The Opposite of Trying

Welcome to The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease. I'm Brett Kistler, and I'm here again with Joe Hudson.

Hey Brett, how's it going?

It is going well. So today we wanted to talk about the opposite of trying. This is the thing that I, that I really love is one of the, one one of my favorite simple demonstrations that you did when I first met you. And it really just comes into it like any aspect of our lives, to be able to find where, where the trying is and what that feels like and what other options are available to us. So I'm really excited to get into this one into more detail.

Yeah, for those of you who haven't been through this with me, somehow or another it always happens in early interactions with me. Somebody Somebody talks to me about trying it. So it's a very simple thing. You can do the exercise at home right now. You just put your two hands together, put them together like they are palms in front of you, like you have a prayer sign that's happening. And then what I ask people to do is I say, "Try to pull your pinkies apart." And what people do is they actually pull their pinkies apart. And then I say, "No, no, no, no, I didn't say pull your pinkies apart." I say, "Try to pull your pinkies apart." And then the person really puts a lot of effort into pulling the pinkies apart, but doesn't actually pull them apart. So if you're at home, do that right now. See what that's like to really try to pull your pinkies apart, but not do it. And then without thinking for a moment, without using your head at all, take this feeling that you have and then feel the opposite of it.

Yeah, as I'm doing that right now, I'm just noticing this separation between efforting and action.

Yeah, yeah. There's also like a— for me, the main purpose is when you feel that feeling of the opposite of trying, the whole system relaxes. And you could call it maybe allowing or receiving or listening. There's like a Like you're in a far more in a flow state, but there's this deep kind of allowing or receiving that happens. And what's interesting about almost everybody I work with, especially when I first start working with them, they're constantly thinking that their solutions are in trying or in effort. What do I have to do is the question. And oftentimes the answer is it's actually the opposite of the doing. It's the undoing that's important. It's the opposite of the trying. It is the allowing or the receiving that's important. And it's one of those things that is this superpower when you get it. And we almost never consider it as a society. I notice we almost never consider it. And as a society, I notice that we really don't grok the full power of the opposite of trying. And so that's what I was hoping we could talk about today.

Yeah, of course. I can't let us get any farther without bringing Yoda into this. Do or do not. There is no try.

Right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

I think—

I think I love that saying. I mean, I remember that as a kid and how much it affected me. And, and there's something— yes, there's like this deep truth of, of you're either doing something you're not doing, you're not trying, which is a pointer also to the flow. Uh, but the, the thing about flow is that there is a deep receiving in it. There's like a— like, if you're in a flow state, there's no trying, but there's also like you're listening. It's more like being a channel, right? The experience is more of being a channel. It's more of, um, receiving and like maybe being a conduit. And that's, and that's the thing that isn't in that quote, which I think is an important thing because it allows you to get out of the trying. Like, a lot of the times, like, somebody is talking about, how do I do that? And I'll say something like, how do you drop a hot frying pan? But it still makes no sense to them because it's just like they're so in that world of like, oh, how do I, you know? And, and oftentimes, like, oh, it's just a receive or allowing that lets it happen.

Yeah. Okay. So, so bringing this beyond sort of the, the workshop party trick that it is, um, at like its initial, and sort of, sort of the, the initial iteration and where it just kind of feels good. Oh yeah, great. There's, I don't have to try to pull my hands apart. I can just pull them apart. But what about, you know, solving my financial crisis or having my partner not abuse me? Or what other things that we're working with in our lives that just don't feel like not trying is going to resolve? What makes this so fractally applicable and important in our lives?

