The Uncarved Block: Why Your Greatest Enemy Is Your Unwillingness to Change

Imagine discovering that the very thing making you feel secure—your established patterns, proven strategies, and comfortable beliefs—is actually the prison keeping you from the life you want.

That every day you resist change, you’re becoming more like a beautiful but static sculpture while the world flows around you like water, leaving you increasingly irrelevant and isolated.

This is the warrior’s ultimate paradox: the strength that comes from mastery can become the weakness that prevents further growth.

One of my favorite passages from the book, 365 Tao captures this perfectly.

In passage 281, “Uncarved,” a father teaches his son about the nature of possibility and limitation through a visit to a wood carver’s workshop.

Here is the opening poem of the daily passage:

Surrounded by beautiful carved pieces and stocks of wood in various stages of completion, the father explains that his son is like fresh wood—full of possibility and opportunity.

He himself is like one of the finished pieces—with wonderful accomplishments but also some faults that cannot be undone.

This metaphor has haunted me for years because it captures something profound about human potential: every choice we make carves away some possibility while creating something specific.

The tragedy isn’t in the carving—it’s in forgetting that we still have wood left to shape.

Recently, I learned about the concept of the “Overton window”—the range of ideas considered acceptable in public discourse at any given time.

What fascinates me is that this window constantly shifts.

Ideas once considered radical become mainstream, while former orthodoxies become obsolete.

In many ways, it’s just a Western perspective on the yin/yang dynamic that Asia has understood for thousands of years—the constant flow and change that defines existence.

The warriors who thrive across decades aren’t those who perfect a single form—they’re those who maintain enough of the “uncarved block” to adapt to an ever-changing world.

The Sculpture vs. The Stream

After four decades of martial arts training, business building, and life experience, I’ve observed two fundamentally different approaches to existence:

The Sculpture Approach: People who believe they should perfect themselves into a finished form and then maintain that form indefinitely.

They invest enormous energy in becoming really good at specific things, then spend the rest of their lives protecting those competencies from any threat of change.

The Stream Approach: People who understand that they are part of a flowing system that requires constant adaptation.

They develop core principles and values that remain constant, but they continuously evolve their methods, strategies, and even identities based on changing circumstances.

The sculpture people become increasingly irrelevant over time. The stream people become increasingly powerful.

The Overton Window of Personal Change

The Overton window concept—originally used to describe political discourse—applies perfectly to personal development.

Each of us has our own “window” of changes we consider acceptable or possible for ourselves.

For most people, this window is tragically narrow:

• Physical changes: “I’m too old to start martial arts”
• Career changes: “I can’t learn new technology at my age”
• Relationship changes: “This is just how I am in relationships”
• Mental changes: “I’m not a math person” or “I’m not creative”
• Spiritual changes: “I don’t believe in that stuff”

The warriors I most admire have learned to deliberately expand their personal Overton window—constantly increasing the range of changes they consider possible and desirable.

My Own Carving Journey

Looking back over my life, I can see the progression of my own “carving”—the ways I’ve been shaped by choices, experiences, and circumstances:

The Hawaii Years (Youth): Like fresh wood, full of possibility but also constrained by limited options. The isolation that seemed like a limitation actually preserved my potential by preventing premature specialization.

The Los Angeles Years (20s-30s): Major carving began. Construction work shaped my work ethic and problem-solving abilities. Martial arts training carved discipline and philosophical perspective. Meeting Amy fundamentally changed my understanding of relationships and partnership.

The Business Building Years (40s-50s): Learning to think strategically rather than just tactically. Developing systems thinking. Understanding leverage and delegation. These carvings built on earlier foundations while adding new dimensions.

The Teaching Years (50s-60s): A major shift from doing to teaching, from individual achievement to helping others achieve. This required developing entirely new skill sets while leveraging decades of accumulated experience.

Each phase required me to expand my personal Overton window—to consider changes that seemed impossible or undesirable in the previous phase.

The Attachment Trap

The biggest obstacle to continued growth isn’t inability to change—it’s attachment to who we’ve already become.

Every identity we develop, every skill we master, every achievement we accumulate becomes a potential prison if we’re not willing to transcend it.

I’ve seen this pattern repeatedly:

The Construction Foreman who was incredibly successful in his 40s but couldn’t adapt to new technologies and management approaches in his 50s. His expertise became his limitation.

The Martial Artist who spent decades perfecting one art but couldn’t adapt when MMA showed the limitations of single-discipline training. His mastery became his blindness.

The Entrepreneur who built a successful business using pre-internet methods but couldn’t evolve when digital transformation became essential. His proven strategies became his downfall.

In each case, the person’s greatest strength—their deep expertise and proven track record—became the source of their resistance to necessary change.

The Yin/Yang of Stability and Change

The ancient yin/yang symbol represents one of the most profound insights into the nature of existence: all things contain their opposite, and sustainable systems require the dynamic balance of opposing forces.

In personal development, this translates to:

Yang (Stability): The need for consistent principles, core values, reliable patterns, and accumulated wisdom. Without this, you become scattered and ineffective.

Yin (Change): The need for adaptation, learning, evolution, and responsiveness to new circumstances. Without this, you become rigid and irrelevant.

The art is in maintaining dynamic balance between these forces—staying true to your core while remaining open to evolution.

The Flow Channel of Change

Just as there’s an optimal level of stress for growth, there’s an optimal rate of change for development:

Too Little Change: Stagnation, irrelevance, missed opportunities. You become like a tree that stops growing—technically alive but not truly living.

Too Much Change: Chaos, loss of identity, inability to build on previous learning. You become like a leaf in the wind—constantly moving but never developing depth.

Optimal Change: Continuous evolution that builds on previous foundation while adapting to new circumstances. You become like a river—always flowing, always changing, but maintaining essential character.

