, we tend to try to lean towards one side, completely dismissing
the other.
Someone who is very passive and never dares to act may get stuck in unfavorable situations,
while someone who is very active may rush into equally unfavorable situations.
Both need to lean into their opposite side more in order to reach a harmonious balance.
We have to realize that neither force of an opposition is inherently worse than the other,
and we need to learn to embrace both.
For example, someone who is too kind may get taken advantage of and so needs to learn how
to become more assertive, however someone who is too aggressive will put people off,
leading to the same result.
Just as light shines brightest after darkness, so can your best traits only excel if you
also are able to display the opposite when the right situation calls for it.
And thus, yin and yang represents finding a balance within yourself that grants you
the best of both worlds.
Finding balance goes for more than just character traits.
You cannot live a physically active lifestyle without taking enough rest.
Everything in your body is interdependent; when your mind is being uncared for it performs
badly, and in turn, so will your body, and vice versa.
Thus, a healthy mindset is as important for your physical health as a good diet, and the
same can be said in reverse for your mental health.
Finding balance means examining your physical health when you are currently focused on improving
your mental health and vice versa.
In order to live a simple and happy life, let your yin and yang truly compliment each
other.
Be in complete harmony with yourself and the world.
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And as always if you enjoyed this video, please make sure to check out our full philosophies for
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