There Is No Try? - Solace Coaching Company

Last week, I gave you a reflection on pressure, and how that might not be such a good thing. This week, I’d like to talk to you about trying.

There’s a line in Star Wars: “Do or do not. There is no try.”

I love Star Wars. I have used the original trilogy in class and in helping people on a personal level for decades. I have found my own personal growth in it as well, and The Empire Strikes Back is my favorite.

We watched it yesterday, my husband and two older boys and me. Landon is my middle child, and he is probably the most like me. He is joyful, athletic, loves people, and bounds into everything with a big personality and a booming voice. He never walks—too much energy for that. He lights up a room and bosses everyone around and hugs people and laughs. If he were a dog he’d be a Labrador, bounding into life and people with his happy tongue flying.

And he is hard on himself. He is so very hard on himself. He is good at things, so when something doesn’t come easily for him, he thinks he might as well give up.

In Star Wars, Yoda says so many good things, but he is part of the problem with this one.

So here is what just happened in yoga.

Landon and his brother came to yoga with me. We were on mats all in a row, in a room with about 20 other people, in a 50 minute power yoga class. Throughout the class, I got to see my kids’ efforts and be so proud of them. They are athletic by nature and were taught, since they were small, that yoga is quiet, because that’s what mama always told them when she was doing yoga, so they were doing a lovely job. Then we progressed Into headstands.

Yoga is a practice. We literally term it a “practice”, handed down in wisdom for millennia. It is not meant to be perfection. It is not meant to be smooth. I love so much when my yoga instructor says, when our bodies are shaking with the effort, that the trembling is part of the pose. When we progressed into headstands today, she gave us multiple steps, various ways to engage the pose, because no one can do it perfectly.

From my decades of recovering from perfectionism, from learning to train my self-talk to tell me that the effort is enough, that I don’t have to be perfect, that trying matters, I was OK as I got one leg up in the air and fell down. As I literally did a somersault trying to do a headstand. I could laugh at myself and try again and breathe… And look over at Landon who was next to me, expecting to share a smile. But instead I saw that his eyes were filled with tears.

I tried to have a whispered quiet conversation with him during our yoga practice, but all he said to me was, “I hate this. I hate this. I should be able to do this. Look at her… She can do it. What’s wrong with me?”

By that time we were in child’s pose, resting from our efforts and thanking our bodies for what they had done. But Landon was shaking next to me, holding back tears instead of breathing deeply.

When I taught my most recent class, Christian Relationships, we delved pretty deeply into psychology. It turns out that so much of our relationships depend on psychology, including our relationships with ourselves. In studying child development for that class, I looked more into fixed mindset versus growth mindset than I ever had before. As it happens, despite what Yoda says to Luke in The Empire Strikes Back, trying matters. Trying matters because WE LEARN THROUGH FAILURE. That is psychologically how humans are built. We have to fail over and over and over again, just like Michael Jordan in that amazing commercial from the 90s…so that we can succeed. We do not succeed right out of the gates… Or if we do, we cannot expect that easy success to last. It is a trap for highly capable people that they expect to succeed easily all the time, and if they do not, they read it as a failure on their part instead of simply the way that human beings learn.

When I was in third grade, I was the queen of playground races. I never lost a race. I was the fastest girl in the class and I beat all of the boys who raced me. I started doing all-comer track meets that summer, and all of a sudden I was at a Hershey’s track and field qualifier in Eugene. I was up against the other fastest girls in the state who had qualified, and I was running the 200 m. Of course, I was going to win.

But I lost that race. I came dead last. Only the top two progressed to the next regional qualifier, so I was out. I remember walking out of the stadium and taking my Hershey’s track meet T-shirt and throwing it in the garbage can. I remember my mom taking it back out and walking behind me, letting me cry out my tears of frustration. In that moment, I didn’t see that as a failure I could learn from; I saw myself as a failure who could not learn.

I saw only perfection as acceptable and nothing less as even passing.

It took me 30 years, a lot of research, and helping so many people who feel that same way for me to come to a point where I could see that just because I fail does not make me a failure. It took all that for me to appreciate that the hard feelings, the hard times, the LOSSES, teach me something. It took all that for me to change my own self-talk so that it encouraged me rather than beat me down, so that I could grow from the failures.

When I looked at Landon next to me in yoga, I knew that he was trapped in the LIE that only perfect is acceptable. That he should not only be able to do all of the poses, but do them first and best, and only then would he be OK. I prayed about this. I asked the Holy Spirit to help me know what to say because it would be great if Landon did not have to go through 30 years of internal torment the way that I did.

After yoga, we walked down to the pool and sat on the side together. He was angry and would not look at me. He turned his body away from me. Finally, he told me that he was so embarrassed because he could not do the headstands and because he was tired from yoga, which he thought should have been easy. He told me how he felt like everyone in class was better than he was. And of course, I had inadequate words. I honestly don’t remember everything that I said. But here is what I tried to say. I will write it here In case Landon might hear it later.

