This is the Wu Wei Wisdom Podcast. Our weekly no-nonsense life lessons aim to inspire you to master your emotional and spiritual health, achieve balance, harmony, and flow. and rediscover the authentic and awesome you. We're your hosts, David James Lees and Alexandra Lees. This week we are talking all about how to stop striving and enjoy life more. Now it can be really easy to get stuck.
in a cycle of constantly striving of working hard for our goals which are always just out of reach and so we end up beating ourselves up and feeling bad about things. Well, this could be in any aspect of your life. So your health, appearance, relationships, career or finances. But this striving becomes... all-consuming and it's as if it becomes your whole life purpose and mission. Now many clients come to us because they are sick and tired of this striving. They are dissatisfied.
unhappy and exhausted but when they work with us and they begin to realize that they are already enough They are already lovable. They can already cope with whatever life throws at them so that there's no need to strive for this perfection. Somehow it leaves them feeling empty. unmotivated, dissatisfied and bored. So what's going on here? And is it actually possible to stop striving, accept that you are already enough?
and live a satisfied and fulfilling life? Well, in this teaching, we answer your questions. Okay, David, so let's just start at the very beginning of this equation. Why is it that we have this need or craving to strive to be better or to be the best? Well, this is a great question because it's one of these questions that go right to the heart of two or three of the Wu Wei wisdom teachings. So we'll be able to explore that in this teaching. So why do we strive? Well...
The word strive is very interesting because wanting to reach the best that we can be is a good thing, surely. And I would say, yes, reaching your potential. Here's what I'm trying to encourage you to do. Being able to flourish. Here's why you're listening to this. So these are all good. So what we're talking about when you listen to the question that somebody sent in is why does it go to the extreme? Why can't I just be on that journey?
In this natural flow, why do I have to go and strive and never satisfy? And then that falls into one of the basic Wu Wei teachings that we call CCJ. Criticising. comparing and being judgmental. And this nearly always falls into comparing. Comparing yourself with other people, even comparing yourself. with yourself perversely enough, that you're never happy.
Remember in lots of other teachings, I talk about raising the bar. It's like a high jumper jumping over the bar. And so you keep raising the bar to lift you up. But every time you jump the bar, you go, well, let's raise the bar a bit higher.
let's raise the bar a bit higher let's raise the bar a bit higher until you can't jump it and then you go well look at me I can't even jump the bar so I think what I've heard you say there David is that it's quite natural quite authentic quite appropriate for us to want to be
the best we can be, for us to grow, develop and flourish as human beings. Both for ourselves and I guess those people, our family that we're supporting because we want to be in the best possible position to support them too as well as ourselves. but there is something that's going wrong here which is taking this desire to be our authentic best and taking it to the extreme where we then start to
compare, criticize and judge ourselves. So what kind of flicks that switch from it being authentic and appropriate to being inauthentic and inappropriate? So again, that's what I said. It comes down to another core teaching. So this is what we call the inner child. Now you... may not be familiar in the way that we use that term. You may prefer something like the emotional mind or the ego or the alter ego or the subconscious mind.
I like the term the inner child because it refers to a part of your mind that's almost locked and frozen and becomes a filter the way you look at life. It normally happens very early in your child development when you're between the ages of six and nine years old. Seems very important to me. And it's that part of your mind that's never satisfied. And you used a word there that kind of signifies the characteristic of that part of the mind, extreme.
It doesn't like the Wu Wei flow, and I often refer to it like a pendulum, where it will swing one extreme, where nothing is ever good enough, and you want to be... better or on a pedestal or superior or special, or it will swing to the absolute opposite. where it criticizes you and tells you you're not good enough, you can't cope, you're unlovable, all the things you said in your intro. And so those two extreme ends of this pendulum is what this question is addressing.
So when we are in that... inauthentic striving mode, in that CCJ, that self-criticism, being self-judgmental, comparing ourselves negatively with other people, that hard driving ourselves mode, we are essentially being... led by the inner child. And we're at those energetic extremes of the emotional pendulum. Now we've done another teaching, which we talk about the Wu Wei Wism teaching of the emotional pendulum. And I will put a link to that in the show notes.
