Stop Trying So Hard, You're on the Brink of a Breakthrough
Stop Trying So Hard, You're on the Brink of a Breakthrough
The paradox of life is when you stop trying so hard, you finally get what you want.
Image by
Imagine you stop TRYING SO HARD to make your life work and then *boom* like magic you get what you were so desperately trying to achieve, but with less effort. “Wait was that an accident?” How could something so good could happen AFTER you stopped all the intense strategies you thought needed?
A part of you might know that you get what you want ONLY when you stop trying so hard because only then do you finally relax enough to be just be you. Not the you that thinks you’re broken and need to be fixed, but the YOU that is authentic and connected to the truth of who you are at your core without the posturing and desperation to be someone else. The YOU who’s joy and fulfillment is not conditional upon everything going her way and on her timeline.
And I get it, a part of me felt like this sounds too good to be true, too. You mean I don’t have to go to the gym 5x a week and 4 first dates a week and then I’ll love my body and get a boyfriend? I have countless examples from my own life about how ONLY when I stopped trying so hard I got what I wanted:
When I stopped exercising and dieting, I finally lost the weight I trying so hard to lose for years.
When I stopped dating to find my person, I fell in love with Adam, my boyfriend.
When I was out shopping and not trying to make friends, I met my most wonderful friend Jaclyn.
When I gave up on making money only from coaching business, I made the most money in one month than I ever had.
So the evidence is clear: when you stop TRYING SO HARD to make your life be a certain way, then you actually get what you want. Yet even KNOWING THIS, I found myself continuing the pattern that once I got the thing I was desiring, I’d move on to the next thing on my list of life desires but I’d go about it in the SAME TRY HARD WAY:
Pick one big problem to obsess about
Think about it day and night
Journal about it constantly
Listen to every podcast
Buy every book
Follow the “experts”
Keep pouring every inch of energy into it
Only to then get REALLY frustrated with WHY it was taking so long, why is this not working out for me? Will it ever? I’m doing everything I’m supposed to be doing! I was stuck on this hamster wheel trying to do all the things to change my life, except the one thing that actually worked: Stop doing the most, relax into my worth, and let go of my timeline.
Yet I couldn’t figure out HOW to stop trying so hard. I was stuck in my TRY HARD ways because I couldn’t find a way to get to this point of relaxing until I had run myself on that damn hamster wheel until I was so exhausted and burnt out I had no effort left in me.
Yet a part of me always held on to this evidence and knew there must be a better way. A way that is repeatable, that doesn’t require getting to exhaustion for things to happen, a way that is effortless where I could more quickly drop my agenda, more easily give up the forcing, contorting, manipulating, and finally stop trying to be someone else in order to get this thing and just finally allow myself to be ME.
I would hear the words “surrender” “let it go” “just be grateful” and “attract don’t chase” and intellectually I got it, but I still was like OKAY BUT HOW?!?
Unsurprisingly, I found this “better way” when I wasn’t trying. My mom emailed me about Internal Family Systems (IFS) back in 2019, but I was too busy efforting away to pay attention to it back then. But over the past couple years, IFS kept popping back into my life, I started working 1:1 with an IFS coach, and I felt called to deepen my knowledge in this process because it was so aligned with how I was already coaching my clients. I jumped into the 4-month IFS certification with IFS Canada and am excited to share that I will graduate at the end of 2023.
IFS is the HOW you STOP TRYING SO HARD so you can get off the hamster wheel and soften and relax into your worthy, authentic self that is at the core of you. The beautiful thing is you don’t even need to try hard to learn about the IFS process, in 1:1 IFS coaching all you need to do is show up. You will learn to shed these layers of posturing, people pleasing, efforting, manipulating and then without efforting you start to attact what you couldn’t catch when you were chasing it. You learn to let your authenticity lead you in life and have FUN, make the journey easier on yourself, feel connected to who you really are, and embody this sense of peace like no matter what happens you will be okay because you’re no longer trying to be someone else or change who you are. And isn’t that what life is all about? Being like nature just weird and imperfect and not needing to achieve anything to be valid in who you truly are.
It’s in that paradoxical truth that when you stop trying hard is when you naturally attract into your life the things you desire. Because there’s nothing more attractive than a woman tapped into her authentic Self energy and desires that she wants but doesn’t need. It’s magnetic because she is not out here begging for attention, she is not out here being thirsty nor is she hiding. She is brave, courageous, confident, and charismatic because she is connected to her authentic Self energy— radiating that level of truth and confidence only comes from doing this work.
My waitlist is open for 1:1 IFS coaching starting in 2024- send me a DM to start the conversation because you’re ready to soften and relax into your authenticity.