The Exhausting Fallacy: Why Striving Harder to Improve Never Works

I Decided to End The Fight

The path from blame to personal responsibility?is extremely difficult.

In my late teens and early twenties, I suffered from an eating disorder that literally took over my life. I was consumed with an obsession to be thin, beautiful, and validated.

As with so many exceptional women, I equated physical beauty with confidence, success, and achievement.

A typical day often involved?restricting, bingeing, overeating, under-eating, overexercising, overworking, or not working at all.

The common denominator in all these behaviours was?escape.

I wanted to escape something.

After every binge, I would solemnly swear to “try harder” and control myself.

Inevitably, life would get hard, and again, I experienced that familiar?craving. At the time, I believed the craving was for more food, but the truth, I later learned was that I craved an?escape from my circumstances.

Hence, the vicious cycle of?overeat, overexercise, restrict,?binge, repeat,?would return. Followed by guilt, shame, remorse and a newfound vigour to “try harder “.

This time?will be different, I vowed.

After countless stop and start efforts, I met a woman who changed the entire trajectory of my life. This became a?Crucible Moment.

She said to me, “Teresa, stop trying so hard”.

Wait, what?

She went on to explain that it wasn’t food or thinness or beauty I craved. A woman of deep faith, she told me “there is a God-Sized Hole in your heart that all the food and exercise in the world won’t fill. Find out how to fill that hole in your heart without the escape of food, overexercise, and overwork”.

The relief I experienced was immediate.

I was exhausted from the constant striving to be and do better. That was the day my eating disorder started to heal.

I stopped?trying harder to control myself.

Instead, I started to fill my “God-Sized hole”?consciously?and?intentionally.

That redirection from pushing and striving to accepting and creating personal responsibility?is hard.

We get to decide what's hard. At home, at work, at play.

We decide.

If you are struggling with addiction, craving, overworking, overachieving, or over-anything, I implore you to?“stop trying so hard”.

Stop?trying?hard?to “stop overworking”.

Stop?trying hard?to exercise.

Stop?trying harder?to wake up earlier.

Stop?trying harder?to assert boundaries.

Stop?trying hard?to stop.

Instead, accept the discomfort, be still for 30 hot seconds and ask yourself these questions:

What is my mind telling me might or might not happen?

Am I willing to pay the price of overeating/overworking/overreacting?

What am I distracting myself from?

What is the relief I expect drinking/eating/overworking will provide me?

Is the craving physical? Mental? Emotional?

What is being?triggered?

Get in touch with where it’s coming from. Don’t make a hard thing harder.

Most solutions to your problems will come with clear thinking, wisdom, and patience.

Know how to filter the inconsequential from the important. You can do that with a coach, a mentor, and a community like The Crucible.

Stop trying so hard. It's exhausting.

Instead, start listening.