Lao Tzu was an ancient Chinese philosopher who is known as the founder of Taoism. He
wrote a small book called the Tao Te Ching — one of the wisest and most timeless books ever
written. It’s a collection of short verses that speak about the Tao, or “The Way.”
What is this “Way”? It’s the natural flow of life — the same force that changes the seasons,
opens a flower in spring, or carries a river gently downhill. Taoism is about
learning how to live in tune with that way, that flow — the flow of the universe.
Taoism reminds us of a very simple rule - peace doesn’t come from trying to
control everything. It comes from letting go, softening, and trusting life a little more.
But in today’s world, that can feel hard. Life moves fast. Our days are full of noise, pressure,
and endless to-do lists. We get caught up in trying to keep up — and in the process,
we lose touch with ourselves. That’s why we need Taoist habits.
These aren’t strict rules or rigid routines. They’re small, gentle practices that help you
come back to yourself. They slow you down. They help you breathe. They remind you to
be present — to listen, not just to the outside world, but to the quiet inside.
In this video, we’ll explore 7 simple Taoist habits that won’t ask you to do more — they’ll
help you slow down, let go of the noise, and come back to what really matters… back to yourself.
1. Begin the Day in Stillness Lao Tzu says “To the mind that
is still, the whole universe surrenders.” In Taoist thought, how you begin your day
is how you begin your life — again. Each morning is a quiet invitation to return to yourself before
the noise begins. And the most powerful way to begin is by doing nothing. Just sit. Breathe.
Be still. No phone. No list. No need to fix or plan anything. Give yourself five or ten
minutes of silence — not as a task, but as a way of remembering what it feels like to simply exist.
Most of us wake up and immediately reach for our phones, check messages, start planning the day,
feeling stressed before we even leave the bed. That quick jump into action makes it hard to
stay present. It sends a message to the mind that this moment isn’t enough — that we need to hurry
somewhere else. But the Tao reminds us: the only place we truly need to be is here. When we sit in
silence, we’re not avoiding life — we’re allowing ourselves to meet it fully, without distractions.
A few minutes of morning stillness helps you enter the day gently. You feel your breath, watch your
thoughts come and go, notice your body waking up. Maybe you hear the birds outside, distant traffic,
or just the quiet hum of the world beginning again. There’s no goal here — nothing to achieve.
You just sit, and in doing that, you remember that life isn’t something to
chase. It’s something to flow with. When you start your day in silence,
you give yourself a bit of space — before the world comes in. You’re not rushing.
You’re not reacting. You’re just there, quietly waking up and as the day goes on,
you carry that stillness with you. You don’t get thrown off as easily. You can pause,
take a breath, and respond more calmly. Even when things don’t go your way, you’re not as shaken.
It’s like moving through the day the way water flows — gently, without forcing anything. You
trust that life will take you where you need to go. And there’s no need to rush.
2. Act without struggle According to Lao Tzu “The Tao never does anything,
yet through it, all things are done.” In Taoism, there's a gentle principle
called Wu Wei. It means “effortless action” — not forcing, not fighting,
but moving with the natural flow of things. It’s how water flows around a stone — no struggle,
no resistance, yet it still moves forward. In daily life, this means noticing when
you're pushing too hard. When you're rushing to get things done, or trying to control every
little outcome. Taoists remind us: you don’t need to force your way through the world.
Instead, pause. Breathe. Let things settle before you
act. If your mind is spinning, take a short walk. If you're unsure, wait a little longer. Let your
response come from stillness, not stress. You can practice Wu Wei in simple ways:
When cooking, let it be slow and mindful. When speaking, leave space for silence.
When walking, feel each step. When making a choice, ask: What feels
natural? What feels like the next gentle step? This habit shows you that not everything needs
to be fixed right now. Sometimes, things sort themselves out when you stop trying
so hard. And sometimes, answers come only when you’re quiet enough to hear them.
When you start living with Wu Wei, something changes inside you. You don’t feel the need
to control everything anymore. You begin to notice—life already knows how to move,
just like your breath or how the seasons change. It all happens
on its own. You don’t have to push so hard. You stop feeling like it’s all on you. That
heavy weight on your shoulders starts to lighten. You feel more balanced. Maybe not peaceful all the
time, but definitely less rushed, less anxious. You don’t jump to react to every little thing.
Instead, you wait. You let things settle. You move when it feels right,
not just when your mind says now. And slowly, life stops feeling like a constant struggle.
