Succeeding by Ceasing to Try—Part I
A Venerable Paradox
Introduction
Why is the quickest way to reach your goal often simply to stop trying so hard to get there? In today’s post, and over the next couple of weeks, we will be exploring this very practical, age-old philosophical question bearing directly, as we’ll see, on both the theory and practice of creating change. It is a topic where it is admittedly too early for conviction and too late for dogma, but one where a philosopher’s feeble candle may throw some light at least—while keeping in mind the old Polish saying that it is darkest under the candle.
—The Editors
Succeeding by Ceasing to Try—Part I
’Tis a lesson you should heed,
Try, try again.
If at first you don’t succeed,
Try, try again.
The Paradox of Intention
Thomas H. Palmer’s immortal advice to students, first published in 1840, is by now a commonplace. However, the contrary admonition, that “if at first you don’t succeed, stop trying,” has a longer and perhaps more impressive pedigree, reappearing persistently in strikingly similar forms throughout the history of religious and philosophical thought, East and West.1
To succeed at last in reaching one’s goal, after repeated failures, simply by giving up the attempt to reach it, strikes most of us as a paradox. And a paradox it certainly is, at least in the original sense of the word—“contrary to received opinion.”2
However it is certainly not a logical paradox, like the paradox of the barber who shaves all the men in town who do not shave themselves, and those only (who therefore shaves himself if he doesn’t, but doesn’t shave himself if he does), for there is no logical contradiction involved in supposing that the abandonment of conscious effort should lead to securing the results one earnestly desires.
But while it is not an antinomy, it remains nonetheless something of a pragmatic paradox, at least from the point of view of common sense. Yet what if common sense is wrong here, as it so often is? Again, if the “paradox of intention” or “paradox of reversed effort” (as it has variously been called) is indeed a paradox—and I shall want to cast some doubt at least on whether it is, or ought to be—it is certainly a venerable one.
In William James’s 1902 study of the matter he contends that this doctrine of self-abandonment, “throwing down the burden,” “actually antedates theologies and is independent of philosophies, …entering into closest marriage with every speculative creed.” (Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 208) In the same breath he goes so far as to call it “the fundamental act in specifically religious, as distinguished from moral practice.” (ibid.)
The American theologian Marvin C. Shaw, in his synoptic monograph, The Paradox of Intention: Reaching the Goal by Giving Up the Attempt to Reach It,3 breezily documents the close parallels he finds between formulations of this paradoxical counsel in Pauline Christianity (he barely even mentions the Gospels, which he might have added to the list), later Stoicism (particularly Epictetus), Taoism, Zen, Tantric Buddhism, Protestant and Catholic mysticism, Lutheran and Calvinist orthodoxy, the Bhagavad Gita, existentialism, and at least one form of modern psychotherapy.
Professor Shaw connects its periodic re-emergence historically with the replacement of an “ethic of attainment” by an “ethic of consolation” at times of intense cultural crisis, particularly, he says, when experiencing, in consequence, “the impossibility of fulfilment through effort” (p. 21), with the abandonment of effort in favour of self-surrender to destiny or to the Tao or to God’s will providing consolation for a feeling of social and cultural helplessness along with a satisfying response to “the felt need for stability in the midst of chaos.” (p. 22)
Whatever social and cultural factors may or may not have been favourable to the broad appeal of such an approach in different times and places, you have undoubtedly had a number of experiences of your own that resonate with it. Here is William James discussing the account given by psychologist Edwin Starbuck over a century ago (p. 202):
You know how it is when you try to recollect a forgotten name. Usually you help the recall by working for it, by mentally running over the places, persons and things with which the word was connected. But sometimes this effort fails; you feel then as if the harder you tried the less hope there would be, as though the name were jammed, and pressure in its direction only kept it all the more from rising. And then the opposite expedient often succeeds. Give up the effort entirely; think of something altogether different, and in half an hour the lost name comes sauntering into your mind, as Emerson says, as carelessly as if it had never been invited. A certain music teacher, says Dr. Starbuck, says to her pupils after the thing to be done has been clearly pointed out, and unsuccessfully attempted: “Stop trying and it will do itself!”
Sound familiar? Marvin Shaw comments on this passage: “We have had just this experience of finding that effort blocked our success while relaxation of effort succeeded, without of course complicating matters by calling it a manifestation of the paradox of intention.” (p. 2) He goes on to quote Starbuck’s account of the flowing, effortless self-moving character of an action when we are performing at our best, particularly in music or sport.
This very phenomenon, under the heading of “flow,” was intensively studied in our own day by the University of Chicago psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, whose popularized accounts of his own work, along with others’ earlier books such as the German philosopher Eugen Herrigel’s Zen in the Art of Archery, W. Timothy Gallwey’s classics on The Inner Game of Tennis and The Inner Game of Golf, and Michael Murphy’s 1971 cult classic novel, Golf in the Kingdom, have helped the idea once again to enter public consciousness: “Stop trying and it will do itself!”
The idea is more commonly, and mistakenly, taken to be a purely Eastern import, while it has been very much part of Western cultural traditions, and is perhaps even more urgently needed as a corrective to the tacit cultural assumptions prevalent in the West since the Industrial Revolution. The originally Taoist notion of overcoming by yielding (“There is nothing weaker than water, but none is superior to it in overcoming the hard. …weakness overcomes strength and flexibility overcomes rigidity.” [Tao Teh Ching]) is perhaps most familiar from its systematic application in the Oriental martial arts—perhaps reaching its apotheosis in Japanese Aikido (particularly the Ki Aikido form) and Chinese T’ai Chi. The notion has, however, entered common parlance in the West in metaphorical reference to a “judo” or “jujitsu” manoeuvre, being one in which one tactically offers no resistance in order to use an opponent’s aggressive force against him.
