Why Are We Trying So Hard? The Ways Excessive Effort is Ruining Our Lives
There is a better way.
What I know is this: Trying harder didn’t make me feel better. It wasn’t until I made room to be who I was without all the trying that I saw a way forward—a way to exist hand in hand with my drive to create a beautiful existence and my fear of falling short.
Late last week, I was brainstorming topics for this edition of House Call, and nothing felt right. I’ve talked in the past about my “Goldilocking” tendency (I initially wrote about it here)—waiting for circumstances to be just right before getting started. I am forever in search of “just right,” and over the years, I’ve watched myself whittling my options down to the point of indecision. Last week was different, though. A new question popped up, offering an escape door to the never-good-enough lens I’ve worked through in life. As I parsed through ideas over and over again, I heard myself ask, Why am I trying so hard?
In every endeavor, I’ve always strived for “better.” It’s gotten me a lot of things I thought I wanted in this life. Even as things in the past year unraveled and revealed a whole new set of unmet needs, I never stopped trying for better in every area of my life, often without even realizing it. I’ll be doing something totally innocuous, like loading the dishwasher, and find myself thinking, This isn’t the right way to do this. You should know this by now. Do it differently. Do it better. Do it the right way. This way of thinking had become so intrinsically wound into every minute action that when I noticed it for the first time, I could barely perceive where my desire to perform stopped and my true self began. I couldn’t just stop trying, even once I consciously saw it as unnecessary.
So over the past few months, I have made it my job to listen and observe how I move through life. I wanted to watch myself, notice the judgment as I watch myself, and in the end, realize that even without all my try-harding, I am OK. Things are not falling apart. In doing so, I’ve started to unravel the motivation behind the extra effort and try-hardness. And even as I saw that I didn’t want to be exhausted by my own expectations, the idea of letting that go was terrifying. What would become of me if I let it all slide? I was terrified to find out. I still am.
When Excessive Effort Becomes Unsustainable
If your life has ever become so unmanageable that you’ve felt there was no choice but to look for a new way to move through the world, you know your circumstance is not for lack of trying. In fact, we’re the ones who try our hardest. More is always the answer. More effort, more grit, more fight, more angles. You were probably praised for never giving up. I bet you bristled at the title of this essay. I bristled writing it. But what I know is this: Trying harder didn’t make me feel better. It wasn’t until I made room to be who I was without all the trying that I saw a way forward—a way to exist hand in hand with my drive to create a beautiful existence and my fear of falling short.
At its core, this proclivity toward trying so hard is about maintaining a sense of control. We try so hard to build a life we love, and we think it'll slip away if we loosen our grip for just a second. But it doesn’t work that way. The life you’ve accumulated doesn’t just evaporate because you stop striving for better. It takes time and trust to know this for oneself, and my words can’t give you what you have to give yourself. But in sharing my experiences, you may begin to see yourself, to decipher where the blurred line between performing for acceptance and accepting yourself begins and ends.
Today I will explore a few questions that will hold different answers for each of us: What is the cost of all this overworking, overperforming, and overdoing? How can we hold the adaptive qualities of our drive and enjoy the fruits of our labor—not the output, but the accumulation of wisdom, skill, and efficiency we gain over time?
Why is it so hard to stop trying so hard?
And why is it embarrassing to admit we’re trying in the first place?
How Endless Striving Impacts Every Area of Life
We spend a lot of time trying to conceal the ways we’re exerting effort and control, which makes this conversation off-limits for many. We have spent years cultivating the appearance of ducks gliding on the surface of a pond while ferociously paddling under the surface. We’re winded, we’re tired, but no one can know. This double bind makes stepping out into a new way of being particularly difficult. It feels like you’ve failed not only yourself but also anyone who has come to depend on the facade.