I have been contemplating my path recently. What else is new? I have been my entire life. But lately I’ve been able to cut myself some slack on perpetual “trying.”
All my life I’ve been told that I’m not trying hard enough. When I have tried, I’ve more or less hated putting forward the effort. When I haven’t tried, I’ve allowed myself to lable the experience as ‘depression.’ From here I had a bit of a breakthrough… it’s not new news, but a rehash of something I have briefly contemplated before.
*Is this something worth my effort?*
*Do I actually care about perfecting this?*
*Why do I care about perfecting this?*
*Is this something that I want to do or is it something that someone is hasseling or guilting me into trying?*
*Am I telling myself the story that I need to care about this in order to be loved?*
So here’s my best advice to myself…
**STOP**
**BREATHE**
**BE STILL**
**ASK WHY**
This is not a blast to stop myself from trying anything ever again, but it is a call to approach it from a different space. When something feels obligatory, it feels frantic and disregulating to my body. It feels like an urgent drive to do the thing to get the person off my back. I don’t enjoy starting new experiences like this.
I feel like a child again being told that I should try everything once and that I am lazy and non-conforming for not even wanting to. “You’re not even trying!” As if not being called to do something is a character flaw.
I understand that there is a period of time during which experiences are developmentally advantageous, but I also understand that where there is resistance there may be an experience or two that still needs to occur before something feels like a curiosity worth exploring.
This is different than fear. Fears can be sat with and worked through, this is more of a distinct feeling of “not for me right now.” Resistance. It feels like pushing through this might lead to fear of new things.
I know lately resistance is seen as some big issue to be resolved, but maybe resistance can be trusted as that intuitive message of “not for me right now.” Explore what’s driving the need to figure out the resistance right now. It might be a matter of waiting for other experiences to happen first. It might even be the experience is something that never comes around as something FOR you.
It’s a big ask to sit with what makes us feel the need to try, but I invite you to explore. Our society says that the things that are worth doing are worth suffering for… trying for… but I challenge that. The things that often make you feel best are engaging yet allow you to experience a flow state that is anything but that suffering/trying feeling. It shouldn’t be a completely destructive suffer-fest. I know that there’s merit in working hard at something, but I intuitively feel that trying too hard out of a sense of need or striving might be an indicator that what you’re doing isn’t working for you right now.
This is something to sit with. I’m sure there’s more nuance that I’m not accounting for, but it’s a start for an important exploration. Everybody is here for a purpose and maybe it’s time we start feeling peaceful and calm about what we are putting our energetic resources into.
