“If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.” — W.C. Fields
Everybody wants to change something about their lives. It may be a relatively small and straightforward change. Perhaps you would like to spend a little more time with your family, get to the gym more consistently or be more productive at work. Or you might be considering a larger change you are considering. Perhaps you feel lonely and want to expand your network of friends or deepen the intimacy you share with loved ones. Maybe you have not quite lived up to some of your own hopes and expectations and want to find the courage to live more of the life you secretly dream of.
We know that people do make substantial changes in their lives every day, from the ordinary to the dramatic; from scheduling a long-delayed physical to surviving cancer, from learning how to live within their means to turning around the fortunes of a failing business, from revitalizing their sexual relationship to leaving an abusive marriage. On the other hand, some life changes can seem inexplicably difficult to make, and maddeningly challenging to maintain. For example, about 600,000 people have coronary bypasses every year in the United States, but two years after surgery, only ten percent of those patients maintain the lifestyle change necessary to help keep them alive.
There are two broad approaches to changing the course of your life. If you browse the self-help section of your local bookstore, you will find a variety of books suggesting you can change your life simply by trying harder. Trying harder is about taking action and changing from the outside-in, changing how you act or changing the external circumstances of your life in order to change yourself. Whether it is dating, dieting or dealing with a job crisis, we like to believe we can change just about anything if we are only willing to work hard enough. As the Nike ads command, “Just do it.”
If you move over to the spirituality section of the same bookstore, you will find books offering the opposite advice. These books suggest that being committed to trying harder is part of what prevents you from changing, and you have to stop trying so hard in order to change your life. Not trying so hard is about changing from the inside-out, accepting yourself internally in order to change how you act or change the external circumstances of your life. Prayer, psychotherapy and meditation are all examples of change through not trying so hard.
While trying harder is often a powerfully effective way to change your life, times also arise when you are just not going to get where you are headed no matter how hard you try. For example, some couples spend years exhausting every outside-in means available to conceive a child, and then are pleasantly surprised to learn they are pregnant soon after giving up on the idea of having a biological child. Same biology, the only thing that changed was the couples’ internal shift in deciding to stop trying so hard.
Having something “on the tip of your tongue” is an everyday example; the harder you try to remember what you were thinking of, the less likely you are to remember, but as soon as you stop trying so hard it usually pops right into your head.
It is difficult for us to imagine that trying harder will not succeed eventually. As Vince Lombardi said, “Winners never quit, and quitters never win.” Despite his iconic status, Lombardi actually got it wrong.
Research suggests people who quit in the face of unobtainable goals suffered fewer health problems and showed fewer signs of psychological stress than those who resisted quitting. Persisting in trying harder can not only be ineffective; it can actually make things worse by creating a backlash, which occurs when you blame yourself for failing to change something that seems simple and straightforward on the outside but is actually very complex internally. For example, believing losing weight is simple because all you have to do is eat less and exercise is a dangerous over-simplification that can lead to weight gain rather than loss.
Our reluctance to embrace not trying so hard reflects an underlying puritanical distrust of ourselves. On some levels, we believe if we do not push ourselves, that we will not do what we need to do to change. To change by not trying so hard we have to let go of our plans and agendas and follow our deeper internal wisdom, allowing the natural process of change to unfold in often unanticipated and mysterious ways.
Why is trying harder effective for some people and not for others? Would everyone eventually be able to change if they persisted in trying harder, or do we sometimes get stuck in a revolving door and will never change no matter how hard we try? Would not trying so hard work for everyone if he or she stuck with it, or are there times when you just have to dig in and push yourself to change?
Extensive psychological research makes it clear that the most effective path is learning how to integrate the two approaches. To make effective and enduring change in your life requires knowing when to try harder and when to stop trying so hard.
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