The “Useless” Parts of You Are Actually Your Hidden Superpower
Let’s be honest:
You were not born to be useful.
Not in the way our hyper-optimised world defines it.
You weren’t put here to monetise your hobbies, brand your personality, or justify your existence in bullet points.
But in a culture obsessed with performance, productivity, and personal “growth,” that’s the exact pressure we all feel every day.
And it’s not just exhausting you.
It’s eroding something sacred.
The Cult of Usefulness Is Quietly Breaking Your Spirit
You know the symptoms:
✹ Guilt for resting—even when you’re completely depleted
✹ Shame around the parts of you that can’t be monetised, scaled, or explained
✹ An anxious whisper in your mind: “If I’m not useful… what am I for?”
This isn’t a personal failure.
It’s cultural programming.
From school to salary reviews, you’ve been trained to believe that value = output.
That presence must be justified by performance.
That your worth must be earned.
But Taoist wisdom and The Strategy of No Strategy offer a radical correction:
What the world calls “useless” may be the most indestructible, sacred, and essential part of who you are.
The taoist parable that could set you free
Zhuangzi, the wildly subversive Taoist sage, tells the story of a massive, gnarled tree.
Its trunk was twisted. Its branches too crooked.
Carpenters rejected it as “useless.”
But precisely because of that uselessness it was never cut down.
It grew old. It spread wide. It offered shade, sanctuary, and stillness to everything beneath it.
It survived.
It thrived.
Not by being “productive,” but by being unusable—and utterly itself.
Zhuangzi ends with a grin:
“Uselessness can be its own kind of protection.”
And maybe even its own kind of genius.
What This superpower Looks Like (If You’re Brave Enough to Notice)
That part of you that doesn’t “scale”?
The slow, soft, playful, weird, or deeply impractical part?
That’s not your flaw.
That might be the root of your clarity, your creativity, and your most original power.
The Tao doesn’t reward speed.
It honours alignment.
In a world addicted to usefulness, your unbranded self—
the one with no hashtag, no output, no agenda…is the one closest to truth.
the question that changed everything
Years ago, someone asked me:
“What would you be if you stopped trying to be impressive?”
I had no answer.
Because I didn’t know who I was without the performance.
For years, I had been proving my value.
Striving. Shaping. Achieving.
And underneath it all?
A quiet fear that if I stopped being useful—I’d disappear.
But the Tao doesn’t ask for proof.
It invites you to return.
To the deep self beneath all that striving.
To the part of you that’s already whole.
what happens if you embrace the “useless” you
✹ You stop contorting. Your breath slows. Your body softens.
✹ You create without agenda. Not for validation—but for joy.
✹ Your relationships become real. Not impressive. Not strategic. Just human.
✹ You remember what it feels like to exist without explaining.
And in that stillness—something real begins to move.
You stop trying to be a machine.
You remember you are a living being.
try this today: the practice of radical uselessness
Do something with no outcome.
Doodle. Wander. Lie on the floor and watch the ceiling.
Not because it’s good for you—but because you want to.
Reclaim a part of yourself that doesn’t "add value."
Something you loved before someone told you it was a waste of time.
Let one thing today stay unresolved.
Watch what happens when you don’t fix it. Often, life softens on its own.
Ask this: “If I stopped trying to be useful for one day… who would I discover I already am?”
Then listen. Not with your mind. With your body.
Want to RECLAIM THE POWER of Your UNBRANDED Self?
Read The Strategy of No Strategy ; your modern Taoist guide to clarity, rhythm, and real inner strength.
Inside, you’ll find:
✹ The “useless tree” parable, reimagined for now
✹ My own story of unravelling under the pressure to perform
✹ Practices that free you from proving—and guide you back to presence
✹ The quiet, revolutionary strength of being whole without explanation
Discover the Superpower You Were Never Asked to Show
Know someone exhausted by the pressure to perform their worth?
Share this. Tag them with compassion.
Remind them:
You don’t have to be useful to be worthy.
You don’t need to impress anyone to be powerful.
Your uselessness might be your greatest wisdom.