The compulsion to try hard—to get the right answer, ask the right question, do the right thing—is rooted in a fear of doing something wrong. Joe reveals the paradox: when you think of things you’ve done wrong, most of them happened while you were pushing yourself. When you aren’t pushing, nothing comes to mind that you’ve done wrong.
The trying itself is the source of the errors. Pushing creates tension, contradiction, and disconnection from the present moment. The underlying belief is “I had to be something else to be loved”—and so the trying is an attempt to become that something else, which ironically prevents the very love being sought.
This isn’t laziness dressed up as wisdom. It’s recognizing that the energy spent trying to get it right could instead be spent actually being present. The freedom is in dropping the performance, not in performing better.
“So afraid of doing something wrong.”
“Think about all the things that you think you’ve done wrong and how many of them are happening while you’re pushing yourself.”
Related Concepts
- Not trying gets more done
- Perfectionism as safety strategy
- Becoming someone to be loved means never being loved
- Pushing creates the opposite of flow