How to have an amazing life by doing nothing?

A lot of this has to do with control, or, more precisely the illusion of control.

Many believe that "if I just do A, B will happen". Unfortunately, life isn't like that. For many, digging and digging will go nowhere if the "gold" just wasn't there to begin with.

The payoff you are seeking is really happiness, or satisfaction, right?

By working hard, you have probably achieved a great many things, but how much of this was truly entirely because you worked hard? Once you have achieved these things, do you sometimes wonder: now what? How comfortable are you with chance, happenstance, etc.? Were something wonderful to appear before you one day, would you be open enough and free enough from all your hard work, to notice it, or would you have blinders on in order to single-mindedly focus on your goals?

When someone tells you "Do nothing and good things will happen to you", the gist of this is that you may not be able to recognize when a good thing happens to you!

Here is an article that gets to the point.

As for "working hard" in relationships, again, what is it you are really trying to achieve? Are you trying to control your partner's (in your words, manipulate) reactions, or are you avoiding issues in the relationship that you believe can only be overcome with all of your hard work? Do you even allow your partner to contribute, or do you minimize their attempts to pitch in when you don't think it's being done "properly"?

It's a fallacy to believe that marriages are all about hard work, most of what is hard in marriages is sweating the small things and paying attention to the other when you may not feel like it. Listening to your partner, appreciating who she is, respecting who she is and who she wants to become, delighting in who she is...none of these things are hard work, per se.

 

There is a difference between being aggresive and assertive. There is nothing wrong with the second, while the first is pretty much your:bang: attitude. If something doesn't work, or it's not working as fast as you want it, then try something different, or simply accept that things take time. Don't let your own energy work against you. Getting angry or desesperate, or bitching, that doesn't solve anything.

This doesn't work... Ok, now I'm going to try something differen, what if...​

About relationships, I gave up long time ago expecting me to save a relationship. Either you take the responsability of being 50% there for good and bad, or I'll dismiss you / let the relationship just die / put gradually more and more distance between us. I don't speak anymore, I just show... With a dense annoying silence. It costs me nothing, and they usually get the message... Eventually... Some of them. (And if they don't, then they were not worth my time anyways)

I'm lucky because I'm normally not that interested on the other person, so I... I just don't care much. I don't think it's all my fault. We are all just too different from each other, and to find someone who fits 100%, or even a ridiculous 60%... It's just nearly impossible. Either you pick up something mediocre to spend some time with, or you just give up and enjoy whatever comes your way, without putting much effort. I'm sure I'll change with the years : I'll feel even more pressure from my enviroment to get coupled. I'll see my friends getting into that awful social contract. But by now I just don't give a damn : I had a couple of LT relationships that were worth five lifetimes, and I intend to keep it that way.

Career is another different story. Your career is practically your damned life : It pays the bills, gives a meaning, and after all you spend there most of your time, so it better be good.
Sucess depends that the match between your own personality and your field, being aware of the opportunities and... Sometimes being willing to take risks.

Let the Universe take care of you... That bunch of rich pseudohippies who live in Goa or Ibiza (or in your local posh neighbourhood) make a living out of selling books filled with such crap. There is too many of them. There is also too many hypocrites and fools who get a kick out of feeling oh so clever. Stop hanging around with them. I never hear you try too hard, I only hear wow so you did that?! How?!. I never tell anyone when I'm trying to reach a goal : I tell them when I'm already there. And of course, it's normal that you don't tell them what a hell has been, you just say well, it took some time and effort, but here I am, and I am proud.

Now there is a power in doing nothing : It's called resting, and you need it to function. You just need your energy back.

To expect all while giving nothing is however bs... Unless you just work in what you really love, then a big part of it comes naturally to you : Because you just push on that direction all the time.

 

I hear you. My situation has different details, but it sounds kind-of the same. I stubbornly spent over 10 years making it a personal mission to get into some meaningful relationship, spending way too much time on internet dating sites and such like. There were a couple of minor and medium successes, but the other 90% of the time I was single and constantly trying to learn from my past mistakes.

Yes! It has been very frustrating. I'd spend hours fine-tuning yet another on-line dating profile, double-checking the spelling and grammar, putting up nice photos, casually mentioning some of the things that make me interesting but without overdoing it. Or I would go speed-dating, paying some half-assed organiser so I could meet 10 to 15 painfully bad matches.

