171. How can being hard block the easy flow of Qi?

There was a time once, in the Western world that if you worked hard, it would get you somewhere in life. Then the rules and systems changed and working hard wasn't enough. In America, the doctrine of working hard got reworked as hustling for a living. While in Australia, some people try to persist with footy slogans like 'Go hard or Go home!' As an energy worker by way of Qigong, I find myself questioning these sayings and beliefs by asking, what do they actually mean? What does it mean to live by them, day in and day out as the norm? And can a person live true to them if nobody else does? It turns out that most people, especially those that love to quote these sayings, tend to live by them superficially. They pay lip service to them in the hopes that others will do the hard yards instead of them. I know this because I'm one of those people who like to post the slogans on my bedroom wall while committing to experiencing what it actually means to live by them. To live by them, it sucks. And it sucks because in order to live by them, one has to change their reality so that it can hold true. For example, if you believe hard work is required to get ahead, it means that to be true, your work must be hard. It can never by its very definition get easier. In fact, as you get more successful, the work only gets harder. Now, if by some chance the hardness of the work stays the same, the work relative to your skill level will seem to get easier. So in order to hold up the virtue of hard work, you end up consciously or unconsciously creating situations where the work becomes hard again. If it's a conscious thing, then we can define the parameters in which to live it. And then like rock climbing for rock climbers, it can be a way to excel. However, most people do not have defined parameters and are conditioned to live it unconsciously. Which means everything becomes hard work including the things that a person would love to remain easy. As a master of Qigong, when I actively cultivate my qi, the people who are closest to me become proficient in qi as well. Albeit in a more passive form until their own qi is large enough for the effects to be experientially noticed by those around them. When that happens, we become highly sensitive to our beliefs and how we want to experience the world around us. For example, recently I had to drive my wife to work and one of my daughter's to school. In the morning drive, we allowed plenty of time to do both and because of the Coronavirus, traffic was meant to be 'light'. However my daughter became agitated because the usual routine wasn't adhered to. As a result, the more worked up she got the heavier the traffic got. It got so bad, that her mum had to tell her off with extreme language so that my daughter would stop her fretting. Once she realised what she was manifesting, she calmed down and the heavy traffic melted away and everybody got to their destination with time to spare. The best bit about the experience, was that it was measurable by counting the number of cars on the road during rush hour and how long one had to wait at the traffic lights. The difference between cars jamming up and there being hardly any was significant. Significant enough for me to be ending up telling you about it. Now just to be clear, not being hard does not mean being soft. Nor does being easy mean you are lazy. Soft is soft and hard is hard. Understand these things and what I've said previously will make better sense.