I Stopped Obsessively Chasing What I Want

Here’s What Happened

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There was a time when I thought the world operated like a vending machine: insert effort, press the right button, and out pops the life you ordered. That belief system worked for a while until it didn’t.

At that point, I began noticing something subtle but powerful: the more I tried to make things happen, the more the very thing I wanted for myself slipped away. Paradoxically, the more I surrendered, the more life handed me unexpected, exquisite gifts.

This wasn’t laziness or passivity. It was a deep, soulful surrender to the Tao—the flow of life that animates everything. As I walked further down the path of Taoism and consulted the I Ching in moments of doubt, a truth crystallized: the universe doesn’t respond to your effort. It responds to your state of being.

Letting Go of the Grind

I remember a season of my life where I was grinding hard, chasing freelance contracts, constantly networking, refreshing inboxes, and playing the “hustle” game. And yet, everything felt uphill. Dry wells. Dead-end connections. Missed opportunities.

One morning, I sat down in quiet meditation and asked the I Ching for guidance. The reading? Hexagram 24 – Return. It told me to come back to myself. To rest. To trust. To stop striving.

That week, I did something radical—I stopped pushing. I took long walks. I read the Tao Te Ching. I called friends for no reason. I showed up to life without a hidden agenda. And wouldn’t you know it? A major writing contract I had long given up on came back around. Invitations poured in from unexpected places. The flow returned—not because I chased it, but because I realigned with it.

The Law of Surrender and Non-Attachment

We are conditioned to want things so badly that we cling to them like oxygen. But the Tao teaches that clinging is a form of resistance. When we hold on too tightly, we cut ourselves off from flow. I’ve watched desires die on the vine from overwatering. I’ve watched miracles unfold the moment I whispered, “I release this.”

Surrender isn’t resignation. It’s supreme trust. It’s standing in your truth while letting go of how it’s supposed to arrive. In Taoist thought, this is Wu Wei—non-forcing, non-grasping, effortless alignment. You become like water: fluid, adaptable, and impossibly powerful.

Five Wisdom Jewels for Manifesting Through Being

☀️ Desire Without Demand

I’ve learned to want things without needing them to prove my worth. Whether it was a new relationship, a new city, or a new chapter in life, the moment I stopped trying to own the desire and instead simply honor it, it found its way to me—often better than imagined.

☀️ Your Vibration Is the Real Work

The universe doesn’t check your résumé. It tunes into your vibration. When I focus on feeling the way I want to feel—free, alive, aligned—those very feelings begin to echo outward, drawing situations, people, and ideas into my orbit. Not by effort. By resonance.

☀️ Act, Then Let Go

Action is part of the dance, but it’s not the whole dance. After I send the pitch, make the call, take the risk, I now let go. I release it into the river and trust the current. Some things come back. Others don’t. But I am always returned to myself, which is where the real magic begins.

☀️ Live as if It’s Already Yours

Before I ever publish anything, I wake up and write like I already had an audience. Life responds to embodiment, not desperation. Wu Wei isn’t passive, it’s embodied allowing.

☀️ Follow the Invitations, Not the Scripts

We’re all handed scripts—how to succeed, how to love, how to plan five years ahead. I’ve found that freedom lives in improvisation. Every major breakthrough in my life came when I followed a hunch, a whisper, a wild intuition. Like the Tao, truth moves in curves, not straight lines.

The I Ching, Wu Wei, and My Life as a Living Experiment

In all this, the I Ching remains my sacred companion. Not as a fortune cookie oracle, but as a dynamic mirror. It has affirmed for me time and again that timing is everything—and timing isn’t controlled by effort. It is sensed through attunement.

The I Ching teaches us to act in harmony with the changing tides of life. To strike not when we want to, but when the moment is ripe.

In retrospect, all the most extraordinary things I’ve brought into my life—soul friendships, creative breakthroughs, even quiet moments of deep self-love—have come not through force, but through alignment. Not through sweat, but through surrender. Not through certainty, but through curiosity.

I no longer see manifestation as something I do. It’s something I become. I become the kind of person who joyfully attracts the life they desire by living in harmony with the Tao, embodying the very essence of what I seek. And I let the rest fall into place as it will.

So I invite you—gently, powerfully—to ask yourself:

What if you stopped chasing your desires, and started becoming the version of you who naturally receives them?

That, my friend, is the Tao of manifesting.