I’ve come across a few posts online from people who are in a period of trying but feel like their efforts aren’t being rewarded.
Feeling stuck in life is a painful experience. And doing the hard work to come out from that is admirable in theory but often leads to more discomfort, failure and rejection. The road forward is messy and this can make it hard to keep going.
Something I’ve learned the hard way is that effort alone is not enough. Hard work does not guarantee success.
I read a newsletter once that talked about life having seasons and each season has its allocated time. We can’t force the arrival of the next season, so we need to be patient and wait. Wait through winter to get to spring and vice versa. Likewise when planting a seed, it needs time to grow. And if all the conditions are right it will do what it’s supposed to do.
Which is great for a tomato but for anyone going through a difficult period this is frustrating and unhelpful.
It’s frustrating because hardship is never a part of the plan. Ideally, life should unfold on our terms with minor but easily surmountable annoyances along the way. Hustle gurus will have us believe that life is fully under our control and that success is equivalent to the effort we put in. This is convenient for capitalism.
The other day I watched a video of a girl who said she’d posted her first piece of content and it went viral. From that post she received many opportunities. The moral of the story was: you never know what could happen from just one post.
It’s a nice message. And I’m glad for her but her experience is not the norm and it’s fine to acknowledge that. Because there’s likely a whole bunch of people putting 100x more effort with 100x less results. So how come one person gets it right on their first try and someone else has to keep trying?
The answer: it’s just not their time. Whatever we want to call it: luck, good fortune, fate, it’s all the same thing. It’s all something outside of our control. We think we can create change by putting more effort and more repetitions, but the hard work is just one part of the equation. The other part is not up to us.
It’s a trickery, thinking that we know best when we only have limited knowledge and data to work from. We can’t even see around corners, literally and figuratively, but we assume we know how the story should play out. The reality is we’re just closing our eyes and stabbing in the dark.
Another arena this not knowing plays out is in relationships. Some people find their partner in school and they end up together forever. That’s lucky.
But then there’s everyone else who has to venture out into the big world to find their person. And some people take it very seriously and spend years trying everything. For these people, the answer cannot be to try harder.
On a random day, someone will meet their partner at a random event like a friend of a friend’s birthday party, and all the other dating events they signed up to would have been redundant. Because when it came down to it, it was that random event on that random occasion and nothing they could have done would have made it happen any sooner.
That was the right time so that’s when it happened.
But we don’t know what actions will lead to our desired results, that would be too easy. If life was that sort of game we would have mentally checked out at 11.
So we should try, we should always try. But we have to manage the idea that trying is the part we play, but there is another massive part that is out of our hands.
It’s frustrating because there is no quick fix. It’s hard to know how long to wait or how long to keep trying, or when to change tactic or when to give up entirely.
Recently I’ve been telling myself to put it all on God. I do my bit and let the rest go.
Put in a different way, there are things that I can do, the small and minute, compared to the things that I can’t.
What’s in my control: what I do today, what I eat, my to-do list
Not in my control: the election, the weather, the economy, roadworks, company lay-offs
The “Not in my control” pot are all the things that are going on in the background, these are the things that one singular human being can’t take responsibility for.
So while I’m busy running around from A to B, holding what I can with my itty bitty hands, there’s a whole solar system doing its thing at the same time. Yet all I can manage is what’s in these ant hands, the rest is on someone else.
Eventually the seasons will change. And just like the seed that was planted in the soil, one moment there’s nothing and the next there’s a green shoot breaking through the surface. That’s how quickly life can happen, nothing at first, then all at once. So the point is not to beat the soil or be unnecessarily harsh. The point is to keep putting one step in front of another and keep watering the soil and let everything else take its course.
I wrote this essay to remind myself of the power in letting go, submitting and surrendering. I wrote this essay to remind myself of humility and clearing up any false identity that everything is in my hands.
I am where I’m meant to be, exploring this moment in this part of my journey.