Do or Do Not, Trying is Exhausting
A wise yoda once said “Do, or do not, there is no try.” I have slightly edited the wrinkled green one’s quote above to emphasize what I think is his initial point. Almost doing, incessantly weighing options, pros and cons, maybes, but also’s, are all different forms of the same cancer that can overtake your brain when you’re trying to make up your mind about something. As I understand it, most of us are not trying to save the interstellar world as we know it, but we are trying to be the heroes of our own story. I think it behooves us to make concrete decisions instead of crucifying ourselves with half-hearted efforts that ultimately turn into something we almost did but ultimately never manifested.
As a microcosm, we are in the midst of the Crossfit Open (yes, I’m using a Crossfit example again but it’s relevant, I promise!). For those who don’t know, the Crossfit Open, is an online competition where the whole community does different version of the same work outs for several weeks. The work out this week was a MONSTER. It was a previous repeat of an open work out that was notoriously challenging, painful, and very taxing on the body and mind. Frankly, I was intimidated by this work out. On my first attempt, after a mediocre night of sleep I attacked it and despite rolling around on the floor in agony after, I was happy with my time and the effort I put forth. Now, this year for the Crossfit Open there is a quarter final where you must be in the top 10% of your division to qualify. I was on the bubble to make this and I was considering redoing the work out on Monday so I could improve my score.
The key word in the previous sentence is “considering.” I considered redoing the work out all weekend into Monday morning where I finally made up my mind to try it about 1 minute before the clock started. The whole weekend I was obsessing about whether it was the best thing to do. Why? Because I didn’t REALLY want to do it. I was happy with what I had done and it was NEVER a goal for me to make that quarter final. I always want to do the best that I can but for this season, it was not a goal to make it to that round. The feelings that I “should” do it again, and try harder consumed me. There was a battle going on in my head and frankly, for a good portion of the weekend, I was distracted, frustrated and maybe even irritable. As you might have predicted, I quit in the beginning of the work out. I have no shame about this. I could feel that I wasn’t going to be able to go faster and I never wanted to do it in the first place. I immediately re-learned a valuable lesson.
There were two options that would have freed me from the miniature prison I had created in my head. Deciding 100% that I was going to suffer through the work out NO MATTER WHAT or being happy with what I had already done. It doesn’t matter which choice I made, either would have set me free because I could have prepared accordingly and accepted that the work out would suck again, but I gave myself an out and so….I quit. This is a lesson that I think many of us learn over and over but it’s valuable every time. All of us are permitted a brief period to weigh our options when decisions lie before us, but after that brief period, it’s time to officially say “yes” or “no.” Both of these are valid. Both free the space in your mind to exist freely because you concretely know that something is or is not going to happen instead of the ever-painful “maybe.”
It’s experiences like this that allow for growth. If we want to be the best version of ourselves, we need to end the internal debates as soon as possible and move on. All that we can ask of our loved ones is their genuine love, presence and time, and the more space that is devoted to indecision, the less capable any of us is of doing that.
