How to Stop Overtrying (and Get Better Results With Less Effort)
Are you Over the Overwhelm Series Part 4
If you’ve ever thought “I just need to try harder”… and somehow ended up more exhausted instead of more successful… this is for you.
Welcome back to our series about the 4 ways overwhelm shows up.
Overthinking
Overgiving
Overtrying
Overdoing
If you missed Parts 1, 2, or 3, here you go:
Click here for the Overwhelm Article
Click here for the Over-Thinking Article
Click here for the Over-Giving Article
Today, we’re taking a look at what over-trying looks like and how to get better results by reducing the effort. If you’ve been wondering how to stop trying so hard and actually get results, keep reading.
When I ask my clients to set intentions, they’ll often say something like: I need to work harder. I need to try harder. I need to put in more effort.
These answers are evidence of an old, worn-out pattern that many people still subscribe to, usually subconsciously: The harder I work, the better results I’ll get. (Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.)
It’s a paradigm that’s still deeply embedded in the collective consciousness.
The thing is, if it worked well, everyone would be thriving because there are a lot of people out there trying REALLY HARD… and still feeling stuck..
How do you know if you’re trying too hard?
Are these words or ideas part of your regular vocabulary?
➡️ Push through/Fight through
➡️ Strive
➡️ Double down
➡️ An uphill battle/half the battle/fight a losing battle
➡️ Press on
➡️ Tough it out
➡️ Go above and beyond (the call of duty)
➡️ Suck it up buttercup
Do you set a goal, work hard to accomplish it, achieve it, and then say, “Ok, what’s next?” without pausing to acknowledge yourself or do some deep celebration?
Do you struggle to take breaks or slow down/pause?
Do you ever find yourself doing a task that isn’t working, but you force yourself to keep at it (getting more and more frustrated/livid)?
If any of these examples feel familiar, there’s a good chance you’ve been trying too hard or over-efforting.
What is over-efforting?
I didn’t know over-efforting/over-trying was a thing until I started learning from my mentor, Dr Sue Morter. She talked about softening on the inside to reduce over-efforting.
“Huh?” said my mind.
I had zero idea what she was talking about.
Gradually, I started to realize that I had been over-efforting in pretty much every area of my life.
Following some reflection and personal inquiry, I noticed that my over-efforting came from a need to prove myself. Some part of me wanted to show people (teachers, employers, family, etc) that I knew what I was doing, that I would go above and beyond, that I was enough (or better yet: more than enough).
I wanted to impress and to dazzle. It was full-on performing mode. And so I demanded perfection from myself, no matter what I was doing.
Can you guess how I felt a lot of the time?
Exhausted, high-strung, on-edge, anxious, and overwhelmed, to mention a few regular states of being.
It was very challenging to keep up with the image I’d built for myself because even what I’d done previously wasn’t good enough. I always pushed myself to go bigger and better. Phew!
Forget keeping up with the Joneses. They were no match for keeping up with myself.
What happens when you try too hard?
You can probably see that this way of living isn’t sustainable. Pouring 110% into every aspect of life doesn’t yield better results. It breeds burnout.
My body started sending me signals that I was over-trying.
Every month, with my cycle, I would have debilitating cramps. I’d be bedridden, sweating in agony. Guess what I did? Fought through.
Next came a year of digestive issues, but that wasn’t really enough to get my attention either, so my body tried out a mysterious pain in my hip that had no apparent cause. I struggled to go up and down stairs and would get shooting pains that woke me up at night when I tried to roll over.
Was it enough to slow me down, to pause, reflect, or make any changes? Nope.
I just doubled down on putting in tremendous effort to find out what was going on in my body. For all my seeking, I didn’t find any answers or experience relief.
When my own body couldn’t get my attention, I was next invited into a variation, wrapped up in the scenario of my daughter not really sleeping much for the first two years of her life.
What did I do with this added bonus? I shifted my over-trying to researching all things related to babies and sleep. I’m became an expert on the topic, filled with information. But it didn’t make much of a difference.
Most importantly, do you think I asked for help? Haha! Not me… I was superwoman, and I could do it all.
But, of course, I couldn’t keep up with that way of living.
When I found no answers or solutions in the mainstream, I turned toward developing my spiritual side, and that’s when everything started to change.
When I realized that I didn’t have to do everything myself and that I could partner with the divine, I accessed solutions I didn’t even know I was seeking.
