When I was 19, I started dating a 37-year-old man.

When I met his best female friend for the first time, over dinner at the late Angelica Kitchen in the East Village, we had a great time, all laughing and getting along.

A few days later he told me that she said I seemed like I was trying too hard…

… and she was right.

Whether a 30-something woman should be making that comment about a 19-year-old girl who’s just figuring out the world is a different, and valuable topic, but my point today is that she was right.

We’re taught to try hard, sometimes to a fault.

Especially if you grew up on the East Coast or in a similar culture, you’re taught to try try try.

Many of us pick up – or are directly taught – that letting go, attracting what’s right for us, and allowing divine guidance is impractical and way too scary.

I’m a New Yorker and I love New Yorkers, but we can be pretty controlling.

After living in Latin America for almost six years, I’ve truly learned and integrated the power of letting go, magnetizing, and receiving, rather than trying too hard.

We all know that trying too hard is often a repellent:

1. When you pursue a potential partner too hard, it can come off as desperate or needy and drive them away.

2. When you try too hard to make the perfect impression at a job interview, you might miss the chance to truly connect with the interviewer and authentically nail the conversation.

3. When you try too hard to eat perfectly, you almost always wind up overeating then beating yourself up, creating a toxic cycle. 

We know that trying too hard in certain categories backfires, but it’s easy to forget that it applies to everything.

Trying too hard can show up in less expected ways, like when you’re…

Trying to be positive.
Trying to manifest.
Trying to love yourself.
Trying not to judge others.
Trying to build your career.

When you remember that you are held and guided, you can shift into the space of allowing, which aligns with nature and divinity…

Allowing yourself to be positive.
Allowing yourself to manifest.
Allowing self-love.
Allowing acceptance.
Allowing inspired action.

Because all the above are our natural state, before we pick up the idea that we need to push to get everything, and before we develop negativity biases.

When someone is constantly pushing, striving, and struggling, they’re trying to override the laws of the universe, which is impossible.

This leaves you frustrated and exhausted.

We don’t give our guides, God, and mother nature enough credit.

In fact, in trying too hard, we offend them a bit – because they’ve got this.

They’ve got you.

You are held.

You are unconditionally and divinely guided, protected, and provided for.

Rest there, in that space.

Take action from there.

Connect from there.

Love from there.

From that place of being held.

Of being guided, protected, and provided for…

… rather than coming from a place of fear, doubt, guilt, neediness, control, judgment, or competition.

Because no one is out to get you, and there is more than enough for everyone.

Everyone and everything is conspiring to support you and usher in your greatest success.

Your divine desires.

Your holy path.

But you have to align with and integrate that belief, or else you’ll only see what’s “out to get you,” and create more of it.

Far more happens in the allowing than in the trying.

In the unlearning than in the learning.

If you close your eyes and feel the energy of trying too hard, then feel the energy of allowing, it’s like resting into your authentic self rather than looking outside yourself.

It helps to…

Release the face.
Unfurrow the brow.
Loosen the jaw.
Drop the shoulders.
Relax the brain.

Allow thoughts to flow down out of your body and into the earth to be perfectly transmuted and utilized as the pure energy they are.

Be in stillness, emptiness, and nothingness, in mind and body…

… and allow.

Because your loving nature and your desires were placed in you by God.

The divine.

Mother Nature.

The universe.

Love itself.

However you see these different creators, guides, and support systems, they all played and continue to play a role in seeding your desires.

Your desires are not an accident, or something you selfishly created in your mind.

Your desires want you even more than you want them.

Receiving them is your nature – not something you have to strive and struggle for.

Action is important – divine, inspired, guided action – but the biggest and often hardest part is stepping out of the way, and allowing.

What does allowing feel and look like for you?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

Much love,
Lula