Stop Trying and Notice What You Have Accomplished

“…for as long as we strive, try, quest for accomplishment, we will never achieve what we are after.”

 I have made an interesting observation (for me) of late. For as long as I strive, try, quest for accomplishment in something, I will never achieve what I am striving for. It is only when I stop, become aware, that I realize what has happened…perhaps, what I have accomplished. My realization comes in ‘not doing.’ Let me explain.

When I began my daily meditation practice many years ago, I can remember thinking and feeling like I was making quick progress. Then, that progress seemed to slow down. I did not feel like I was getting the ‘buzz’ I once received after a meditation session. And then it got to the point where it felt like I was not making any progress at all. Days, weeks, months would go by and it just felt stagnant. But it was in the awareness of how I was living my daily life (with more peace and tranquility) that I realized the daily meditation practice was, in fact, continuing to have a remarkable and transformative affect.

Similarly, when I began my daily yoga practice years ago, it felt like I made quick progress. Then, the progress seemed to slow and eventually seemed to stop. Yet, I continued on. I would be in a yoga class and remember thinking… “Focus, Rob…focus! I need to get deeper in this pose. Try, Rob…try!!!” As with the meditation practice, it dawned on me one day after I had become tired of ‘trying’ that if I just focused on ‘being’ in my yoga practice instead of ‘doing,’ I became aware that I was deeper into my poses than I had ever been before. The yoga has shown me time and time again that for as long as I focus on ‘doing’ I will get frustrated with my accomplishments. But when I focus on ‘being,’ I surprise myself time and time again at how much progress I have actually made.

This distinction between ‘doing’ and ‘being’ is an important one for our times. We so easily become caught up in our own self-importance and the busyness of our lives (the ‘doing’) that we rarely take a moment to stop and just ‘be.’  For as long as we ‘do’ we create the conditions that bring us out of awareness and into an egoic state of never-ending-thought, illusion, and chaos. It is only by ‘stopping’ that we have a chance to bring awareness back into our lives.

I am not referring to taking a vacation here! That often results in simply transferring our ‘doing’ to another activity; to busying our lives and minds with other things to distract us from the stress and pressure that we momentarily left behind in favor of going on the vacation in the first place. I am referring here to stopping trying to get somewhere with our lives and simply ‘being’ in our lives. To walk through every moment of our day in complete awareness of all that is going on around us. When this truth reveals itself to us, when we awaken to the perfection around us at every moment in our lives, we become less affected by what is seemingly going on around us. We become more calm and more at peace.

So…stop trying and notice what you have accomplished. It may just surprise you.

In love, gratitude, compassion and forgiveness…

Shanti, Namaste, Agapé,