It begins to feel softer. More natural. Like you’re walking with life,
not against it. One step at a time, it gets easier. Less force. More quiet flow.
3. Turn Ordinary Acts into Rituals
In the words of Lao Tzu “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”
We live in a world that tells us to move fast. Eat fast. Work fast. Reply fast. Even rest gets
scheduled. The message is clear: get through the small stuff so you can reach the “real” life — the
big moments, the achievements, the payoff. But here’s the quiet truth: most of life
is the small stuff. If we rush through it, we rush through most of our life.
Think about your mornings. How often do you make tea or coffee while scrolling your phone,
half-aware of what you're doing? How many meals are eaten in front of a screen? How
many times have you washed dishes just to “clear them,” without once feeling the warm
water on your hands? We treat daily tasks like obstacles — things to get done and move past.
But when everything becomes something to “get over with,” we never actually arrive anywhere.
Taoism turns this around. It says: don’t rush past your life. Meet it where it is.
The sacred isn’t hiding in a future achievement — it’s right here. In steam rising from a cup.
In the sound of chopping vegetables. In the simple act of folding a shirt. When
Taoist teachers talk about living in harmony with the Way, they’re talking about how you
place a bowl on a table. How you breathe while sweeping the floor. Presence is the practice.
To live in the spirit of Taoism is to stop rushing. Life isn’t a race to be won — it’s
a rhythm to be felt and it can be felt if you turn your ordinary tasks into small rituals.
So next time you make tea, treat it like a small meditation. Heat the water and wait
without distraction. Watch the steam rise. Pour it slowly. Hold the cup with both hands.
Sip — not while checking your phone, not while multitasking — just sit and drink.
When cooking, be with the food. Before turning on music or a podcast,
pause. Smell the garlic. Listen to the rhythm of the knife. Stir slowly. Let the
process itself calm you — not just the result. Even cleaning can feel grounding when done with
attention. While washing dishes, notice the temperature of the water, the weight of each
plate, the motion of your hands. When you sweep the floor, match your breath to the
movement. Let it become a rhythm, not a rush. Transitions can become pauses too. Before moving
from one task to the next, take a breath. Let one thing end fully before beginning another.
It only takes a moment, but that moment can shift the pace of your day.
If you're not sure this really makes a difference, try this small comparison:
Rushed version: You boil water while checking messages. You drink fast. You barely taste it.
You move on. Ten minutes gone. Nothing felt. Ritual version: You wait. You listen. You hold.
You sip. For two minutes, you’re fully there. Your breath slows. Your mind softens. You move into the
next thing less tense. Now ask yourself:
Which kind of day would I rather live — not once, but 300 times?
When this habit settles into you,you stop waiting for weekends or vacations to feel alive.
You stop postponing peace. You start finding it — in the sink, the stove,
the kettle, the broom… Everywhere around you. Taoism reminds us: life isn’t somewhere else.
It’s here, in the ordinary. Always has been.
We just have to stop rushing long enough to feel it.
4. Follow Your Breath During the Day Lao Tzu once wrote “Returning is the motion
of the Tao. Yielding is the way of the Tao.” Sometimes, in the middle of the day,
you’ll notice you’re not really here. Your mind is scattered. Your body feels tense.
You’re lost in thought or pulled in different directions. That’s the moment to come back to
something that’s always with you: your breath. You don’t have to force it or fix it. Just
notice it. Inhale… exhale. That quiet rise and fall. Feel the air move in and out. That’s all.
The Taoists saw the breath as more than just oxygen. They called it the rhythm of the
Tao inside you. A subtle tide — always flowing, always present. So when you return to your breath,
you’re not just calming yourself… you’re coming home. Back into the flow. Back into presence.
You can do this anytime — standing in line, stuck in traffic, walking to your next meeting.
Even in the middle of a conversation, you can quietly tune in to your breath. As you breathe
you’ll feel your shoulders softening, your jaw unclenching, and your thoughts slowing down.
Taoism teaches: you don’t need to escape the world to feel peace. You
just need to return to what’s already here. And your breath is always here.
5. Spend Time in Nature To quote Lao Tzu “Be still
like a mountain and flow like a great river”. One of the simplest ways to reconnect with the
Tao is to step outside. Taoism teaches that nature is not separate from us;
it is us. The trees, the rivers, the wind, the sky — they move in harmony without force. They
don’t rush or overthink. They just are. And when you spend time in nature, even for a few minutes,
you begin to remember that same rhythm. You don’t need a forest or a mountain.