Yeah, so it's, what's interesting to me about it is that there's a time for trying and then there's a time for receiving. And the major issue is Not that one is good or one is bad, or one is the way and one is not the way. The major issue is that most of the time we don't see the option of, uh, of, of not trying. And so there's a really cool Taoist story about this, and the Taoist tradition in general has a tremendous amount about trying and not trying and what they call the way. But I love this story. So a A prince comes into a butcher shop and he asks the butcher, "How often do you sharpen your knives?" And the butcher says, "I don't sharpen my knives." And the prince is like, "That's ridiculous. Even the best butchers that work at the palace have to sharpen their knives, you know, once a month." And he says, "Oh yeah, no, I don't have to. My knife finds the space between the bone and the meat." And if there's ever an issue, if there's ever a place where it doesn't move through with ease, I just sit there and wait and it eventually just comes undone. And that's the story of, of this butcher. And it's this— I think it's a, I think it's a Chuang Tzu story. And, and it's, and it speaks to it so beautifully. And, and what— and the The other way to say this in more practical terms is that— is this quote, uh, "Letting go doesn't happen by telling yourself to let go. It happens by clearly seeing the pain of holding on, and from here, the mind lets go when it's ready." And so there's no doing in that. And so particularly with psychological pain, there is the— it's the— the work is often in the letting go. It's not in the doing anything. It's not in the trying. It's not in the effort. It's in the receiving.

Yeah, sort of. If you, if you allow the pain of holding on, then the natural— your, your body and your emotions, your soul's natural responses to do something different. Drop it.

Yeah. Um, yeah. How do you, how do you drop a hot frying pan? You feel it. That's all you have to do is just feel it and you're going to let go. Right. That's the, yeah.

And then of course there's the, there's the fork in the electrical socket. Like there's cert, there's other, there's other metaphorical examples where you, it would be better to drop it, but you actually just hold on tighter because that's what kind of response you have that. So I, I feel like there's, I think it'd be valuable to, to point to some kind of wisdom in that. Like what is, what is the benefit? What, what had us adapt? In such a way that would have us hold on and grip and try.

Right, that's exactly it. So the way we hold on tighter is we say, how do we do it? How do we fix it? What's wrong with me? How do I improve it? What do I do? Like there's a lot of ego in that and there is a lot of doing in that and there's not a lot of receiving or allowing in that. And that is exactly the methodology in which we use to hold on tighter. And there are times when that makes a lot of sense. If I'm on a life raft, that's what I'm gonna do. You know, if I am in, like, there's ways in which I would use my will both in business and in relationships or coaching with somebody where I would use my will for that exact purpose. And there's no problem with that. I think there's, like I said, a time and a place for that. The question is, you can't really know what the— the thing is that you can't really know when the time and the place is unless you really understand the other tool, unless you really understand what it is to receive, to allow, to let go, to listen.

Okay, okay. So give me some practical examples of this.

Yeah, so none of these are perfect, but I want to be really specific in them. Like listening is a great example and how that can change your life by the way that you listen. The resilience that comes from allowing, the pleasure that comes from allowing peace, authenticity, joy, all of those things really don't respond to trying very well at all. I mean, occasionally there's certain ways in which it works, but generally all of these things prosper through the allowing process. So just like giving you an example on listening, So we do this exercise in one of the courses where you have somebody talk to somebody and then they listen in one way, they listen with like skepticism, and then they listen in another way, like that person is like the most wise person in the whole world. And what people often notice in that exercise is different things are shared. The way that we listen Basically, how well we receive, how well we allow the other person to be, will create different stories that we hear. We'll get different levels of honesty, intimacy, transparency. Our whole world will be different by the way we listen. However, I very rarely ever see anybody say, "Oh, how am I going to listen in this next meeting?" They always think, "What am I going to say? How am I going to present myself? What is the slide deck going to look like?" They never say, "How am I going to listen?" Though listening can have a much deeper effect than what you say in a meeting. And so that's a really great example of how much power you have just in the receiving as compared to the doing. And if you don't believe it, spend one day going around listening to everybody with skepticism and then take the next day and listen to everybody like they are, you know, the most wise sage speaking to you and see, see how your world changes in a day.

Yeah, I just had the mental image of like a child running up to, to the front door to show mommy the mud pie they made and they're covered in mud and All this, they're all excited and all of a sudden the mom is just standing there, arms on her hips, like, yeah, yeah. And then all of a sudden, yeah, just the, the immediate deflation.