But it's essentially this black and white. It's either all or nothing. Things are going great, we're doing great, or it's a complete disaster. Things are going great, but they should be going better. Yeah, yeah. Or it's a complete disaster. So the inner child part of your mind is never satisfied. That's where that word striving comes in. It always wants better.
It'll always be somebody that's got a bigger car, a better job, more money, a bigger house, taller, thinner, whatever, whatever. It's always comparing. It compares. you're you to other to other people and so it's almost like a whip that's whipping you all of the time and or
As we said, don't forget when we talk about the inner child, there's always the two extremes. So it'll either be that way, and that will signify a lot of... my clients who come to me who can't reach that satisfaction, never have been able to, or it'll swing the opposite side, which is again what a lot of clients come to. when they are absolutely so hard on themselves, critical, beating themselves up, torturing themselves, self-sabotaging. Is this you? Self-sabotaging themselves.
So here are the two extremes of the pendulum. And we've also done a full teaching on what causes that inner child part of our mind to become so dissatisfied with everything that we do, everything in our life, even... If we have a great life, great family, great career, we're healthy, that inner child is never satisfied. So I can put a link to that as well. But just to recap, though.
What motivates the inner child all the time to be on this striving mission, mission impossible if you like, are those core, those faulty core beliefs that we talk about. Absolutely. And then this introduces another important part of the Wu Wei wisdom model, the golden thread. So the golden thread is when you're on one... or both sides, because you can be stuck on one side or stuck on the other side, or you can be stuck swinging violently between the two, constantly striving.
but in a moment, criticizing yourself, self-sabotaging, then striving again, then beating yourself up. So this is swinging between the two extremes. And both of those extremes will create emotional... feelings negative emotional feelings now you may want to give them words like anxiety depression whatever you want to call them that's why I prefer to simply call them red lights
A red light feeling. Here's a very important teaching in the Wu Wei wisdom model. A red light feeling tells you that you're not living your life authentically. You're not living your life in wu-wei, in the center of the pendulum, if you like the idea of the pendulum. If you're creating a red light feeling, you are at one or both extremes or swinging between the two.
Very confusing. But the red light, you won't like what I'm going to say, is your greatest ally. It's your friend. It's telling you, shouting at you, come out of the extreme. come out of this striving or beating yourself. This is nonsense. This is when he's telling you, stop it. For goodness sake, stop it. You know it's not going to work.
You've always known it's not going to work, and you've got to come out of that extreme. And what the red light does, you can use it as a kind of a reverse engineering, and that's what we call the golden thread. And I think though, David, that a lot of people, when they're striving for something, so whether it's like a health goal, they set themselves to lose weight or a money goal, you know, I must save up this amount of money by the end of the year.
When they don't reach these often unattainable goals that the inner child sets and they create the red light feelings. I think a lot of people think the red light feelings are because they're not reaching their targets. They don't realize that it's because... what they're doing is inauthentic, unhealthy and inappropriate. So for a lot of people, they know the red light feelings are not good, but they take it as a signal that I've got to work even harder. Absolutely. They don't do the...
the golden thread. And the golden thread is very interesting. You started the emotional red light feeling, and then you ask yourself, why have I chosen, listen to what I'm saying, Why have I chosen to create this red light feeling? Because remember, you are the creator of your emotions. You are not the victim of them. And this is where you'll get the most resistance from that part of your mind that we're categorizing as the inner child. She or he will not want to accept.
that they are creating the emotional feelings. The inner child sees and understands that the emotional feelings are coming externally into them. And they have to protect themselves. Have you heard yourself saying words or statements like, I have to be emotionally safe or I have to be emotionally protected?
or I can't cope with my emotions, or my emotions are out of control, or other people affect my emotions, or all of the other things, all of those are taking away your... accountability for creating your emotions and making you the victim so is what you're saying that we often when we get the uncomfortable or painful red light emotions through this constant striving We often think it's because something, it's because, oh, the boss didn't give me a promotion because I haven't worked hard enough.
or the girl I was after isn't interested in me because I haven't got myself into good enough shape. It's like we're thinking it's because they've rejected me or they've done something, therefore... This is why I'm feeling bad rather than us kind of, I guess, looking within, as you say, and asking the question, why am I creating these emotions? It's not about them. It's about my mindset.
