 | For our February Topic of Conversation, Trying to Stop Trying, we are continuing to explore how and why we get caught in this belief. How many of us have traditionally begun the new year with a ‘new year’s resolution’? We decide that we’re going to start the year with a renewed intention, setting ourselves up trying to achieve that which we didn’t achieve last year. |
There are heaps of new year’s resolutions we can no doubt relate to, i.e., ‘I’m going to lose X kilos by March’, ‘I’m going to finish my diploma by June’, ‘I’m going to be a better person this year and not fight with my partner or mother’, and on they go.
However, the very nature of trying brings a hardness into our body and puts us into drive which ultimately exhausts us. So, what is it about trying and why do we constantly find ourselves trying hard to get the job done, trying to achieve this and that, and trying to be better in some way?
There’s an ideal in our society that to succeed one must achieve. We must be well educated, have a great career and do well at it. Whatever our choice of career or desire, it has generally meant striving to achieve it. Trying has been championed, but at what expense to our general health; and it appears to have saturated our lives with devastating results. Caffeine and sugar usage is through the roof as people, feeling exhausted, try to get through another day.
If we look back at how we’ve been in our life and focus on how we’ve lived in just one day, we will no doubt find that we’ve been trying most of the day. To simply get out of bed, go for our walk, eat breakfast (if we made time to do that) and prepare for work, many of us would have been rushing about before we even left the house let alone the drive that we went into during our working day.
Has this momentum set us up to continue the trying even after we retire from work, leaving us unable to deeply rest and live more surrendered in our bodies?
For those of us who are still in the workforce, are we still trying and still exhausting ourselves or have some of us realised the folly of this and found a more supportive and healthy way to move through our day? We would love to hear your experience.
This month there are two incredibly insightful articles where the authors are sharing their observations, ‘What Makes us Want to Try?’ and ‘Trying = Effort'.
However, the very nature of trying brings a hardness into our body and puts us into drive which ultimately exhausts us. So, what is it about trying and why do we constantly find ourselves trying hard to get the job done, trying to achieve this and that, and trying to be better in some way?
There’s an ideal in our society that to succeed one must achieve. We must be well educated, have a great career and do well at it. Whatever our choice of career or desire, it has generally meant striving to achieve it. Trying has been championed, but at what expense to our general health; and it appears to have saturated our lives with devastating results. Caffeine and sugar usage is through the roof as people, feeling exhausted, try to get through another day.
If we look back at how we’ve been in our life and focus on how we’ve lived in just one day, we will no doubt find that we’ve been trying most of the day. To simply get out of bed, go for our walk, eat breakfast (if we made time to do that) and prepare for work, many of us would have been rushing about before we even left the house let alone the drive that we went into during our working day.
Has this momentum set us up to continue the trying even after we retire from work, leaving us unable to deeply rest and live more surrendered in our bodies?
For those of us who are still in the workforce, are we still trying and still exhausting ourselves or have some of us realised the folly of this and found a more supportive and healthy way to move through our day? We would love to hear your experience.
This month there are two incredibly insightful articles where the authors are sharing their observations, ‘What Makes us Want to Try?’ and ‘Trying = Effort'.