Yeah, yeah.

The, the quality, the quality of the listener does directly backchannel and impact the way that we share. And that's a really interesting observation that, yeah, we, we go into, we go into a meeting preparing for what we can't possibly prepare for, which is how listening is the other person gonna be.

Right. Exactly.

Rather than how are we going to listen and what is the quality of our presence while we are sharing and exchanging ideas.

Yeah.

Okay, so that's for listening. You kind of went through a list there, like listening resilience was the next one.

Yeah, resilience.

How does that work there?

Yeah, resilience is a really interesting one because it works a little sideways there. If you look at For example, if you look at economies that are highly planned, that don't allow, that don't have allowing in them, if they are fragile, they might grow for a while, et cetera, but they become fragile, they become weak. Whereas if you have a non-planned economy where people are following their inspiration, You're doing a lot of allowing, and that allowing creates a lot of resilience. Decades and decades. It's not like 30 years of an economy. It's hundreds upon hundreds of years of an economy. So that's another example. And in business, another example would be open source, the resilience of an open source platform instead of a non-open source platform. Um, the same thing with Uber, like the, the more they just like, oh, we're allowing people to drive when they want to drive, how they want to drive, it becomes a far more resilient thing than a taxi service, which is far more controlled. So, allowing people inside of a company is— it very much creates that resiliency. Internally, that same resiliency is created by allowing the emotional experiences that we have, by not managing and constricting on those. They help us get through transformation much quicker. They help us heal much quicker. They allow us to make decisions much quicker, as we've talked about in other podcasts. So, it's that allowing that creates creates resiliency in us, in our companies. And, and, yeah, and you can see companies that are more decentralized oftentimes, um, are more— in general are more resilient and also win competitively. Not in all cases, but in many.

Yeah, yeah. And I could also see that helping with pivots, you know, responding to, to market changes, and then internally responding to changes in our own in our own selves, our own capacities, our own environment, allowing us to update our identity with who we are now rather than a lagged behind idea of who we've been and then insisting on maintaining that.

Yeah, if you really want to geek out on it, there's a book called Reinventing Organizations that really is talking about a structure of company that allows for a lot of allowing, a lot of listening, and it really, you know, has a very particular way in which it moves in the world. So if you really want to geek out on as far as like company culture, that's another way to check into it.

Yeah. How about pleasure?

Yeah. So pleasure, that one's like the easiest one to explain. It's like, no. So, you know, men and women obviously are different, but if you just take it sexually, there's definitely a group of people that if they really try to have an orgasm, they can't. That orgasm is something that the more you try, the further it goes away. Even for those people who, um, who are— who can have an orgasm through trying, that the orgasm is usually tight and shortened instead of where what people would say call valley orgasms or something like that, where they— it can be very long, extended, pleasurable experiences through the not act of trying. But the other way to just instead, if you don't, if you want to take it out of sex for a second, just like try to find pleasure without allowing, you know what I mean?

Like the try to enjoy the sunset.

Yeah, try to enjoy a breath, try to enjoy. And so the way I define pleasure here is the best way I've heard to define pleasure is observing the movement of your sensations in your body or the movement of energy in your body. That's, that's what pleasure is. It is a listening to the sensations of your body. And if you're trying to get there, it's— it just doesn't work. Whereas if you're allowing the pleasure of a breath in, that can be an incredible experience. And if you're trying to have pleasure in a breath in, it's a lot less pleasurable. So, and, and we have this, um, exercise that, you know, we've done in MasterClass where it's like, how do you enjoy? And people find out that enjoyment is the undoing. It's not the doing of things like pleasure is. And so that's, that's like, that's such an easy one because everybody can viscerally feel that, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I'm thinking about, you know, a deep tissue massage or bodywork as well. And one thing that you had mentioned there is it's allowing the sensations in our body. That statement has no valence. It's not allowing the positive sensations in the body. Right, and enduring the negative ones, or ignoring the negative ones, or suppressing them, or having there be negative ones in the first place. It's just allowing the sensation in your body, which is— yeah, bringing that back into a massage, it's bringing aware—