Well, you're absolutely right, Alex. And this is where the analogy or the metaphor of the inner child works really well. Because you don't question your belief system, what the inner child does, exactly what you says. It turns it back onto yourself. It tells you one of the three lies, and here comes another call we weigh teaching. It will tell you, I am not good enough. The boss didn't give me the rise because I'm not good enough. I can't cope.
Oh, this is too much. This job, this career, this relationship is too much for me. I can't cope. I'm unlovable. Oh, look, they've left me because it's me. And so it turns you back. It turns it back onto you. And instead of looking at your belief system, the real cause, the root, the foundation, what I call the fountainhead. The problem you don't you go off onto some carousel going round and around and around in ever decreasing circles
And two, you go deeper and deeper, like a hamster's wheel. That's what the carousel of despair is like. Running faster and faster and faster, getting nowhere, trying to prove something that can't be proven instead of doing the... reverse engineering, going back from the original red light and having a look at the belief that created the red light. Because that and only there can you change. Because don't spend your life...
expelling your energy and your life force and chasing a dream. When I'm doing this teaching, I often think of the donkey and the carrot because you're just trying to grab the carrot and every time you move forward, you never get there. But you already know this. I'm telling you something you already know. The question for you is, why do I do it?
And that's the accountability. That's what you've got to own. Stop blaming other people. Stop looking externally. Look internally. Look at your core root belief system. And I think... That point you make about we already know this. I mean, I... I really believe that there are so many people who are on this hamster wheel of striving, in this mode, which is all-consuming for their whole life in terms of the time it takes, the energy it takes.
where they put their attention, they know it's wrong. They often know if they've done some self-development work that it is fueled by those lies that you talked about. believing that we're not good enough believing that we're unlovable believing that in our current situation we can't cope or manage with life therefore we've got to work for perfection so We know there's something wrong with this equation that we are operating our life by, and yet we still do it because it's almost like...
We're fearful if we step off the hamster's wheel of striving. What do we do then? Because this is basically, the striving is our whole life story at the moment. I hope you were all listening to what Alex said then. We are fearful of stepping off. Do you see what happened there? She created a fear. And then she used the fear as the excuse of not stepping off. And that's what we do. See how it's all written into our, I use it, I use these mistaken words. But that was very interesting.
We're fearful of changing. We're fearful. We're scared. We're frightened. And so that emotion is not then something we've created. It's something that's controlling us. That's why you've got to really think hard and meditate on you are the creator of your emotional feelings. You are not the victim. And so what you said is absolutely right.
This is the story that that part of your mind that I call the inner child. This is the inner child story. And although your inner child is very intelligent, very intelligent. You know what it really favours? It favours the familiar. And so it will prefer to go down a path. I always think about it like a track, like a railway track.
And if you offer it these two alternatives... go down this track, it's not going to work, but it's very familiar and you know how it works out and you've got the dialogue and you've got the mindset and people accept you and you can beat yourself up and you can blame yourself. very familiar track, but doesn't work, or go down this other track, the unknown track.
where you've got to learn new skills, where you've got to change your life lesson, where you've got to change your filter, the way you look at it. If you offer those two alternatives, it will always choose the familiar. And you will be led by that part of your mind that I call the inner child. And this is the life lesson.
You've got to come back to the fork. Got to bring it back to the fork. It will want to keep pulling you down that fork. It's like a child on reins and it wants to keep pulling you. Let's go this way. Let's go this way. And you've got to take absolutely accountability and self-responsibility for saying, no, hold on, drop your shoulders, take a breath. Let's not go down the road that we know will fail. You know it's going to fail. It's never worked. How old are you? When has it once worked?
