The true brilliance here isn't that thoughts matter—most of us know that—but rather that Lao Tzu is describing a *mechanical process*, not a moral lecture. He's saying there's no willpower required at the endpoint; if you've genuinely watched your thoughts, the rest follows like dominoes. A person who catches themselves catastrophizing about a work presentation doesn't need stern resolve to avoid snapping at their family that evening; the attention itself interrupts the chain. It's why therapists ask clients to merely *notice* their anxiety rather than fight it—observation becomes the intervention, not some force of character applied later.