We tend to trust the skills of automatic people

When it comes to sports, the best athletes are the ones that appear to do things without thinking — and it’s true. As explained in the book “ Trying Not to Try “, the more automatically you can perform a task, the better you’ll likely perform at it.

This is also why people often choke under pressure. Rather than just lining up and doing their thing, they really stop and think about what they’re doing, which isn’t always helpful.

In the book, author Edward Slingerland simply says this:

Moreover, we are attracted to people in wu-wei (“effortless action”) because we trust the automatic, unconscious mind.

It reminds me of the birth of our second daughter in 2006. The doctor came in to perform an epidural on my wife, and his approach was noteworthy. While he was working on this important (and somewhat scary) procedure, he was casually chatting with me about the Braves game from the previous night!

My wife wasn’t too concerned with what he had to say, as she just wanted to the procedure to be finished, but it gave me a surprising amount of confidence in his ability. I felt that confidence at the time, but didn’t really understand why until later.

His “wu-wei” is what did it — he’s done this many times before, he knows what he’s doing, and he…