Now put them into categories as you see fit. The research psychologist Nick Hobson says that there are two distinct ways of thinking – analytic and holistic. If you choose to put together the dog and the rabbit and leave the carrot out as an odd man out due to it not being an animal, you’re an analytic thinker. If you paired together the rabbit and a carrot, due to the internal relationship of rabbits enjoying nibbling on carrots, you’re a holistic thinker.

This difference is the main cultural difference of the Western and Eastern thought. In the West you are taught to rationalize the world around you, to have rules and regulations governing your reality that fit in a neat box and that can be applied to everything, you look for the object itself and concentrate on the physical. This can do wonders for some tasks but suggest that there is an instant solution or a category for everything, and when solution is not found we tend to invent one, a narrative that might have nothing to do with reality. This is why not knowing is worse than even bad news.

But the East sees things not as separate objects to be looked at and dissected but as a series of interconnected RELATIONSHIPS, as to say a Westerner would stare at a single tree while the Easterner will contemplate the internal relationships of everything in the forest. Neither is completely right or completely wrong, they are a yin-yang see-saw which, if understood and implemented correctly, could greatly improve your life. In the event, distraction and action ridden world today when you get overwhelmed sometimes the best thing to do is… nothing. “Wu-wei” would in rough translation mean something as “non-action”. Not as a lazy passivity but as a recognition that sometimes you just need to be and go through it, not forcing, not fighting the real, not trying to subdue the outcome to yourself by action.

“Wu wei” is an art of paying close attention to all that is going on and remain unshaken by it, working with the situation not against it, like you would do in the martial arts of judo or aikido, letting you opponent basically defeat and tire himself out while using his force against him. You’re doing nothing offensive yet are winning. This is “wu-wei” and it could save you a lot of pain and useless wastes of energy. Learn some self-control and when in doubt do nothing for a while. Everything is just nothing with a twist.