Let Go of Striving

Instead of setting New Year's resolutions, I set a word for the year.? A word or concept serves as a value or priority for how I am going to show up in the year ahead, it helps me express my values in behaviour in a way that resolutions fail to do (most research shows resolutions are ineffective).? For 2024 my guiding word is Unstriving.??

Goals, achievements and ambitions can play a positive part in our lives, they can create satisfying and rich experiences for us.? When I was 4 years old and desperately wanted a budgie but was told I wasn’t old enough to help look after it striving (or nagging!) got me the budgie for my 6th birthday. Striving for a specific goal helped me gain my registration as a psychologist after a 20-year wait. As helping professionals we are driven by a desire to excel and to create a positive impact for our teams and clients.? We strive towards delivering our best for those we serve or care for.?

However striving can quickly get out of hand and become unhelpful. We can strive too often and too far, and striving becomes a habit that we can’t turn off. Too much striving can overshadow other crucial elements necessary for creating positive outcomes sustainably.? If we become stuck in striving we may become so focused on outcomes that we forget about using good processes to achieve them, we may focus on tasks rather than people and forget to build relationships as we manage our ‘to dos.’ We may become so focused on ticking all the boxes and completing tasks that we forget we are meant to be learning and enjoying the coursework.? We may create or work hard because of our need for recognition rather than as an expression of our strengths and skills.

Striving becomes about pushing ourselves, always doing more, doing better, and becoming better. Sometimes even to the extent of compromising our flourishing. Striving comes from a place that says we are not ok just as we are, we have to get better, do better and grow more. Sometimes it can be driven by avoidance of mediocrity, our fear of failure or the feelings we have of falling short when we compare ourselves to others.

Recognising the dangers of an attitude of striving, particularly as a precursor for burnout,? I've spent the last few months exploring unstriving.? Unstriving isn't merely the absence of striving. It’s like the difference between undressing and being naked. Unstriving is the process of raising my awareness of striving when it is active and pushing me on, and consciously replacing it with a more compassionate stance to my drive and results orientation. It has been illuminating to notice how striving has been popping up. In my mindfulness class striving has been trying to do ALL the extra readings and exercises between classes. As I attempt to exercise striving emerges as "if I am not following a routine or instructor then that doesn’t count". Striving emerges as I didn’t do a good job unless I performed to the often unrealistic standard that I have created in my head.

Unstriving is not simply about not doing anything (it's pretty easy to not strive when you are sitting on the couch binge-watching Ted Lasso). Rather it is about changing the stance or attitude that I have to my work, my impact and my results. If we take this newsletter as an example writing from a place of striving means writing for recognition, comments and shares. Focussed on achieving the result of more email subscribers, and more purchasers for my coaching package (its here by the way). Writing from a place of unstriving in contrast involves attending to and creating the internal and external conditions in which I can do heartfelt, passionate writing about things I care about and enjoy. Attending my mindfulness class from a place of unstriving involves leaning into the exercises, tuning into what I most need and focusing the homework around those elements, it involves practising mindfulness rather than ticking the boxes of all the readings. So far I am learning that the heart of unstriving lies in creating a deep sense of kindness for myself, that acknowledges that being able to use my strengths and gifts and passions to change the world involves attending to what I most need to do that work, rather than driving myself towards results.

Christina

I am a psychologist and founder of The Kindness Workshop NZ. I am creating a kind world by developing kind leaders and training organisations to get their values off their walls and into daily actions. I provide

??Leadership Development Coaching for new Team Leaders in Health and Social services.

??In person workshops for teams that want to create a culture of kindness

?? Well-being support for those who struggle with workplace stress and burnout.