Once upon a time, a middle-aged executive was facing such severe problems that he decided to visit a Taoist hermit and ask for advice. The trip consumed one and half days because of the poor infrastructure in the area where the hermit lived.
The local airport had few connections and featured a rental car office that closed at 7pm. The executive’s flight landed far later than planned, preventing him from picking up the car he had booked.
Undeterred, he called up a taxi, was told that he would have to wait for an hour, and said yes. When the taxi finally arrived, the executive instructed the driver to take him to the hermit’s home.
“No problem,” said the driver. “I know where it is. I’ve been there many times.”
“How come?” inquired the executive. “I thought that he was a hermit.”
“Well, if he is, he didn’t tell me,” replied the driver.
Despite the late arrival, the hermit came out of his home as soon as the taxi came to a standstill.
“Welcome,” said the hermit joyfully, opening the taxi’s door while the executive was paying the driver. “We have kept your dinner warm.”
Upon entering the house, the executive was greeted by the hermit’s wife, led to the dining room, and treated to a delicious dinner, accompanied by conversation about the local cuisine.
“I did not know that you had a wife,” said the executive.
“We got married two months ago,” answered the hermit.
The executive wondered whether the hermit’s marital status was compatible with someone being called a hermit, but opted for keeping the question to himself.
After a good night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast, the hermit and the executive sat down on easy chairs on the veranda. The sight of the surrounding mountains was breathtaking.
Severe problems
“I need your help,” said the executive right away. “A friend of yours recommended me to come here.”
“I know. He told me. I will do my best to help you.”
“I have so many problems that I do not even know where to start.”
“Any of them will do. The rest will come after.”
For more than an hour, the executive poured out his heart. It was a painful tale, punctuated by sighs of anxiety and nervous twitching. It was obvious that the executive was under a lot of pressure.
The hermit listened attentively, nodding from time to time. When the executive finished recounting his tale, the hermit got up from his chair. “I have something for you,” he said.
The hermit walked into the house and returned with a little book bound in leather. “This is the answer to your troubles,” he said. “It’s the Tao Te Ching. You can keep it.”
Disappointed, the executive stared at the little book. He had not travelled for one and half days just to be presented with a book. What he wanted was practical advice, not theory.
“I am sure this book will be useful,” he said diplomatically, “but can you not give me your personal opinion?”
“It comes to the same,” explained the hermit. “My advice is going to mirror the Tao Te Ching. You can listen to me speak or you can read it yourself, as you prefer.”
A key recommendation
The executive looked at the little book sceptically. He didn’t want to waste his time reading philosophical speculations. He had real problems that required real solutions. “Yes, I do prefer to listen to you,” he said. “That’s what I came here for.”
“I will make it easy for you then. I can summarize the book in just one sentence.”
“In one sentence?”
The hermit nodded. “One sentence will be enough to solve all your problems. Here it is: All you have to do is to stop doing what doesn’t work and keep doing what does.”
The executive was puzzled for a second, but then he reacted angrily. “But I am doing that already!”
“No, you are not.”
“But I told you I am.”
“No, do you want me to prove it to you?”
“Sure.”
“Amongst other things, you mentioned a relationship that has turned sour, an investment where you keep losing money, and a business partnership where you are doing all the work.”
“Indeed, those problems are dragging me down.”
“But why have you not liquidated the failed investment and taken the loss?”
The executive did not reply.
“And why have you not discontinued the failed relationship and the failed business partnership?”
The executive looked at the little book, but still kept silent.”
Crucial advantages
“The recommendation to stop digging yourself into a deeper hole seems easy enough, but nobody does it,” said the hermit, “because not-doing is much more difficult than doing.”
“I see what you mean,” replied the executive, unconvinced, “but I am not sure that not-doing will solve my problems.”
“Yes, it will because not-doing is going to free up your time and your mind, and enable you to have better ideas and attain your goals much faster. If you want to do better, you’ll have to start by not-doing what makes you worse off.”
The conversation continued for two hours, during which the executive kept saying that not-doing is impossible, unworkable and unaffordable.
“You are wrong,” countered the hermit. “In fact, you cannot afford to keep doing what doesn’t work. None of us can afford it, but we keep running in circles because we refuse to face the truth.”
“I’m still not convinced,” said the executive.
At that moment, the hermit’s wife walked into the veranda, carrying a tray with a pot of tea and two cups. She placed the tray on the table next to the two men and returned to the house.
“I also considered it impossible to quit being a hermit,” he stated calmly.
“What happened?” asked the executive.
“Someone gave me the little book and asked me to read it.”
It took the executive one and half days to return home, but by the time his flight landed, he had already made a list of all the things he was going to stop doing.
The executive then stopped doing those things, cutting them off abruptly one after the other. The results proved so rotundly successful that, for the rest of his life, the executive remained a devoted practitioner of the non-action principle.
If you are interested in putting rational ideas into practice in all sorts of situations, I recommend my book “Against all odds: How to achieve great victories in desperate times.”