Mid-April 2021 Newsletter

Hello, and a mind-blowing abundant Mid-April to you!
Welcome, or welcome back, to my newsletter. Today's issue is about trying too hard, with some hints about changing that. Enjoy!

"If at first you don't succeed, then try, try, again" we're told. The culture, and many families, seem to encourage effort and struggle, looking upon a rest break as goofing off, or changing direction as giving up. I was trained this way too. In a photo of me as an infant, I'm crawling forward with a look of determination on my face like I'm trying to make my way up a steep cliff!

Take a look at what you're focusing on now, in your work or personal life. Do you feel like you're putting out a lot of energy and getting nowhere, or moving forward at a snail's pace? Sometimes this means your approach needs to change, and sometimes it means your goal needs adjusting. Depending on the setup of your work, you may not think you have as much control over your assignments as you'd like, yet you can still modify the situation if that's needed.

Years ago in my corporate job I evaluated a software management tool, hoping to fit it into our code to help us. After many frustrating weeks changing the programs, which neither I nor my department owned, trying to force them to fit our environment, I finally gave up, pronouncing the tool unusable for us. Even though it was obvious this tool would never work with our code library, I still felt like a quitter. Then several other programmers asked what had taken me so long to realize this!

A single roadblock is not usually justification to stop pursuing a goal. However when you reach a point of diminishing returns, expending more and more effort yet receiving only problems and frustration in return, it may be time to re-evaluate. In hindsight, I should have abandoned that software management tool weeks earlier, especially when it seemed after all my work on it, I understood the code better than the owner did! I was too stubborn to admit the it was an impossible task, at least for me.

So is there somewhere you're "beating your head against a wall"? I grew up with thick heavy glass eyeglasses, and wore strong hard contact lenses for many years in my young adulthood. When I finally started to improve my vision, I was way too aggressive about it. I read book after book about eye exercises, voraciously, sometimes straining to see with glasses that were too weak for me. I was fiercely determined to make progress, the faster the better.

It took me longer than I like to admit that the way forward with vision improvement, as with many things, is to have an intended outcome, or at least an intermediate goal as a checkpoint, then to proceed methodically toward that. It's usually not helpful to throw yourself fiercely into a project, struggling to advance like you're slogging through mud. Easy does it! If it feels like too much work, it probably is. What if there's a more effective way that's actually enjoyable? See if you can find that. You deserve it!

For an article on how seeing well is about not trying too hard, click here.

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Please send me your questions and comments
Let me know what you've wondered about concerning energy medicine or vision or dreams. I'll be glad to write a short article addressing that topic. Thank you to those who have sent me questions, or see a question you asked me in a private session written about here. You're helping many other people! Enjoy the second half of this all-is-great! month of April. I'll write again in a few weeks. Take care!