There is no try.....

[Alun Jones]

“Do, or do not. There is no try”. Remember that line spoken by Yoda in the film “The Empire Strikes Back”? This was when Luke was going to “try” to do something using the Force. How many times have you found yourself saying the same thing? I know I used to.
The thing with the word “try” is, that it almost sets you up for failure – “I will try…” means that you can’t promise you’ll succeed. What kind of message do you think that’s sending your subconscious mind or those around you? There’s another phrase I seem to remember hearing a few times “He’s a ‘trier’ not a ‘doer’”. Now admittedly one must take this into context as there’s also the phrase “you don’t know if you’ll like it unless you try it”. The context I’m using here is when we’re aiming to undertake doing a task or facing a challenge.

If you try, there’s a chance that you will not succeed. Have you ever watched someone who’s said “I’ll try” and then when they didn’t succeed there’s this little, deflated voice saying “well I tried my best”. And you can hear the Ego in their heads saying “yes you tried, but you didn’t try hard enough”.

In reality, there is no try. We do things or we don’t. It’s where we put our focus that really counts. You don’t try to brush your teeth each morning, or go to work, or eat a meal, or face a new challenge – you do it or you don’t. When a challenge arises for each of us, we meet it head on and deal with it, or we choose to avoid it, or we run away from it. Each of those choices are us “doing” something – not trying.

You see, here’s the thing. When we “do our best” we know that we’ve always succeeded at something. We know when we choose to “do our best” that we’re putting our effort, heart, and soul into something. Even if the results are not what we perhaps would have wanted, we can still walk away confidently knowing, “we did our best”.

When you watch an athlete running a race – of course one of their aims is to win the race. However, having read a number of sports coaching books and watched programmes about sports coaching, also utmost in the athlete’s mind is doing their best to beat their personal best. At the end of the day it would be great to win, however if they don’t but they do beat their personal best there’s still a great achievement.

Now you may think this is just semantics on words and, to a point, I would not disagree with you. There is much power in words, however, and it is we who allow our sub-conscious to be programmed or reprogrammed by the words we take in.

It is also about belief. If we tell ourselves we will try, we’re opening up the opportunity to fail on so many levels. If we know and believe that we will do our very best, whatever the outcome, we will have succeeded.

Doing our best at whatever we do is where our focus needs to be, in order to be most helpful in terms of feeling good about ourselves and our achievements. If we keep allowing ourselves to “try” we’re constantly allowing ourselves opportunities to fail and not giving ourselves the chance to see what we actually have achieved. Where is your focus at the moment? On “trying” or “doing”? Remember, you are a powerful being and doing your best is what you’re actually good at if you allow yourself to.

[Alun Jones]

:D Thanks for that Sarah... hope you're son enjoys it too... aren't all boys star wars addicts? LOL although in my day it was the ones with Luke and Han in rather than the 3 newest films :D however, Yoda's wisdom reigns throughout :)

Blessings
Alun

[Alun Jones]

Thanks for your comments Maria. I hadn't heard the acronym TRY before - very apt indeed! I agree about the energy being split and fragmented - nicely put :)

Yes Yoda was a bit fab wasn't he :D

[Maria]

Really wise words Alun. I once saw try written as an acronym - TRY - Today Repeating Yesterday and thought it was very apt. When we use the word 'try' our energy is always split and fragmented. When we 'focus' our energy is aligned with our desire.

Yoda was a wise old owl :-)