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We finally went to see the final episode in the Star Wars saga last week!

Kevin has been a die-hard Star Wars fan for as long as he can remember.

So much so that he was absolutely appalled that I (Nikki) hadn’t seen a single episode when we first met.

In fact, watching the entire series (and enjoying it) was an unspoken prerequisite for marrying him!

Let the record show that I too am now a big fan. We even started watching from Episode 1 again on Sun night 🙂

One of our mutually favourite lines of all time is by none other than Yoda (the greatest Meditation Master of all time):

“Do or do not. There is no try.”

We love it because it is such a relevant principle that can have a powerful impact on our day to day functioning.

How often when you are asked to do something, do you respond with ‘ok, I’ll try’. “I’ll try to make it to the party”. “I’ll try to call you tomorrow”. “I’ll try to bake a cake on Friday”.

Have you ever stopped to uncover why we respond this way?

And whether it is even possible to ‘try’ to do something in the first place?

In fact, let’s do it now….Try to blink.

…………..

One of two things would have happened:

  1. You blinked;
  2. You didn’t blink.

As you can see, a task will either be completed or not, there isn’t really a middle ground between the options.

‘Trying’ doesn’t tangibly exist.

What happens when we say “I’ll try”?

Well, when we enter into the realm of ‘trying’, we open ourselves up to the possibility of failure.

Since failure has such a bad rap (mostly because of what we make it mean about ourselves), this can have all sorts of subconscious detrimental effects on us.

By succumbing to the fact that we might fail, on one level we are mentally preparing our ego in the case that we do fail, but on another level we are popping a seed of doubt into our minds which actually acts to hinder our ability to succeed from the outset.

Yoda’s advice to “do or do not” moves us beyond the grey and into the black and white, without all the drama.

You see, you either blinked or you didn’t. And that’s the end of it.

‘Trying’ is neither here nor there and certainly is not an outcome in and of itself.

Rather, it’s a good excuse. An excuse not to fully commit. A way of doing only some of the job (or none at all), but still feeling OK about it.

You see, when we say we will do something, most of us would like to believe that we have the integrity to follow through with it. By only committing to ‘trying’, we have a great out if it all gets ‘too hard’ or we just become ‘too busy’.

Our solution to getting beyond the constraints of ‘trying’ is to get rid of the word ‘try’ from your vocabulary altogether. This require you to:

  • Accept that you can’t do everything;
  • Be comfortable with saying ‘no’. “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on… It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas.” – Steve Jobs.
  • Fully commit, against all odds, to what you believe in and want to achieve. Here’s another quote that we love. “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” – Norman Vincent Peale.