What separates someone who achieves their goals from someone who doesn't? We're often given three
explanations for success. The first explanation is that successful people are just smarter than the
rest of us. They're geniuses who stand out from the crowd. But is it really true? A 2016 study
published in the proceedings of the national academy of sciences, found that high intelligence
doesn't predict financial success very well. Although most people guess that the impact of
intelligence on income is between twenty to fifty percent the actual number was only one
to two percent. Another study carried out by the Carnegie Institute of Technology showed that only
15 percent of someone's financial success comes from technical knowledge or raw intelligence.
What this means is that smart people aren't necessarily successful, and successful people
aren't necessarily smart. And this makes a lot of sense because someone with a genius level IQ
who's born in poverty is more likely to drop out of school and face a whole host of risk factors
that stops them from ever getting the chance to apply their intelligence in a productive way.
The second explanation is that successful people inherited their wealth. That they're successful
because everything was handed to them. But again this doesn't seem to be the case. According to
a 2017 study from Fidelity Investments only 12 percent of millionaires inherited their wealth.
Almost all of them, 88% built their own wealth within their own lifetime and within a single
generation. Studies also show that most people who inherit their money don't hang onto it for
very long. And most family fortunes disappear within three to five generations. Which means
that most of the time, inheriting money by itself won't make you successful. The third and most
common explanation is that successful people just work harder than everyone else. In recent years
this has been one of the most consistent messages from self-help gurus all around the world. Being
a workaholic has become a badge of honour. The prescription for success is to grind it out, to
put in ever more hours, and to hustle 24/7. This idea that more effort necessarily leads to success
is so ingrained in our world, that we often don't realize just how widespread it is. Even Elon Musk
has had this to say: Work harder, you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks, every week,
to be successful. And so it's been called the "cult of effort." And it's a pervasive idea, but
is it really true? According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor, the average employee works about 7.6 hours
a day. The average salary for a full-time job in America is about 48,672 dollars a year. But if we
look at industries like transportation, we find that truck drivers work some of the longest hours
of any type of employee. Often 70 hours a week. In a long day they might drive the whole day,
and only stop to take care of personal needs, to eat, and to rest. It's a grueling lifestyle.
And what does the average truck driver in America make? It's actually less than the national
average, about forty thousand dollars a year. And if hard work was the single key to success,
then some of the hardest working employees like truck drivers and hospitality workers would all be
wealthy. But they're not. Most of the time, it's the people they work, for their bosses who work
far less, that end up making most of the money. So why might this be? Research is beginning to show
that after about 50 hours of consistent work, your productivity drops a lot. And if you
keep pushing yourself beyond that it can make your performance worse, disrupting your sleep,
straining your relationships, and harming your mental health. And the combination of all of these
things can lead to burnout. When we accept the idea that working harder always leads to success,
we can end up blaming ourselves if we don't reach our goals and for not working hard enough. And
it's precisely this type of thinking that can trap us in a never-ending rat race. That is, until we
recognize that not everything can be solved just by working harder and until we recognize
that just maybe there might be a way to be more effective and more fulfilled while doing less.
There's an ancient Taoist idea that addresses exactly this issue. It's called Wu Wei. There's
no real English translation for Wu Wei but roughly the word "Wu" means "none" and the word "Wei"
means "forcing." So we can think of Wu Wei as the principle of not forcing or the principle of
effortless action. Many people mistake this idea with being passive or with being lazy and avoiding
work but that's not what Wu Wei is teaching us. We can see this in verse 63 of the Tao Te Ching,
which describes the idea like this: act without doing, work without effort, think of the small as
large, and the few is many, confront the difficult while it's still easy, accomplish the great task
by a series of small acts. If this sounds abstract and confusing to you, then you're not alone,
because Wu Wei takes a lifetime to master, and it reveals one of the great paradoxes of life,
which is that it's only when we surrender to the natural flow of the universe that we can
work with the elements that are all around us. Wu Wei is understanding the ebb and flow of life.
