Mind and feeling
Wang Yangming
Knowing is doing
Wang Yangming (Ming · 1472–1529) — Knowing is doing.
What actually happened?
In 1506 he offended a powerful eunuch, was beaten in open court and exiled to Longchang in Guizhou — a malarial posting on the edge of the empire where he had to build his own shelter and grow his own food. The officials sent there mostly died. He had a stone coffin made and slept beside it, on the reasoning that the only thing he had not yet let go of was the fear of dying. One night he woke shouting. The way of the sage is complete within my own nature — he had spent twenty years looking outside for something that was not out there.
The mind is the principle
The meaning and value of a thing arrive with the mind that meets it. Practically, this moves the standard: your judgement doesn't come from an external authority that has to be consulted before you may act.
Knowing and doing are one
'I know I should get up early' from someone who never does is not knowledge, it's an idea about knowledge. Real knowing shows up in the body. This is the sentence he is most quoted for and the one most often quoted without being applied.
The hardest campaign is interior
He never lost a battle, and wrote from the field that breaking the bandits in the hills is easy and breaking the ones in the heart is hard. What actually stops people is fear, laziness, vanity and self-deception — none of which appears on any plan.
How do I use it today?
When a team knows what to do and doesn't do it, the problem is usually not execution. Either they don't actually believe it matters, or the incentives point elsewhere. Fix what they believe before you talk about delivery.
Deep read
Read alongside
Further
Lines to keep
Without a settled aim, nothing in the world gets finished.