The Trying Paradox

Have you ever stood in the rain desperately trying to find a taxi?

Or searched frantically to find your keys when you’re in a major hurry to get somewhere?

Or wrestled to remember someone’s name when you know you know and it’s on the tip of your tongue?

And have you noticed…

Just when you give up and completely let go of finding a taxi, when you say f**k it, we’ll walk, a taxi suddenly appears?

And that as soon as you’re in the cab and out of the rain, two or three more available taxis drive past?

Or noticed when you stop frantically looking for your keys, breathe and momentarily let go, you’re moved to look and find them in the exact place you 100% know you’ve already looked?

Or how, when you’re cooking or watching tv later in the day, that name you’d been trying to remember suddenly comes to you?

We may dismiss these events.

Chalking them up to coincidences.

But they’re all pointers.

And leaning into really understand why these things happen can support us to attain our biggest goals much faster and without all the trying and effort.

Because really understanding that when we resist our current circumstances, we bind ourself to them is the key to effortless achievement.

We may not give taxis, keys and names much attention but we may be wise to……. if we want to do a lot less striving.

It defies logic and reason – just as laying back in the water when you’re drowning does or just as thinking of someone and them then phoning or texting does – but they’re all related to the constriction or opening of our mind and the consequent resistance to or the expression of our desires.

And exactly the same principles apply with business, sales, profits, health, relationships and so on…

Have you ever noticed when you really need sales or are under pressure to hit a target, how it can be and feel so hard?

Or how, when you’re feeling relaxed and abundant and confident, the enquiries and sales just seem to roll in?

Have you noticed how – despite it being so counterintuitive – trying hard from a place of wanting and needing actually seems to negate the desired outcomes?

If you play golf, you’ll probably know this only too well!

Have you noticed the direct relationship between you and the results you most want either flowing or not?

How wins and business flows when you flow and how the opposite is also true?

Trying hard is of course what we’re conditioned to do.

Many of us are also taught it’s admirable.

If you want to get ahead, you’ve got to work hard.

And it makes total sense (because we’re conditioned to believe it’s what’s necessary to create results) but it’s simply not true.

It’s a conditioned belief based on lack of understanding.

And whether its through our own direct experience or looking out at the world; the evidence that it’s not true is everywhere.

Because the truth is that trying really hard to make something happen from a place of needing and wanting comes from a seeking state of consciousness and carries a corresponding seeking energy.

Trying really hard keeps us trying really hard.

If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of a needy salesperson, you’ll know you can detect the need in them.

It’s entirely energetic.

And a needing, wanting, striving state of consciousness will always return results which align with and perpetuate the originating state of consciousness.

We may get a deal over the line but then something else shows up to perpetuate the wanting.

It can feel like playing “whac-a-mole.”

Only it’s not fun. It’s hard work. It involves lots of trying.

And if we don’t know it’s our trying and our state that’s the problem, we get stuck in patterns.

Patterns of striving behaviour and hard work.

Patterns of familiar results.

Paradoxically, trying hard (from a needing state) is why what we most want to experience can continue to elude us.

Whether it’s taxis, keys, names, money, sales, weight loss, time freedom or something else, the way to guarantee results is to stop resisting “what is” and to surrender fully to what’s desired.

I acknowledge it’s easy to say but not so easy to do; especially if we’ve no notion of the science behind it, what the mind is or how the mind actually works.

I don’t ‘mind’ telling you it took me 30+ years to figure it out.

It’s one of the reasons I created Unstrive®.

It’s the only leadership coaching programme guaranteed not just to help you / your business earn a lot more money whilst working, trying and striving a whole lot less but to help you attain the lasting happiness, inner peace, fulfilment and freedom you may want too.

Unstrive® is application only and definitely not for everyone but if you’d like to guarantee achieving a great deal more with a whole lot less effort whilst enjoying a lot more fun and freedom and you’re also open to un-learning, it may be for you.

Scroll to Top