The paradox, in different variants, has also been deployed in numerous ways across the most diverse forms of modern psychotherapy. Psychotherapy is a field devoted, after all, to creating desired change and resolving intractable problems on behalf of individuals who have found themselves unable, despite their best efforts, to resolve their own problems or make the change for themselves.
Freud made use of the paradox clinically in two of the most important technical rules of psychoanalysis: First, the patient, or analysand, is instructed to follow what has become known as the “fundamental rule” of psychoanalysis, “free association”—to say whatever comes into your mind, without any effort to make your utterances pertinent or cogent, and without exercising any censorship or editing or selection: “Act as though, for instance, you were a traveller sitting next to the window of a railway carriage and describing to someone inside the carriage the changing views which you see outside.” Second, the analyst’s job is simply to refrain from directing “[one’s] notice to anything in particular and [maintain] the same ‘evenly-suspended attention’ in the face of all one hears.” The analyst “should withhold all conscious influences from his capacity to attend, …simply listen, and not bother about whether he is keeping anything in mind.”
The early clinical psychologist Knight Dunlap with his “negative practice,” John Rosen with one of his techniques of “direct analysis,” Viktor Frankl with his “paradoxical intention,” along with hypnotherapists from Coué and Baudouin to Milton H. Erickson—not to mention Gestalt therapists, brief therapists, marital and family therapists of widely different schools, have all developed techniques of actively encouraging or even prescribing the symptom or presenting complaint as a means of rapidly resolving it, with a sometimes impressive track record of success.
Psychologists and other theorists of psychotherapy, notably researchers in communication theory, semiotics and cybernetics have offered a wide range of contending explanations for the success of such paradoxical therapeutic interventions. These will not be our concern here. Rather, I would like to turn our attention away from empirical considerations and ‘causal’ explanations—psychological, spiritual or otherwise—of the paradox of reversed effort, and inquire into some more philosophical questions which arise for me as soon as I begin to consider the matter. For it is these specifically epistemological issues which are highly relevant to the practical business of creating change.
Patience, Negative Capability, Laziness, Delay, and Rest
Before we begin our investigation, we might do well to heed the (paradoxical?) oft-quoted advice of Rilke, who was offering his precociously avuncular (he was himself, after all, still in his twenties!), uncommonly sage advice to a younger aspiring poet on matters of life and love and art:
[B]e patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
There it is again, back like a bad penny.
And then there is Keats’s classic, well-known formulation of his ideal of Negative Capability, which he attributed to Shakespeare and which, unbeknownst to Keats, may well have been originally due to Mary Sidney (Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke 1561–1621). Keats regarded Negative Capability as the quintessential quality required for creative achievement: being “capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact and reason,” a sentiment echoed perhaps in Wittgenstein’s contention that to philosophize you must descend into the old chaos and feel at home there.
Yoga teachers (particularly but not only in the Iyengar yoga tradition) often talk about “easeful effort” or sthira sukham, a key notion whose locus classicus is found in the Yoga Sutras of the Hindu philosopher and mystic Patañjali who as far as we know lived somewhere between the 2nd and 4th Centuries CE, but who by his own account was simply synthesizing and ordering yoga philosophy found in very much more older traditions, so the roots of “easeful effort” doubtless go back to ancient times. Simply put, though unsurprisingly easier to practice in yoga than to put into words, “easeful effort” I would describe as a kind of easy, pleasurable expenditure of the minimal effort possible to realize the desired outcome—a particular asana or posture, perfectly executed.
The doctrine of “easeful effort” suggests that the correct way to perform an asana, and your surest guidance, is the way that is most effortless. In the contemporary mind-body exercise practice of Pilates, developed by Joseph Hubertus Pilates (1883–1967), the very same notion is almost the central pillar of the practice—every movement, every posture is being achieved most perfectly when it involves the minimum expenditure of energy or effort. In the Feldenkrais Method of physical therapy devised by the Ukrainian-Israeli physicist Moshé Feldenkrais (1904–1984) we find the selfsame notion again, vividly realized in action. An earlier article here in Change, by Dr Andy Bass, talks about the Taoist-derived “Small Fish Test” and has much to say about this same line of thinking.
In 1930, Generaloberst Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord (1878–1943), the Commander-in-Chief of the Reichswehr, the armed forces of the Weimar Republic, replied to Der Tagesspiegel, a Berlin newspaper, who asked him how he conducted his officer selection and printed his answer:
I divide my officers into four classes as follows: The clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite nerves and the mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous.
The Generaloberst’s recognition of the value of laziness intelligently deployed is very closely related. A number of more recent books including, notably, Frank Partnoy’s Wait: The Art and Science of Delay4 and Alex Pang’s Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less5 are contemporary examples of thoughtful and nuanced advice offered in much the same spirit.
But what has all this to do with epistemology, and with achieving change in organizations, in your life, or in the world at large? We turn to this question next time.
© Copyright 2004, 2023 Dr James Wilk
The moral right of the author has been asserted
An earlier version of this three-part paper was presented at 8.45 p.m. on Thursday 4th November 2004 in the Head Master’s Chambers as an invited lecture to The Wotton’s Society at Eton College (a society founded some eighty years ago by the late Tom Stacey FRSL, who passed away just before Christmas) followed by a lively seminar.
from the Latin paradoxum, in turn from the Ancient Greek παράδοξος (parádoxos, “unexpected, strange”)
New York: Oxford University Press USA, 1988. It is to Martin Shaw’s work on the subject that the present article is particularly indebted.
New York: PublicAffairs, 2012
New York: Basic Books, 2016