The key is learning to calibrate your rate of change based on your current life phase, external circumstances, and long-term goals.

The Warrior’s Change Strategy

Through decades of observation and experience, I’ve identified several strategies that allow warriors to maintain adaptability throughout their lives:

Principle-Based Identity

Instead of defining yourself by what you do, define yourself by your core principles and values. “I am a construction worker” becomes “I am someone who solves practical problems.”

This allows you to change methods while maintaining identity.

Beginner’s Mind Practice

Regularly engage in activities where you’re a complete beginner.

This keeps your learning muscles active and prevents the arrogance that comes from expertise in one area.

Future Backwards Thinking

Instead of extrapolating from the past, imagine where you want to be in 5-10 years and work backwards to identify what changes are necessary.

Experimental Mindset

Approach changes as experiments rather than permanent commitments. This reduces the psychological resistance to trying new approaches.

Weak Signal Detection

Develop the ability to notice early indicators of change in your environment before they become overwhelming forces.

Core Plus Edge Strategy

Maintain a stable core of proven capabilities while continuously experimenting at the edges with new approaches and ideas.

The Stages of Change Resistance

Understanding the psychology of change resistance helps in developing strategies to overcome it:

Stage 1: Denial

• “This change isn’t really necessary.”
• “Things will go back to the way they were.”
• “This is just a fad.”

Stage 2: Anger

• “This is stupid.”
• “They’re ruining everything.”
• “The old way was better.”

Stage 3: Bargaining

• “Maybe I can make small adjustments without really changing.”
• “If I just work harder at what I’m already doing…”

Stage 4: Depression

• “I’m too old to change.”
• “I’ll never be as good at the new way.”
• “What’s the point?”

Stage 5: Acceptance

• “This change is happening whether I like it or not.”
• “I need to figure out how to adapt.”

Stage 6: Integration

• “I can see opportunities in this change.”
• “I’m actually getting good at this new approach.”

The goal is to move through these stages as quickly as possible when facing necessary changes.

The Modern Change Imperative

Today’s world presents unique challenges that make adaptability more crucial than ever:

Technological Acceleration: The pace of technological change means that specific skills become obsolete faster than ever.

Economic Volatility: Career paths that seemed stable for decades can disappear overnight.

Social Transformation: Cultural norms and social expectations shift rapidly, requiring constant recalibration.

Information Overload: The ability to distinguish signal from noise and adapt strategies based on new information becomes essential.

Global Competition: You’re no longer competing just with people in your local area but with talent worldwide.

Longevity Increase: People are living and working longer, requiring multiple career reinventions within a single lifetime.

In this environment, the ability to change isn’t a nice-to-have skill—it’s a survival requirement.

The Uncarved Block Practice

Here’s how to maintain your capacity for change throughout your life:

Daily Questions:

• “What assumption am I making today that might no longer be true?”
• “What small experiment could I try that might teach me something new?”
• “Where am I clinging to old methods because they’re comfortable rather than effective?”

Weekly Practice:

• Engage in one activity where you’re a complete beginner
• Read or listen to perspectives that challenge your current thinking
• Reflect on one area where you might be becoming too rigid

Monthly Assessment:

• Evaluate whether your current strategies are still serving your goals
• Identify one significant change you’ve been avoiding and make a plan to address it
• Seek feedback from people who will tell you hard truths about where you need to evolve

Annual Review:

• Conduct a comprehensive assessment of what worked and what didn’t in the past year
• Identify major trends in your environment that might require significant adaptations
• Plan one major evolution or reinvention for the coming year

The Paradox of Mastery

Here’s the ultimate paradox: true mastery isn’t about perfecting a fixed form—it’s about developing the capacity to continuously evolve that form in response to changing circumstances.

The master carpenter isn’t someone who can make one perfect chair repeatedly.

It’s someone who can adapt their skills to create whatever the situation requires—chairs, tables, houses, sculptures—while maintaining the fundamental principles of good craftsmanship.

The master warrior isn’t someone who perfects one fighting style.

It’s someone who can adapt to any opponent, any environment, any set of rules, while maintaining the fundamental principles of effective combat.

The master leader isn’t someone who has one perfect leadership style.

It’s someone who can adapt their approach to different people, different situations, different organizational phases, while maintaining the fundamental principles of human motivation and achievement.

Your Change Challenge

The question isn’t whether change is coming—it is.

The question is whether you’ll be a conscious participant in your own evolution or a victim of forces beyond your control.

Start with this assessment:

1. What aspects of your current approach to life/work/relationships are no longer serving you?
2. What changes have you been avoiding because they threaten your current identity or comfort zone?
3. What would you attempt if you knew you could adapt and learn whatever was necessary?
4. Where are you clinging to “the way things have always been” instead of embracing “the way things are becoming”?
5. What experiment could you start this week to begin expanding your personal Overton window?

The Bottom Line

The father in the Tao story was both right and wrong.

Yes, we all have aspects of ourselves that are “carved” and difficult to change.

But the biggest mistake is thinking we’re completely carved, that our capacity for growth and adaptation is finished.

Every day you wake up, you still have some uncarved wood left.

The question is whether you’ll use it wisely.

The world is changing whether you participate or not.

The Overton window of what’s possible and necessary keeps shifting.

You can either flow with these changes, adapting and evolving while maintaining your core principles, or you can resist until the current overwhelms you.

The warriors who thrive across decades aren’t the most talented or the most initially successful.

They’re the ones who maintain enough of the uncarved block to continue growing, learning, and adapting throughout their lives.

Your next carving awaits.

The only question is whether you’ll pick up the chisel yourself or let circumstances carve you randomly.

Choose wisely.

Your future self depends on the choices you make today about who you’re willing to become tomorrow.