Why Zen masters don't try hard (and neither should you)

I could outwork anybody.

That's what I told myself for years. And it was true - I climbed fast, got promoted, checked every box.

From the outside, I looked successful. From the inside, I felt completely hollow.

I knew exactly what I needed to do to get the fancy jobs, to get promoted. I knew how to do the work. Everybody else thought I was doing well.

And yet there was no joy. Just exhaustion. Just the death grip on everything, all the time.

Then I picked up this book - Know Yourself, Forget Yourself by Marc Lesser. It’s not a famous book. 

But the five paradoxes in it showed me a different way. 

Know yourself, forget yourself. 

Be confident, question everything. 

Fight for change, accept what is. 

Embrace emotion, embody equanimity. 

Benefit others, benefit yourself.

It wasn't the "either/or" I'd been living - either work hard OR take it easy, either be ambitious OR be at peace.

It was both/and.

You can be confident AND question everything. You can fight for change AND accept what is. 

And for me, I realized that: 

You can be ambitious AND at ease.

This completely rewired something in me.

I'd been living like success required the death grip. 

Like if I loosened up, everything would fall apart.

But the paradoxes showed me: maybe the grip itself was the problem.

—

There's a Zen story that captures this perfectly:

A young student asks his master how long it will take to achieve mastery.

"Ten years," the master says.

"What if I work twice as hard?"

"Twenty years."

"Three times as hard?"

"Thirty years."

The student is confused: "But why? The harder I work, the longer it takes?"

The master smiles. "When you are so focused on the destination, you cannot see the path beneath your feet. The grip prevents the flow."

—

I read that and thought: That's me. That's exactly what I'm doing.

The striving. The proving. The constant pushing. It wasn't getting me where I wanted to go faster. It was just making me miserable.

The Zen concept that unlocking your potential comes from ease, not effort? Completely counterintuitive. And somehow... true.

Not about doing less. About releasing the extra 30% of strain that wasn't serving me.

Where The Grip Shows Up

As I work with ambitious leaders,I watch this pattern show up in three places:

Before high-stakes meetings: Over-rehearsing until they're rigid. When a question comes that's not in the script, they can't adapt - they've memorized the performance, not integrated the thinking.

When challenged: Jaw clenches. Voice tightens. Every question feels like an attack. They defend instead of explore. Executives can feel the strain across the table.

In their body: Shoulders up by their ears. Jaw locked. Breath shallow. Chronic tension they don't even notice anymore, but everyone else does.

The research backs this up: the Yerkes-Dodson law shows performance peaks at optimal stress, then collapses when you push past it. Most ambitious leaders blow right past the peak.

Zen knew this 2,500 years ago: the master swordsman doesn't grip the sword tighter in battle. He holds it lighter.

Three Ways To Loosen The Grip

1. Trust your preparation, then let go

Close your laptop 30 minutes before the meeting. You've done the prep. Now trust it. Walk in with your thinking AND your presence.

The harder you grip preparation, the less room you leave for adaptation.

2. Replace defending with exploring

When someone challenges your strategy, pause. Count to three. Say: "Tell me more about that."

Not defensively. Genuinely curious.

Questions aren't attacks. They're showing you where the thinking needs to go deeper. The obstacle IS the path.

3. Drop your shoulders (literally)

Set a timer for every 90 minutes. When it goes off: scan your jaw, shoulders, breath. Drop the tension. One long exhale.

You can't force presence. You can only create conditions for it. Start with releasing the grip in your body.

What Changes

The work doesn't get easier. But you stop making it harder.

One client told me after three months: "My CTO pulled me aside and said I seemed different. More confident. Not defensive. I realized - I just stopped trying so hard."

That's the shift.

Not from ambition to apathy. From proving yourself harder to being yourself fully.

Clarity on who you are. Conviction in what you want. Competence without the strain.

It's not about doing less. It's about letting a thousand flowers bloom instead of strangling them with your grip.

Where Are You Gripping?

This week, notice one place where you're holding too tightly.

The over-rehearsal. The defensiveness. The tension in your shoulders.

Just one place. And see what happens when you loosen your grip.