It never will work. And you have to look at what we call the life lesson. And that's why we do these, to highlight the life lesson that the inner child hasn't quite understood. So what is a life lesson here? Well, that's a good question. I guess the first thing would be for the, well, it's acceptance that we are. already enough already okay and that as we are we can just allow things to unfold we don't have to push
We don't have to keep pushing and pushing and pushing. But the inner child always resists that. Absolutely. Because the life lesson here for the inner child, from my perception, from a Taoist perception and from a Wu Wei wisdom perception. is value. The word value. So the inner child has been taught, we have been taught that value comes externally. from other people, whether you call it validation, reassurance, love, attention. And the inner child is always searching externally.
to other people, to give them that value, that attention, that love. And so it's constantly on the... the hamster's wheel, the treadmill, to look for that. That's why it wants to do better than anyone else. It's got this misguided belief that if it was somehow superior, other people would love it. appreciate it and take care of it and honor it in actual fact it would be the opposite they wouldn't like you because you'd be superior so and then when you don't do well it's so hard on yourself
Because it devalues you. And so we get taught as children by our parents that you have to earn love. You have to earn value. It's something that's... outside of you that your parents, your sibling, your grandparents, your teachers, your bosses, look at the boss. The boss has to give me value. The boss has to tell me, tap me on the head and tell me I've done really well.
Well, how about if he's a crap boss? How about if the company is no good? Why are you still striving? Why can't you step back and look at the whole situation from a position of self-value? Yeah, but David, I know a lot of people will hear what you're saying and say, yeah, that's all sounds great. Value myself. Don't worry about what other people think of me. But it's easier said than done.
We had a great question from a member of our Facebook community. And he's been following our teachings for quite some time now. He's been really kind of trying to apply them to his life. And he... He's really into kind of health and fitness and exercising and, I guess, striving and driving himself hard to lose weight, get fit, get in shape for a future girlfriend, a future relationship. But he says, you know... I'm now learning to love myself, value myself.
to accept that I am already good enough. So he's doing the work, he's done the golden thread process work, he's putting in place more healthy and authentic beliefs. But now he's starting to change his thinking, change his story to something that's more authentic. He says it's like his inner child is kicking back big time because his inner child is saying, well...
You know, I've got nothing to aim for now. I've got no motivation. It's boring just thinking I'm already okay because now I've got nothing to... aim for in life? Well, that's a great example. I didn't know that question. That's a wonderful example. So first of all, again, roll back the tape and listen to what Alex said. He said, first of all, I want to get this super fit and have this...
whatever it's called, 8-pack or 10-pack or whatever it's called, for a girlfriend. So you see, value. He's not putting value on himself. He's letting a girlfriend give him value. Then... When he says, oh, okay, that's not working. That's not going to work out. I can see the logic behind that. That doesn't make sense. Then the inner child steps in and goes,
Well, we're not worth it. It's not worth doing it just for us, is it? For our health, for our well-being, for us to reach our potential. Hear the inner child speaking. We can't do it just for us, can we? Because that's boring. How can you, as a spiritual being, oh my goodness, I wish I'd got you here. How can you be boring? You're an amazing human being. Look at you. Do you know there is not one person in the universe like you? You are totally unique.
Your potential is absolutely unfounded. And you're trying to convince me you're boring. This just doesn't make sense. And that was a great example of the inner child striving to get a girlfriend. one extreme, not striving, oh well, we might as well go and get drunk, we might as well eat too much, we're boring, we're not worth it. You see, and all of that comes down to self-value. And that's the life lesson. Because if you do not value yourself,
Why do you expect that other people are going to value you? Value is not a commodity. Let me repeat this teaching. Value. is not a commodity that someone gives you. But what about if we realise that everything we've been striving for does not have any meaning?
What if we, so for example, if we were going to the gym for... three hours every day working ridiculously hard in the gym or working really really hard accumulating money just for the sake of accumulating it because originally we wanted people to like look at us and go wow how amazing are you What if we wake up? What if we develop new authentic beliefs and we wake up to the fact that all these things were just a waste of time? Then it's like we've had the rug pulled from under us.