Landon, yoga is called a practice. It’s like how medicine is a practice. And it’s how life is a practice. There will always be mistakes. You will never be perfect at it. No one will. The goal of yoga is to practice, and maybe, over time, to make some progress. It is important to notice, each day, what your body would like to do, where it is healthy to push, and where it is healthy to be gentle and rest. Yoga is a moving meditation, where you grow through the movement, and you grow through your mind, and you grow through the practice. They say a lot in yoga, “It is your practice.” Your practice will look different than everyone else’s. Your practice will look different from day to day. The goal is not to make it perfect; the goal is to practice.

I love yoga because it is a miniature version of life. We practice. We sometimes make progress. We never make perfection. We are not meant to. Growth is the point, and sometimes the most important growth comes from not being able to do it.

But Bubba, remember growth mindset: remember to add “yet” to the end of a statement that says you can’t do something. “I can’t do headstands…yet. I can’t do revolved half moon…yet. I can’t say nice things to myself when I’m frustrated… yet.”

Because even that we can change. We can change that we cannot change. We can change that we can’t affirm ourselves. We can change that voice in our head that beats us down instead of building us up. That sees failure as permanent instead of seeing failure as an opportunity for growth. I know that we can change this because I used to not be able to do it. And now I can. Sometimes. Not always, because I’m not perfect. That is a different blogpost, how I learned that. And I will write that post, but not right now. But, like every other form of human learning, it came with challenges, difficulty, and failure.

Yoda says to Luke, “Do or do not. There is no try.” Yoda was right about a lot of things, but he was wrong about that. Research shows that we can change our minds, that we can learn to be kind to ourselves, and, in fact, if we encourage ourselves when we are failing at something, we will get better at it. And conversely, if we beat ourselves up, we will not grow as effectively. Research–and experience, if you look around, and look at your own past–shows that trying is what DOES change our minds, change our learning, and help us grow. Trying, and failing, and trying again.

There is a cute movie on Netflix called Set It Up. One of the best parts is a minor subplot, in which the main character, Harper, continually keeps herself so busy that she can’t try her hand at writing, which is what she really wants to do. And then, she gets fired. All of a sudden, she has all this time and, in the midst of her failure, she could TRY something.

Her best friend finds her rolled up in a blanket on the floor, terrified of writing, terrified of failing, terrified of trying. Harper reaches forward for a hug…and her friend beats her over the head with a pillow, saying, “Of course your first draft is going to bad! It’s going to be terrible! But you know what you do? You go back, and you make it better! You actually DO IT!”

I like that part of what Yoda says to Luke: “Do or do not.” Leaving it there is helpful: “Do it. Go after it. Write it. Write that terrible draft. Do that terrible headstand. Do whatever it is, terribly…because that is the start. That is learning. That is growing. That is becoming. And of course we suck at it. That’s kind of the point: be brave enough to suck at something, so that, while you might one day live into doing it well, the best thing that will have happened will be that you will have become resilient, courageous, and stronger than you knew.

In the movie, Harper gets up off the floor and says, “Ok, I’m going to write the shittiest article ever written.” And her friend jumps up, totally excited, ready for the trying to begin, and shouts out, “It’s gonna suck ass! I can’t wait to read it!”

That’s the kind of friend we need. That’s the kind of friend we need to BE–to others and to ourselves. The one who is pumped to cheer something on that sucks ass, because eventually, if we keep trying, it won’t suck ass anymore. It will be GOOD and we will be stronger.

That’s kind of what I tried to say to Landon: I can’t wait to do yoga with you! You will suck ass! And eventually you might not! But I want to do it with you anyway because sucking is part of the process, and being BRAVE and TRYING is what really matters.

Maybe he heard some of what I said to him. If he heard even a tiny bit, and if he can start to live into that in any small way, that is a triumph. Because progress is always a triumph. Progress, not perfection.

So, Landon, go ahead and try. Try a lot. Try and fail. I’ll be right there next to you, falling over, myself, and trying and failing. Remember that it is your practice, and the bravery to practice is what matters.

Reflection Questions:

Where do you find yourself being hard on yourself? Track your self-talk: what things do you say to yourself? Would you say those things to a friend? How might you be a better friend to yourself?

What is one thing that you took a chance on, that you knew you might suck at but you were brave enough to try anyway? How did that trying go? What did you learn through that experience? Who was there with you in that experience, and did their influence help or hurt as you learned something new?

Where have you failed? What have you learned from those failures? If you are embarrassed about those failures, how might you reframe your self-talk so as to use your failures as a chance to learn and grow?

Who in your life helps you grow and be gentle with yourself when you mess up? Let your heart fill with gratitude for them and seek to trust their words.

Songs for Reflection:

May God be with you as you seek to see your goodness, face and learn from your failures, and TRY each day to follow where your heart leads. May you practice bravery and grit, for they are a practice, and may peace and love be with you as you do. Until next time.

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