I have tried really hard my whole life. To what? You ask. Well, everything. The thing isn’t really the point. The trying is. And trying is good, right? We all want to strive for certain things. To set goals and put forth effort to reach them. Sure. That’s fair. And our hustle culture reinforces hard work and ambition. It’s how we get places, right?
But what if… what if you didn’t have to try so hard? What if you didn’t always have to push or force or trudge uphill both ways in the snow barefoot holding ten pound boulders in each hand with 50 pound ankle weights strapped to yourself?
What if life wasn’t supposed to be this hard?
I know I started out saying “the thing” wasn’t really the point, but maybe it’s a sub-point in all of this. For me, the thing - the thing I tried so hard at my whole life - is to be perfect. I would never have admitted that. But in retrospect, it’s true. I have tried really hard my whole life to be perfect.
That’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself, you might be thinking.
And you’d be right. It is a ton of pressure to put on myself. But the thing is - the other thing, I guess - is that I didn’t even realize that I was doing it. I also just thought it was normal. I thought perfection was attainable and we were all out here trying to achieve it.
I used to get really jealous - like madly envious - of people who seemed to just not care. The people who just did what they wanted to do. The people who had the audacity to just be themselves and to follow their own path.
I admit, there was a little anger mixed into that jealousy. I mean, I’m over here killing myself to do all the right things in all the right ways and they get to just cruise through life like that? Must be nice.
I’d also get really resentful of all the people around me who held me to this standard of perfection. The people who just expected me to get it right every single time and expected so fucking much out of one person. Why didn’t they hold anyone else to those standards? Why aren’t they getting mad at all those other people who are just showing up as their own flawed self? Why do they get a pass?
Can you hear the self-loathing whine in my voice?
A really hard truth I’ve had to learn is that I was the only one holding myself to the standard of perfection. And I’ve been projecting that on to everyone around me; assuming they were expecting me to be perfect because that’s what I’ve been expecting of myself. Assuming they were judging me when I didn’t do every little thing correctly or the way they wanted me to do it. Assuming they thought I was a failure because… that’s what I thought of myself.
The fucking beautiful part though? It’s that once I realized it wasn’t true - that no one expected the same thing of me that I expected from myself - I looked up and saw all these people who just loved me and wanted to support me and wanted to see me succeed.
Cynicism be damned.
There is a lot of vulnerability that comes with releasing that level of cynicism. And although the idea of just showing up and being myself is freeing and amazing, it’s also really scary and unfamiliar. Cynicism has been my safe space for decades.
Familiarity feels safer.
To be really abundantly clear, this is not the story of how I used to be an angry, cynical person and then I just woke up one day and decided to shoot rainbows and sunshine out of my ass.
You might wake up and decide to be different. But actually being different takes time.
And it’s not a linear process. When I start to feel frustrated because I slip up or fall back into old patterns, it’s a red flag that tells me I’m expecting perfection again. I’m expecting myself to just get it right each step of the way. (Yes, in this case, I’m expecting myself to be perfectly imperfect. Ironic, no?)
You don’t have to try so hard.
I come back to this idea all the time. When everything feels hard, when I feel pressure to do or be something that I can’t keep up with, when things just don’t seem to be going the way I want them to.
You don’t have to try so hard.
What if I just trusted that things are exactly as they are supposed to be? What if I just trusted that things will work out for me? What if I allowed things to be easy? What if I released my grip on control? What if I let go?
You don’t have to try so hard.
You are not a failure. You don’t have to be perfect. You are human. You are whole. You are enough.
Let that be enough.