it's being aware of the movement of sensation in your body. Specifically, the awareness is important, feeling the movement of it is important as well. Just for pleasure. It doesn't have anything to do with the allowing part, but it's— those words are, are precise on that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, allowing is sort of the thing that happens when you're in the opposite of trying.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, what about on a more psychological or spiritual level, like peace, pleasure? This was sort of in the body. What about just our general orientation towards towards the world and towards reality?

Yeah, I mean, the best way I've ever heard anybody talk about peace is in a war with yourself, you always lose. And so it's really about dropping the war and that's an undoing, it's not a doing. And trying to force yourself to do something doesn't create peace. Trying to force yourself to eat the right foods and exercise in the right way meditate the right amount. None of that brings you peace. And people know that because they've been doing it for decades looking for peace and it doesn't come. Peace actually comes from the allowing, from the receiving of it. And so, you know, and what I notice is that some people try to get to peace in the opposite way by avoiding conflict, but avoiding conflict just creates a war inside yourself. And so, so that doesn't work either. It is an allowing, it's not an avoidance. And so that's like any moment that you've had in peace, it's been received. It hasn't been something that you have, that you have forced yourself into or tried to get into.

Yeah. So double-clicking on that statement about if you avoid the conflict to keep the peace, you are creating conflict in yourself.

Yeah.

So example here being if there's something going on with your partner and there's a need that's not being met, and rather than letting that conflict arise, rather than allowing, rather than letting it be there and be like, "Hey, there's a need that I have that's not being met," and just letting that enter the space between you—

Correct.

—then the conflict between your need and not having it met exists entirely within you. Not entirely, because it leaks out in all kinds of different ways. Passive aggression, yeah, yeah. But those are all then downstream effects of the war that's inside yourself. So rather than having it be in yourself, you can just allow that there is conflict. And if you are with it in the way that you just described about being with pleasure, being with the noticing the movement of energy in your body, noticing the movement of energy or emotion in a relationship, noticing the flow of power or disempowerment or needs and wants in a team. Yes. Then, then you don't need to be in a war with yourself. And there may be conflict, there may be disagreements, there may be intensity.

No, there will be. Maybe there will be. Yeah, that's right. Without, without that tension, life doesn't exist. You know, we sit in nature and we can feel the peace of nature. And there is tension in every cell around us, every animal, every tree around us. Tension is what creates life. And so there will be— peace isn't created through lack of tension, it's created through the allowing of it. Yeah, the Buddhists have a saying around this too, which is like, um, that life is painful, you can't avoid that. Right? I'm paraphrasing, but life is painful, you can't avoid that, but you don't have to suffer. And that's the— it's pointing to the same thing.

Yeah, yeah. So now that you bring nature into this, I'm imagining like, uh, a tree sprout growing through the crack in the concrete, and I don't imagine there being any trying occurring there, right? It's just happening.

That's right. Yeah, that, that's the thing is people think that trying happens like is required for evolution. But the truth is that evolution happens whether we're trying or not. Growth movement happens whether we're trying or not, and oftentimes happens quicker, just like it does in a child. There's a lot of not effort in a child and a lot of growth.

Yeah. So then what's the relationship between trying and tension? If tension exists in all of evolution and all of life, What is the difference between that natural tension and the trying that we're talking about here that we humans and maybe some other complex nervous systems have evolved as a strategy?

Yeah, so again, I'm not trying to say that trying is bad in some complete sense. Like, trying is appropriate at some moment. Just to make sure that it doesn't become a binary situation. But in general, the trying that is ineffective that happens is usually happens because we are trying to get out of an experience, right? So the trying is, is, is not hugging the cactus. It's trying to get away from the cactus, right? It is the avoidance of it that it typically creates the trying. We're trying to get towards something or away from something rather than allowing it. And that, that's, that's when the trying becomes counterproductive. If we're embracing the intensity, if we're, if we are loving and, and allowing for the intensity, trying may arise, but it's not in a way that creates suffering. It's not through like the, you know, the It's, it's not through the craving or the aversion is the way that the Buddhists would say it, right? Not, not that wanting is bad or anything like that, it's just that our suffering comes from, from that experience.