It can be as simple as standing barefoot on grass, sitting quietly under a tree,
or watching clouds drift across the sky. You’re not trying to do anything. You’re just letting
the natural world hold you — letting its calm, unhurried presence soften your mind.
Most of us spend our days surrounded by screens, noise, traffic, and pressure.
It’s easy to lose touch with the part of us that feels whole without needing
to prove or perform. But nature doesn’t ask anything of you. It doesn't judge.
It simply invites you to slow down, to listen, to breathe — to return.
When you sit with a tree, you’re reminded that growth takes time and doesn’t need to be loud.
When you watch the clouds, you see how thoughts and emotions can come and go,
without needing to hold on to them. When you walk by a stream or feel the wind,
you begin to understand what it means to flow — to move through life with less struggle or effort.
The Tao is always showing itself through nature. Through the changing seasons, through sunlight
and rain, through stillness and movement. It teaches balance without ever speaking a word.
Spending time in nature is not a luxury — it’s a return. A quiet way of remembering
who you are beneath the noise. Even a few minutes a day is enough. Let the sky remind
you to open up. Let the ground remind you to stay rooted. Let the trees teach you patience.
You don’t have to figure everything out. You just have to be present. Nature takes care of the rest.
6. Let Go of the Need to Control Lao Tzu considers that “Life is a
series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them — that
only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality.” There’s a quiet tension many of us carry — the
need to control everything. We want things to go as planned. We want people to act how we expect.
We want life to follow the picture we’ve made in our heads. But life doesn’t always
listen. And when things go differently, we feel anxious, upset, even helpless.
But what if real strength isn’t about control? What if it’s about letting go?
Taoism teaches us to put our trust in life. Think of a river. It doesn’t move in straight
lines. It curves, it flows fast, it slows down. Sometimes it even overflows. If you
try to force the river to go your way, you’ll wear yourself out. But if you move with it,
you find a different kind of power — the strength to bend without breaking.
Letting go starts in small moments. A plan changes. Someone lets you down. Something doesn’t
go how you thought it would. Pause. Take a deep breath. Notice how your body wants to tense up,
to fix things, to hold tight. And instead, say softly to yourself: “Let it flow.”
It’s not always easy. Many of us were taught that being in control means being safe. But this need
to control often comes from fear — fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of getting hurt.
So we try to plan everything, avoid all mistakes, and protect ourselves from anything uncertain.
But the truth is — most things are not in our control. The weather. Other people.
The past. Even many of our own thoughts and feelings. Life is too big to micromanage.
But what is in our hands is how we respond… We can tense up and fight every change,
or we can pause, breathe, and move with it. When we start letting go, something shifts.
We stop being thrown off by every delay or mistake. Life still brings ups and downs,
but we stop adding our own stress to it and we will start to trust that life doesn’t have to go
exactly as we imagined for us to be okay. Like bamboo in the wind — we bend,
but we don’t break. We stay rooted, even as we move with whatever the moment brings.
7. End the Day in Release In our final quote from Lao
Tzu for this video, he says “To hold, you must first open your hand. Let go”
Before sleep, just sit quietly and ask yourself gently:
What did I resist today? Where did I flow?
What can I let go of now? No need to overthink. Let
the answers rise naturally. Maybe you held onto stress in a conversation.
Maybe you went with the flow when things didn’t go your way. Maybe there’s a grudge, an expectation,
or a thought that’s still clinging. As you breathe out, imagine releasing it.
Not pushing it away, just loosening your grip. Like leaves floating downstream — let it go.
In Taoism, life is not a straight line. It’s a cycle — effort and rest,
doing and being, light and dark. Just as the day fades into night,
we too must let go of the day to make space for what comes next.
Most of us carry our days into our sleep. Our minds keep spinning, replaying moments,
clinging to what we should’ve said or done. But reflection is not rumination — it’s awareness.
And release is not forgetfulness — it’s trust. This small ritual helps us return to balance.
It tells the body: "You’ve done enough." It tells the heart: "You are safe to rest." And it tells
the mind: "You don’t have to hold everything." The Tao flows best through emptiness — and when
we clear the clutter of the day, we make room for something wiser, calmer, and more alive to
return tomorrow. Let the day go. Trust that life continues to flow — even as you sleep.
If you enjoyed this video, please make sure to check out our full philosophies
for life playlist and for more videos to help you find success and happiness using
beautiful philosophical wisdom, don’t forget to subscribe. Thanks so much for watching.