Meanwhile, everyone around me would mysteriously find boyfriends and girlfriends, and they would never be able to explain exactly what they did. "Oh, I was playing D&D as usual, and we just met". Doesn't that just make you mad as hell?

I think I've finally learned that love can't be forced. The world is filled with confused and often illiterate lovers, so if it seems too hard, then you're definitely doing something wrong. I'm swearing to myself that I'm never going to bother with on-line dating sites again for as long as I live. And the same goes for other contrived nonsense like speed-dating.

Since "giving up", I've felt a whole lot better about myself. I've had more me-time, and a few weird changes have occurred. For instance, I might be having a bad hair day, I go on public transport looking a bit unkempt, avoiding eye contact and even thinking about how much I honestly HATE all those people who I feel involuntarily attracted to, and would you know it? It works like a magnet. Yet if I TRY to look that way, the spell breaks and it doesn't work at all. I guess it has something to do with cultivating some inner feelings of self-worth, so that you do not want to succeed so badly.

 

Okay, this is my intake, based on personal experience: Luck favors those who are well prepared.
There's a latin saying that goes Audentes Fortuna Adiuvat, which means something like "Fortune favours the strong".

I barely ever study for a test with more than one day of antecipation, yet I usually get better grades than my colleagues, even if I don't really know much about the topic.
This happens because, for years, I used to study A FREAKING LOT. This developed my intelligence and a certain skill to "break" some questions and make it seem like I actually know what I'm talking about.

Also, I have been invited to perform and dance at events without applying for it. Technically, I did not do anything to be invited, but actually, I was invited because those people saw me perform before, so they liked it and invited me.

If you work on yourself and are prepared, you will be able to take a chance when it's presented to you.

 

On the other hand, why are you working on yourself? Are you doing it because that's what you would naturally do? Or because you want to attract someone?

In the past I've felt attracted to a couple of people who definitely weren't in top physical shape, but they made up for it by having confidence. Not just showy, fake confidence, but with a touch of vulnerability and self-acceptance. Maybe they weren't 100% comfortable in their own skin, but they stood up for themselves, and I found that really hot.


Also, if someone tells you to "get out of your comfort zone", ask them "but what IS my comfort zone? Do you know?". I'm starting to think there's no such thing, and it's just a made-up excuse so that adrenaline junkies can feel superior. Doesn't everyone naturally learn and explore the world to whatever extent they're able? There's even an internal warning system called "boredom" that automatically tells you when you're not doing enough. I'd go further and say that we should also trust our other warning systems like fear.

Sometimes I can overcome some fear and get a big sense of accomplishment, but that's my private business, nobody else's. Other people, including family, don't know my emotional levels, so they have no business telling me how I should live my life.

A related thought that comes to mind is, when is the last time you felt attracted to someone who was really pushing themselves? What if someone next to them was doing the same thing, like having a beginner dancing lesson, but instead of having 2 left feet, they were in their element and enjoying themselves? What's hotter, nervous wreck or goofy confidence?

 

This all works in cycles.
There is a cycle to think about what you want.
There is a cycle to rest.
And there is a cycle when things get done and are moving.

Its just what you see what happens. If something happens, it may be they have given it a lot of thought and some work before, and its just materializing.

If you try something and it does not work out, it usually is a sign it was not the right thing, or not the right time yet. This is not to say that you should not try again, or maybe to change something a bit.
But if there is a lot of resistance it might be advisable to take one step back and think about it.

Often if its right things just click into place.

 

I am one of the "stop looking for a relationship" people so I suppose I will step forward and try to explain. Sorry it's really long--it's amazing how having someone challenge what you sort of instinctively believe can help you formulate what exactly that is. So a big thanks to the OP for helping me do that.

I certainly don't think that success just rains down on people who "do nothing." However, I do think there is something to be said for living in the moment, working hard at being the best person you can be (for yourself) and being open to the possibilities that arise--and not letting a constant grasping for more intrude upon your peace. And as much as a younger me might have called it hippy dippy bullshit, the older I get the more firmly I believe that real happiness--happiness in the here and now that isn't waiting or striving for something more to be happy--draws more happiness to it. It seems like so many people are working so hard at being happy that they never stop and just... be happy.

It's interesting that thinking about this thread is actually the first time that I have thought about career along the same lines of how I think about relationships, the first time it really occurred to me the extent to which my job--which I love and where I make somewhere between twice and three times what I made at my last job (money isn't everything, but, hey, it's something)--just sort of fell in my lap once I stopped looking, just like my relationship.