Yeah, I'm just picturing having hugged the cactus and having a bunch of cactus needles in me and trying to get them out. And you know, if you've ever had like a tiny little cactus needle stuck in your skin and it breaks off, and like, you know, the, the trap, whatever it's called, to go in there with tweezers and very carefully try to get the thing out could be considered trying. You could also do it without— with or without tension, or with or without, like, suffering. Yes. And so it sounds, it sounds to me that what you're describing as trying here often involves that there's, there's resistance to the experience that makes it trying. That's right, that's right.

Yeah, it's a great way to say it.

Got it. Okay, so there were a couple other examples that you had mentioned.

Yeah, I think there was two more. Authenticity was one. Okay, yeah, and joy. I think joy was the other, yeah. Yeah, so what I mean by authenticity here is not just saying the first thing that comes to your mind. I think a lot of folks think that that's what authenticity is about. But that can be conditioning, that can be trauma, that can be a lot of responses that aren't particularly authentic. When I think about authenticity, it means that I'm not avoiding being myself and I'm not defending being myself. If I'm avoiding being myself, then I'm clearly not okay with myself and that's not authentic. And if I'm defending myself, I have to agree that there's something wrong with me. And so, and so I don't mean defending as in protecting. Sometimes obviously you need to protect yourself. I mean that feeling of defensiveness, that wall up, that that non-openheartedness. And so to me, that it— like, the only way to be authentic is to allow yourself, is, is to listen to yourself, to, um, to receive who you are and let that express. It's again like being a channel. It's not, it's not a, it's not a doing. Like, I had to really try hard to be authentic is like, it just rattles the brain when you think about it that way. So it is a very much a receiving or a listening. Yeah, the trying comes in the defense and the avoidance.

Yeah, yeah. And I'm also imagining that now as it, as it becomes a strategy and it gets into our, like, from our body up into our heads. Then there becomes a lot of trying. It's like, if I'm operating from a core belief that I can't be seen as wrong or bad, and it would be bad for me to be seen that way, then I need to figure out how to defend myself and manage other people's story. And all the, all the other, all the other downstream effects of that. Yeah. And tracking other people's opinions and needs rather than my own feelings, and then all that disconnection occurs downstream. Yeah, that's right.

Our, our, our, our main reason for not being authentic is because we want a certain reaction from other folks, which means we are not allowing them to be themselves either. And, and my noticing is that the, the more I move from my authenticity, that's all I really want from others. I don't want them to agree with me. I don't want them to tell me how great I am. I don't want them to give me attention. The biggest joy I have in interacting with others is their authenticity and being authentic together. That's what actually feels deeply intimate.

Beautiful. Well, how about joy then?

Joy, I've said this a lot before, and which is the Joy is the matriarch of a family of emotions and she won't come into a house where her children aren't welcome, where her children aren't listened to, where her children aren't allowed, where her children aren't received. It's the same idea. It's that deep welcoming of our emotional experience is what allows for joy. Joy isn't like, you can see it, you see it all the time with like, especially in the '20s where you're just like, I'm just gonna smile because that'll make me happy. It's like joy doesn't come through force. Joy doesn't come through effort. Joy doesn't come because I'm going to be positive all the time. I'm not going to have any bad emotions. Like, those people— I've worked with plenty of them— that when they hit 40, they're like, my whole fucking life is miserable and all I've done is be positive. Joy comes because we allow all the emotional experiences to be, and then, and then they clear out, they move. And then when that, when that dock is empty, joy moves in, joy comes. It's the one that likes to settle in place. All the other ones want to move. Like the undercurrent of our emotional experience is joy, unless something's wrong, and then that can move through.