It's very hard to just then, well, for some people, I guess it's very hard to just accept the Wu Wei, to be in that middle zone, to be just calm and balanced and not have like some sort of mission or goal or drive in life. Is that what? The woo-way is to just kind of just to be, accept we're good enough and then just accept our lot. Well, why wouldn't you accept you're good enough? I mean, why would you want to carry on following a course?
going down a road, going on a journey where you're not going to reach the end, and even if you reach the end, it's not going to be where you want to be. Why would you continue that? That sounds more... foolish than than anything else and then you say well that rug has been pulled from under me Well, how can that rug be pulled onto you because it's not achievable? You've already admitted that it's not achievable. And then you say, well, what do I replace it with?
Well, you replace it with the only thing that you've got, the uniqueness and the amazingness of who you are. Because when you've been going down that road, that railway track, you haven't been going down your authentic track. You will never reach your potential going down that track. And so it's like saying, well, I've gone 100 miles down the wrong road, David. I might as well carry on, mightn't I? Well, you're going down the wrong road.
Yes, but I put 100 miles in. Well, then there's 100 miles to come back to go down your right road, the road that gives you value, that you give yourself value. Remember, as I've said in many videos, When you were born, when you came down your mother's birth canal and the midwife held you in that delivery room, she didn't look around and say, quick, quick, can somebody give this child some value? You intrinsically have value. You intrinsically have worth.
You are lovable. Love is an emotional feeling that you have to create for yourself. Now you can say, no, no, David, I want to waste my time. I want to carry on for the rest of my life, please. Okay, I'm not going to stop you. Let me go farther down the road to nowhere because I'm so used to the road to nowhere. Carry on down the road to nowhere because you know where that's going to lead.
Nowhere. Turn around, come back and go down the road to somewhere, to your value, to who you are, to your authenticity. about looking after you and living your life to your truest potential so you can flourish. Here's the life lesson. And if you've got to walk back 100 miles, at least immediately you turn around, you're now going in the right direction. Yeah, because I think David...
Just to refer back to the gentleman in our Facebook group and his example, I guess if his inner child is saying to him, this is boring, we've got nothing to aim for here now. You know, I just want to give up on everything. What the inner child, I guess, is trying to do is to drag this gentleman back to the familiar, striving, working hard setting.
unattainable goals for his kind of health or lifestyle or appearance or whatever it is. Or his girlfriend. Or striving for the perfect girlfriend or the perfect relationship. Because the inner child has only given him one alternative option.
The inner child's saying, this is boring, this is no good. This is not all that's cracked up to me, this, I think I'm enough, malarkey. Let's go back to where we were, because at least we had a motivation, a reason to get out of bed at five o'clock in the morning and get down to the gym.
And what you're saying is actually what's happening now is this is a sign that actually the old story, the old mission, the old purpose wasn't authentic. And it's almost like we've got to sit down and take the time to. to write out a new script, a new set of authentic intentions for us that would reinforce our value. Yes, because this is what we would call emotional education.
So you have to learn how to speak to your child because, you know, I build all of my sessions with my clients. I know I meet. the inner child and they come and they present they tell me they're awful and they're nasty and they're trying to get rid of them and kill them off this is not true I don't know you know I know other practitioners say this Your inner child is you. It's a beautiful child of about six, seven, eight, nine, who's stuck. She's stuck.
She's stuck in a corner of a dark room, scared witless. She doesn't know how to deal with emotions. She doesn't know how to deal with reality. She doesn't know how to deal with life. And we've got to go. and talk to her and answer her questions and hold her hand and allow her to develop a new story. And that would be based on what I would call Shen.
or your spirituality. Truth, honesty, and integrity. Going down the road to nowhere has none of those values. Not one. It's not truthful. It's definitely not honest. And if that zero minus integrity going down your authentic road, we have to now convince your inner child that that is where she'll find the value. inside of her, not external to her. And that is almost like a flip.
