I’ve noticed that a lot of us will be pretty wiped out at the end of a long day of work or social activity, to the point where we need time to recuperate from exhaustion. There’s nothing wrong with that, but let’s talk about the possibility of doing hard things without exhausting ourselves.
We might call it effortless effort (similar to “wu wei” in Daoism)—the idea of acting without a huge amount of pursuit, tension, or extraneous physical effort.
When someone talks about “trying hard,” that usually means they put a lot of energy into something, and quickly exhausted themselves. “Trying hard” is equated to being very tense, pushing hard with your body and mind, and putting everything you have into it.
…