To do or do not

As Yoda told young Luke when he said he’d try to raise the spaceship from the swamp: ‘Do not try. Do or do not.’

And while we may not be faced with spaceships that need raising from swamps on a day-to-day basis, it is a good perspective to ponder.
How often do we tell ourselves that we are trying our best, but…

The distinction between trying to do something or deciding that we are going to do something is conviction. When we decide to try something, there is some part of us that is uncertain about the event. It may be that we are uncertain whether we like doing it, whether we like the taste of it, or even whether we can do it at all. When we decide to do it, we will actually do it no matter the outcome. We do the best we can, and if it is within our abilities we will have success. If we are not successful the first time, we can either decide to learn more about it, hone our skills and abilities; or we can decide that we are not willing to put our time and energy into mastering whatever it is we are doing…

The choice is always our own.

The real question then becomes why we would try doing things, rather than decide to do them or not do them. Where is the uncertainty coming from?
Is it because we feel pressured? Do we feel we should do it, but we don’t really want to? Are we having a hard time stepping out of old patterns and habits, perhaps to the point where we say ‘yes’, while our whole being is screaming ‘no’?

Ultimately most choices are not that hard.
We either want to do it, or not. We either can do it, or not. We either will do it, or not.

As soon as we tell anyone we will try doing it, chances are we are accommodating the other person while we truly don’t see a way in which we can make it happen in the first place. And rather than saying, ‘Sorry, no can do’, we’ll say ‘I’ll try’.
This may seem nice toward the other person, it may even be the polite thing to do. Yet it has a tendency to put our own needs and desires on the back burner as pretty soon we are trying to accommodate everybody around us, rather than taking care of the things we really need in our lives.

So ultimately it may be a good time to take Yoda’s advice: ‘Do not try, do or do not.’
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Pendant by Taliswoman Me   www.taliswoman.me