Alan Watts uses an analogy of a boat. If we were to imagine ourselves on a river then our
work obsessed culture tells us to constantly row harder and longer even when it's obvious
that it's not getting us anywhere. But Wu Wei means adjusting the sails of your boat so that
you can move with the current and the wind. And it means doing things in a way that maximizes the
effective use of your energy instead of needlessly wasting it by resisting the forces around you.
At this point you might be thinking this sounds all well and good, but how do i
actually implement this in my life? To answer that let's look at two closely related ideas: "flow"
and "divine timing." According to scholars of Wu Wei the state of effortless action often feels
like losing our sense of self, of becoming so completely absorbed in what we're doing,
that we forget everything around us. This bears a striking similarity to an idea known as the
"flow state" popularized by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in 1975. Flow is
a state of mind that exists between boredom and anxiety where you perform at your best,
and you're so engaged in what you're doing that you completely lose track of time. It's
a feeling of total immersion and energized focus. Athletes call it being "in the zone"
and when you're in this state, the work seems to flow from you effortlessly. One of the best ways
to find flow is to do work this is slightly harder than what's comfortable for you. If the task is
too easy then the mind quickly becomes bored and unmotivated, but if the task is too hard
then we give up due to frustration. The key is to find that point where we're slowly improving
through progressive challenges, just enough so that we stay interested. Scholars of Wu Wei
often describe it as a state of total harmony with something known as the Tao.
The Tao can roughly be translated as the path the direction or the way of the universe. When
you're in a state of Wu Wei you're in complete harmony with the Tao and with heaven's will. A
big part of Wu Wei and effortless action is the ability to wait for the precise moment to act,
when the timing is right. And we see it as a kind of alignment with the timing of the universe,
and a way of flowing with the cycles and forces of nature. In other words it's "divine timing."
If you're skeptical at this point you might be surprised to learn that research is beginning to
show that timing just might be the most overlooked factor in success. One study done by Bill Gross
which measured more than 200 companies found that timing was the most important
factor in whether a company was successful. More important than funding, execution, and
even the people running the business. For example, many smart investors completely passed on Airbnb
when it first launched, because they assumed no one would want to rent out space in their home
to a complete stranger. At the time, almost everyone thought that this was an absurd idea
for a business. But when Airbnb launched its website on August 11, 2008, it happened at the
height of the recession. At a time when people really needed extra money, and it
was precisely this need for extra income which helped them overcome their fears about renting
their homes to the public. It also happened at a time where people were finding it hard
to book hotels in saturated markets. The timing was perfect for Airbnb's success.
In the years that followed its valuation would go as high as 38 billion dollars.
On the other hand you've probably never heard of the online video streaming company z.com, because
it went out of business in 2003. But in 1999 it seemed like it should have been a sure success.
It had plenty of funding, a strong business model, and support from Hollywood talent. But
when it launched, it was still too complicated to watch videos online. Broadband technology
wasn't where it needed to be for video streaming to work. And so it went out of business. But just
two years later when the technology did become available, YouTube launched and overtook the whole
market. Today some investors estimate that YouTube could be worth as much as 300 billion dollars.
In the words of Victor Hugo, "nothing is stronger than an idea whose time has come." And in much the
same way, there's an optimal and divine timing in your life. A time for education or career,
a time for relationships, or a time for family. And we also find the principles of non-forcing and
divine timing in Numerology, which is based on the idea that everything we see around us is governed
by mathematical cycles. That we're all connected, and that everything exists in perfect synchrony.
One of the central insights in Numerology is that everything unfolds in its own time, that we can't
always make things happen on our schedule. We can only trust that things eventually fall into place
when the time is right. And what this means is that on a spiritual level,
wherever you are in your journey, you're always where you're supposed to be.
And from a soul perspective, your destiny always has a way of finding you. And if you'd
like to learn more about your numbers, have a look at this video. As always
thanks for watching, take care of yourselves, and i'll see you in the next video.