I started learning about Quantum Physics and how to get your energy working for you. I learned that my body had been trying to help me make changes at a profoudn level; that it wasn’t against me - it was for my expansion. Most importantly, I learned how to gather my energy and become unified.
How do I stop trying too hard?
There are a lot of standard solutions out there to stop trying so hard, and the thing is, they are generally mind-based.
But, it’s the mind that created the trying-too-hard issue in the first place, so if we just try to solve it with the mind, we end up doing more of the same, like with my body and trying to get my daughter to sleep better.
Pouring in more effort tends to yield the same results, but you end up being burnt out and exhausted. At least, that’s what happened for me.
If only I knew then what I know now.
(And this is where everything changes.)
There’s one powerful and simple solution.
To stop over-trying and over-efforting, we need to learn how to unify mind, body, and breath simultaneously. That’s it! We just need coherence.
Every single experience I went through could have been resolved gracefully and seamlessly if I’d known that.
Now I base my life around coherence (unifying mind, body, and breath), and everything is better.
I have no pain in my body, no chronic issues, and take no medication. I’m in the best shape of my life. I move with joy and can do whatever activities I want.
I wake up every day feeling rested, refreshed, and energized, no matter how I slept, and I have overflowing energy all day long.
My capacity continues to grow, and I flow through the day, alternating between peaceful productivity and empowered pauses.
I used to think life was really serious business, and so I had a lot to prove. Now, I’m much more uplifted, and I have more fun than I even had as a child.
I know how to listen to my inner guidance and take action on it, and my sense of trust in myself, others, and the Universe is unwavering.
All of this from unifying mind, body, and breath by focusing on coherence.
When I was researching for this article, there were so many how-tos for reducing over-trying. You could work on your boundaries, your mindset, and your scheduling. You could do a myriad of things to reduce stress and anxiety. You could get clear on your values and prioritize.
Yes, you could do all that (and more) OR you could focus on creating coherence, and all of those other things would resolve as happy by-products.
That’s how you stop over-efforting.
You don’t have to become a whiz at 874 self-improvement strategies. When you focus on one thing - coherence - by unifying mind, body, and breath as often as possible, over-trying melts and dissolves. You don’t really even have to work at it all.
Which is exactly what we want. The mind doesn’t understand how it works, and that’s okay. I’ve seen over and over again with myself and my clients that when we get coherent and make that the focus, the mind softens and things shift.
When Dr Sue said that softening on the inside was the key, I had no idea what she meant. Now, years later, I can tell that so much has softened on the inside, and I can see the difference.
Over-efforting is a thing of the past. Now, I do a few practices every day that enhance coherence, and the rest unfolds with ease and grace.
Sure, of course, I still have my moments, but I always know what to do in the moment, so the amount that I suffer has dramatically reduced.
I invite you to get curious about creating coherence in your life by unifying mind, body, and breath.
Pulling It All Together
So here’s the real shift.
Trying harder isn’t the solution.
It’s the pattern.
A pattern that looks productive on the outside… but quietly drains you on the inside, because no matter how much effort you pour in, you can’t force your way into alignment.
Instead, you want to learn to access it.
Through coherence.
When your mind, body, and breath are working together instead of fighting each other, everything changes.
You stop pushing and start flowing.
You stop proving and start creating.
The results?
They come faster, with less effort, and they feel a whole lot better.
So if you take one thing from this article, let it be this:
You don’t need to try harder. You need to come back to yourself.
(And if you’d like support with that… start here. ↓)
With gathered love and potent courage,
Christina
🕺🏻Creator of Courageous Self-Care
🕺🏻 Enjoying winter…spring…winter…spring. I’ve just been pretending it’s Christmas whenever it snows and saying, “How beautiful.”
🕺🏻 Celebrating co-hosting a wildly successful in person mini-retreat with my dear friend Gillian Abbott. What could be better than an afternoon of embodying through yoga, meditation, breathwork and quantum physics? We’ll be doing more of this for sure!
PS - If you’re realizing that trying harder hasn’t been the answer (and you’re ready for something that actually works), this is exactly what we practice inside The BALM.
Simple, powerful ways to unify mind, body, and breath - so you stop over-efforting and start experiencing real results in your life.
You don’t have to figure it out alone. You can join us here: Click here to learn more.