In fact, you know, in our model, we do call it the flip. You have to flip because the way you've been doing it is completely the wrong way. From childhood experiences. From poor teachings, maybe parents, maybe dysfunctional childhood, household, teachers, bullying at school, doesn't matter what it is. but it's created a dysfunctionality that we have to flip so we can get the child believing in the right road. And remember what I said some while ago.
that your inner child absolutely loves familiarity. So all you've got to do is to get the new road familiar, then it will want to go down that road. So for this gentleman... If he had all his kind of energy and focus was previously on getting fit, getting ready for a new girlfriend or a new relationship, because that...
he saw would be the answer to all his prayers and his questions and then at the end of the rainbow he would be satisfied. I guess, are you saying that he's now going to teach his inner child that? yes it's great to want to be healthy and to be fit and we should keep on doing that but perhaps we don't need to take it to extreme. And perhaps there are other things we can be doing, other intentions we can have in our life beyond just this kind of singular focus on health and fitness, for example.
will resonate with us, which will help us flourish and grow much more broadly. That actually dear inner child that you will also love doing. So it's like saying, don't just use this one. Paint paint brush and this one paint color and keep on working and working and working that he's a whole paint set
of other things we can be doing together, which are not about proving ourselves to other people or proving our status or proving our worth. This is all, this is about us and what we enjoy and how we can flourish. It's always very difficult to give a diagnosis because you don't know the whole story. But on the little bit of evidence you've shared with me, I think the work that you would want to do with that gentleman...
is to say, why are you only going to get value when you meet this mythical girlfriend? I would say that you start with you doing the journey, the process of valuing yourself. of getting that connection with you bringing your inner child as i've said on many videos not that the inner child is separate
criticizing you, looking at you from the outside in and saying all those things. Oh, well, if you get a girlfriend, oh, you'll never get a good girlfriend. Oh, you'll never get a girlfriend that likes you unless you put on muscle and coming together as one. I would say to him that that can be done relatively easy. I'm talking about weeks or months to bring those two together and then decide on his track.
decide on the road that he wants to walk. And I would always say, my terminology, I would want you to walk on fresh snow. I don't want you to walk in the footprints of others or follow your own footprints. I want you to step off on a new journey, a new story with you and the inner child working together because... When you do that, you know, I believe in the law of attraction. That will attract the correct person into your life because you are radiating the correct spiritual.
energy that becomes far more attractive than muscles. It becomes far more meaningful than an eight pack. This is far more important. And that person, male or female, will be attracted into your life. And that will be someone that you can consider building a long-term relationship from your... from your honesty, from your integrity, because they will see who you really are, not a mask of who you think you should be. And that's just a wonderful byproduct as well.
and built upon the fact, as you say, that we truly, honestly, authentically believe we're already enough. So everything we do in terms of our intentions, our goals. comes from a place, that place of authentic knowing, not from the unstable foundations of the striving. And that authentic knowing... is the life lesson to have authentic knowing you've got to have authentic self value if you do not have self value where are you where do you believe that you will get your value from
Do you believe it's a commodity? Do you believe that other people have to give it to you? Whether that's your boss, whether that's your partner, whether that's your family mother, mother, father. Where do you get your value from? And that's the life lesson for this teaching. Look inside of you for your value. I am saying without reservation, you are intrinsically valuable. There is no one like you in the universe. You are awesome. I believe in you. It's time now that you clear the confusion.
You come straight, you talk straight to yourself. Don't be let down these complicated, oh, well, she said, he said, they said. Come back and think about what you say to yourself and take responsibility. and be accountable for you. Thank you so much for listening to this week's Wu Wei Wisdom Life Lesson. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
And please rate and review us to help us grow. If you'd like to work one-to-one with David, he supports clients all over the world every week via video call. You can learn more about David's consultations, plus our online events, offers and gifts on our website, wuweiwisdom.com. You can also meet and share with us in our private Facebook group. on our YouTube channel and on Instagram. Search for Wu Wei Wisdom and you'll find us. Until next time, stay happy, healthy and in your flow.