Do or do not, there is no try - Yoda was right.

Something I discovered after many years of "trying" to write my first novel was that when I really put my nose to the grind stone and gave it the old college try and any other rah, rah platitude you can apply writing was really difficult. However, when I got really frustrated with the whole process and gave up, all of a sudden things started coming to me: ideas, dialogue for characters, sentences, paragraphes, metaphors, it was a virtual treasure trove. If you don't believe me just remember back to school days when you really liked someone and "tried" to get theem to like you. Nothing happened. No one likes a needy salesman. However, once you stopped "trying" something strange happened. People actually started liking you, in droves even, you attracted to you what you had been "trying" to, but without effort. Anyway, I quickly accepted that this is how the universe works because I'd rather not work at something than work hard at something...especially if I am getting better results.

However, it took me a long time to figure out how this all worked in the scheme of the big picture. After years of reading philosophical and religious texts as well as studying psychology and understanding a little bit about how the human brain and mind works I've got a pretty good lock on it. I won't bore you with the big picture but I will tell you why "trying" works against you and why I stopped "trying" years ago.

The act of "trying" actually implies the possibility of failure. Now Carl Jung, the great Swiss psychologist said that things that are not resolved within the subconscious must become manifest in the world around us. So, if you think that there is the possibility of failing you will manifest difficulty and potentially failure in your external reality. But, and here's the secret, drum roll please, failure, just like the existance of cold, is an illusion! Just as cold is really the absence of heat and doesn't, in itself, exist, it is impossible to fail. People who say they have failed have simply stopped moving toward their goal, they have given up. Things that appear to be failures are really lessons to teach you how to adjust your approach so that you will eventually reach your goal.

So take it easy, stop trying and keep working toward your goal.