I'll start with the job. So anyway as a young person I was pretty driven academically, career-wise all that--good grades, Ivy League education, the whole works. And then after college I came out and went to grad school and while I still loved the learning all that drive just didn't seem all that important any more--to be honest I think a lot of it was just sublimation any way. It all kind of faded into the background as I went looking for love. I'll get to that momentarily, but back to the job thing. So I got a job at a big bookstore. I didn't honestly think much about it. It was in the right neighborhood. The people were nice. I liked books. It paid the rent, whatever. It was fun and it didn't intrude on my real life. I was there for several years, gradually rising through the ranks and then one day I looked up and I was the manager of the store and it didn't feel like "just a job" any more, it felt like a career. And, to be honest, as a career it felt a little beneath me. In retrospect I see how silly that was but that's how it seemed at the time and so I kind of flailed about looking for a "real job." And nothing came of it. I beat my head against it for quite a while and just couldn't find anything that seemed right.

And then finally it occurred to me that I liked my job. I mean like really liked my job. As a bookish young boy who was socially awkward I loved books. Owning a bookstore had been sort of a dream of mine--and while I didn't own one I did run one. And it was fun. I loved the books and my customers and my employees. I got to see the Harry Potter books before anyone else. We threw midnight release parties where the kids dressed up as their favorite characters. We did promotion for Broadway in Chicago and I got to go to shows for free. I and my staff got advance copies of all the big new releases. I provided a nice place to shop and a nice place to work. It was fun--and so I made my peace with it, stopped looking for something else and did it the very best I could.

As it turns out that was about a year before I left the company, which as it turned out was about two years before the company folded. One day at work I got a call from a recruiter from a large investment banking firm. Apparently someone from the firm (I never did find out who--it's a really big company) had been a customer of mine at the shop. I don't know what I did for him or her but they were impressed and apparently sort of kept tabs on me for a while then asked the recruiter to call me. At first I wasn't going to even consider it. I didn't know anything about finance--my degrees are in religious studies. I told the recruiter as much. She responded that they would train me and would get me all my securities licenses and would pay me during the whole process. She insisted that they were confident that they could teach me all that, but, she said what they figured they couldn't teach was the ability to in very short order put people at ease and make them feel you had their best interest at heart, in short they couldn't teach people to genuinely and convincingly want to help people. The more I thought about it the more exciting and different and challenging it seemed. I gave my two weeks notice and never looked back.

So, well, relationship. And it now occurs to me that it's a pretty similar story. After I came out I looked for a relationship. I was determined, and I found one. We were together for a little over a year. We moved in with each other. We were perfect on paper, so much so that after we broke up most of our friends were convinced we would get back together. We worked at our relationship, we cultivated it, talked about it, treasured it. We were both thoroughly enamored of our relationship. We were best friends--it wasn't all fireworks and butterflies, but this wasn't infatuation it was a relationship. And in the end we both realized that we had so wanted to be in a relationship that we both had settled. Interestingly, while we were both alright with the fact that we had settled for the other, neither of us was alright with the fact that the other had settled for us.

So I dated around, but with less intent. Sure in the back of my mind I was looking for my Prince Charming, but I tried not to think about it--I'd seen where that led. And I just met interesting people and did interesting things and had a wonderful time of it for a few years and then I sort of stopped thinking about it. I eventually decided that maybe I just wasn't a relationship guy and finally really and truly decided I was alright with that. I had a joyous life full of loving people and exciting pursuits and well there you go. And then, of course, I met him. I literally saw him across a crowded bar and knew it was him. It's been seventeen years and it's all fireworks and butterflies and we've seen each other through some pretty awful things but, you know, it's never been work, not at all. Becoming the kind of person who was ready to recognize him and be with him well that was a lot of work. But from that very first moment, being with him has never been any work at all...

 

Now that's inspirational, @OGS! Then again, I'm not sure if I should be "hopeful" or if there's no escape from learning my lesson the hard way...

That year-long "serious relationship" sounds a lot like my story. Mine was OK, a bit of compromising, a bit of planning and we got along like mature adults, but there was this niggling doubt in the back of my mind that something wasn't right. It wasn't passionate or exciting, and it slowly got stifling. Putting it bluntly, it was like a glorified friends-with-benefits thing, with additional responsibilities like dates, dinners and activities because that's apparently how it was supposed to be.

After things ended, I still had that MUST FIND RELATIONSHIP NOW! mindset. A large part of me still desperately wants one right now, even though I've sworn them off.