Frustrated Goal? - You Could Be Trying Too Hard

Jumping to conclusions can be dangerous. If you were out to win a race and your time needed improving, there would be a strong argument for making more effort. The implied principle is that more effort equals better results. But when we take this principle into other areas of life it doesn't work!

Making more effort can actually chase away the very results we want. You'll know this when you are dating. If you are too eager to impress, trying too hard to win approval, you will jeopardise success. The same is true in business - it is well known that a potential customer will be driven away if the business person tries too hard. The customer reads the signs as desperation and walks in the opposite direction.

A few years ago I learned to meditate. It has now become part of my life yet I still clearly remember the teacher's advice - if you find yourself making an effort you are doing it wrong! And he was right - occasionally I find myself wanting a certain meditation experience instead of letting it unfold naturally. When I make an effort the meditative state just slips away. When I catch myself and back off, everything is fine again.

Letting go like this - trying less - is at the heart of the ancient wisdom of staying unattached to the results you get. This does not mean the results don't matter but that you remain separate from them rather than identify with them. If this sounds all rather philosophical, think what happens if you plant a seed in the garden.

You choose the seed and the place to plant it, but once the seed is in the ground you need to let go and allow nature to take its course. The seed may germinate or it may not, and no amount of effort on your part will control it. You can sit indoors fretting or lie awake at night worrying and it will make no difference. If you make even more effort by digging the seed up again to check progress, or moving it to new places in the garden, you would sabotage the outcome.

Left to itself, the seed might grow and you can admire the new plant. Yet it would not make you a successful person any more than if the seed failed would make you a bad person. You did your bit and nature did the rest.

This is the secret really - look out for where more effort is counter-productive. The best way to do this is watching for feedback. In any particular context ask: what happens when you make more effort? If it moves you closer to your goal, that's all well and good. If the feedback tells you that the goal gets no nearer, or is even pushed away, then you can stop.

Learning this way is very valuable. As you redirect your efforts like this, these are the major benefits:

** You will become more aware of what works and you can use this insight to be successful in the future

** You will gain more energy. This is because the energy that you had been wasting on unnecessary effort is now yours to use other ways

** You will find that you have liberated some of that most precious commodity - time!