Yeah, this has been a really big one for me, even lately, as I've been starting another company and there's slide decks and there's presentations and there's conversations with people, and we're continuing to do the podcast and preparing for that. And I've been noticing like over the past couple weeks that there have been times where my joy has been like decreased because I'm like, I'm doing things that I normally would be enjoying, but I'm like just not really there. And it's 'cause some part of me is like off in the trying of, well, this has to get done this way, that has to get done that way. There's a bunch of moving pieces and then it gets off a little bit. I'm like, I'm juggling so much. Right. Yeah, just, just noticing that it's like, if I, if I notice the absence of joy, then that's a place where I can look, where am I trying right now? Where am I? Where am I in resistance and not just allowing what, what's happening? And when, when that moves, then it's like, oh great, this, this thing doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to be like an authentic expression of what I'm doing right now in the, you know, the time that's available. And yeah. Like it's an iteration. And we get to come back to all those principles of, you know, being in connection and being in iteration and being— yeah, one of, one of my principles from, from the Recent Decisions course that I came out with was, I'm already free. And so that's another way, just, I, I notice when I feel like I'm not free because I'm dependent upon how some situation goes, I get to just remember that, and then the trying releases. And then the joy can come back. Yeah.

And so the interesting thing that you're saying here that I think is really important, because some— I remember the first time I heard some idea like this and I was like, wait, but, you know, I got to try some things. Like, I got to, I got to like get gas in the car. I got to like, if I'm going to make my business work, I have to. And, and, and so it's really important to— when we say trying, we don't mean doing. Right? And that's back to the Yoda thing. So I think if anybody's lost there, that's a really important thing. And I, and I also really dig what you're saying about freedom. I'm already free. It, it, it, it's like there's something that happens in the receiving, which is like the recognition that— and there's a really cool little point that you're, you're, you're making right here, which is that our rec— our capacity to recognize, to have the epiphany, happens far more in the receptive place than it does in the trying place. There's like this— there's— and so when you say, I'm already free, there's like the recognition allows for this movement to happen. That if— whereas if your principle was, um, I can be free it doesn't do the same thing.

Yeah, because I can be free if I try hard enough, it becomes what it, what it would be, right? Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, instead of I am. It's like, yeah, it's a great principle. That's cool, dig that. Yeah, so that, that's, that's the joy part.

Yeah, again, another, another way that I'm thinking of like kind of intellectually slicing up this, this trying concept is that when I notice I'm trying, it's generally that there's actually something I'm not wanting to feel. It might be helplessness. And if I'm not feeling that helplessness, I'm not— if I'm not feeling that fear, then I go into like focus, and not necessarily a productive focus, but sort of like a blinders focus, uh, sort of like a fear, uh, fight-flight kind of state. And when I'm in that state, I'm— I have less capacity to be authentic, less of capacity for joy, less capacity for peace. Yeah. And I find myself in the struggle with reality, in the fight.

Yeah, it also just takes a fucking shit ton of energy. It just takes it. Like, you and I have seen this with people who have gone through some of the courses, and they have like this moment of, oh, I can allow my emotional experiences, and then they have so much energy they even have a hard time sleeping for a couple of days where they're just like, yeah, you know. And so that's a huge Like once you experience that, once you experience like, oh, me managing and trying and controlling all this stuff requires a lot of energy that could be going towards getting a lot done. And what I've noticed is that like nowadays, like one of the things that as people work with me, they're like, wow, you do so much stuff and you get so much done. It happens quickly. And it's, you know, some people complain about not being able to keep up and And it's not that I'm moving quickly in my experience, it's just that I'm not wasting my effort on trying or managing my experience or trying to make it different or resisting the experience. And so what I think is hard for people to grok until they fully feel it is that you get a lot more done in the not doing than in the trying.

Yeah, awesome. Thank you, Joe.

Yeah, pleasure. Enjoyed this. Thanks for being with me again, Brett. Awesome.

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