Stop Trying So Hard

Two thousand years ago, a chapter in a Chinese philosophical text put personal effort and fate side by side — and found that effort was powerless.

Not in a motivational-poster way. In a devastating, surgical way.

The Liezi, a Daoist text attributed to the philosopher Lie Yukou (c. 400 BCE), contains a chapter called “Endeavor and Destiny” — Li Ming in Chinese. The Encyclopedia of Taoism summarizes it in one line: “Personal effort is powerless in the face of fate.”

That line is not a platitude. It is the conclusion of a sustained argument about what you can and cannot control.

The Chapter That Asks You to Stop Choosing

Chapter 6 of the Liezi sets up a confrontation. On one side: endeavor — your effort, your planning, your will. On the other: destiny — the forces you did not choose and cannot redirect.

The text does not pretend these are equal. It finds effort helpless before fate. Not occasionally. Structurally. The way a candle is helpless before a hurricane.

Its recommendation, as the Encyclopedia of Taoism puts it: “complete inertia in the expectation of whatever happens naturally.”

Read that again. Not reluctant inertia. Not inertia as a last resort. Complete inertia — as the rational response to reality.

What “Complete Inertia” Actually Means

The word “inertia” in English carries baggage. It suggests laziness, passivity, depression. But the Liezi is not telling you to lie on the couch and let the ceiling fall on you.

The text goes further: “The text repudiates conscious choice in favor of following one’s intuition and inherent capacities without thinking about alternatives.”

The key phrase is “without thinking about alternatives.” This is not about doing nothing. It is about stopping the endless loop of weighing, comparing, second-guessing, and planning.

The Daoist tradition has a word for this: wu wei — often translated as “non-action” but more accurately rendered as “effortless action.” It describes a state where you act in alignment with what the situation requires, without the exhausting overlay of deliberation.

A river does not “choose” to flow downhill. It flows. A tree does not “decide” to grow toward the light. It grows. The Liezi is asking: why can’t you be more like that?

The Modern Trap: Decision Fatigue

The Liezi was written for people who had too many options. So was your smartphone.

The average adult today makes roughly 35,000 decisions per day, according to research cited by Columbia Business School. What to eat. What to wear. Which email to answer first. Whether to take the job, leave the relationship, move cities, start the project, wait for better timing.

Each decision draws from a finite pool of mental energy. Psychologists call this “decision fatigue.” By the end of the day, your capacity to make good choices is degraded — not because you are weak, but because the resource is depleted.

The Liezi would recognize this pattern instantly. It would also say: most of those 35,000 decisions are not yours to make.

Some things are in your hands: your actions, your attitude, your effort. The rest — other people’s reactions, timing, luck, the weather, the economy, whether your boss is in a good mood — are not. And the Liezi’s argument is that the suffering comes not from the outcomes but from pretending the uncontrollable is controllable.

The Liberation in Letting Go

Here is what happens when you genuinely accept that some things are beyond your control:

The noise stops. Not all of it — but the worst of it. The 3 AM spiraling. The mental rehearsal of conversations that will never happen. The spreadsheet of pros and cons that keeps growing but never resolves.

You start to notice that many of your “decisions” were never decisions at all. They were anxieties wearing decision costumes. You were not choosing — you were worrying in the shape of choosing.

The Stoic philosopher Epictetus, writing in Rome roughly five centuries after the Liezi, arrived at a strikingly similar conclusion: “Some things are in our control and others not.” His Enchiridion opens with that sentence. The Liezi opens its sixth chapter with the same insight, reached through a different philosophical tradition, in a different civilization, centuries earlier.

This is not coincidence. It is convergence. Humans in every era have faced the same trap: trying to control what they cannot, and suffering for it. The wisdom traditions that survive are the ones that name the trap clearly — and offer a way out that does not require you to become someone else.

Tonight’s Practice: Release What Isn’t Yours

The Liezi recommends “following one’s intuition and inherent capacities without thinking about alternatives.” Here is how to do that tonight, in three minutes:

Lie down. Find the decision you have been agonizing over — the one that keeps circling back.

Name the part that is yours: your actions, your preparation, your attitude. Write it down if it helps.

Name the part that is not yours: other people’s reactions, timing, luck, outcomes.

To the part that is not yours, say quietly: “I release you.” This is not giving up. It is acknowledging that it was never yours to carry.

Then notice what remains. Not emptiness. Clarity. The part that is actually yours — now unburdened by the weight of what was not.

You do not need to believe this works perfectly. You just need to try it once, honestly.

The Text That Outlived Its Author

We do not know for certain who wrote the Liezi, or when. Scholars place the current version somewhere between the 3rd century BCE and the 4th century CE — a span of seven hundred years. The text itself is a composite, layered with additions from different hands across different eras.

What is certain is that Chapter 6 — “Endeavor and Destiny” — has survived every one of those centuries. Empires rose and fell. The Silk Road opened and closed. Printing was invented, lost, and reinvented. Through all of it, someone thought this chapter was worth copying, preserving, and passing on.

The decision you are holding tonight — the one that feels so urgent, so uniquely yours — someone else held a version of it two thousand years ago. And the answer they left behind is the same one you need to hear now: some things are not yours to decide. And that is not failure. That is freedom.

Sources

The Liezi, Chapter 6 “Endeavor and Destiny” (Li Ming). Encyclopedia of Taoism, ed. Fabrizio Pregadio (Routledge, 2008), entry “Liezi.” Cf. Epictetus, Enchiridion, Ch. 1.