how much effort?
“The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.”
- Bruce Lee
This quote goes against what we’ve been taught—the amount of effort we exert will directly impact our outcomes.
When I read this after I finished my morning meditation (the Open App I use always shares a quote upon finishing a meditation), I immediately knew it would be the start of today’s Note.
First, it spoke directly to me (more on that in a second).
And secondly, it was a different quote than the one I received when I opened the app; many times, the quote on the app's homepage is the quote you receive after finishing a meditation—not today.
The reminder that sometimes, when we try too hard, we actually get in our way and slow down our progress and sometimes even prevent our Selves from reaching our goals was a continuation of the conversation I had with my coach yesterday.
In my weekly call, I was sharing the progress I’ve made in just the last week on the Keep Pursuing Series, the Daily Notes podcast, and moving closer to getting clients in the AlignedLife+ relationship at RLS Wealth. Part of this conversation involved sharing my feelings about the reach of my content and how I’m stubbornly not willing to do anything that feels inauthentic to try to grow my audience–I don’t want to play the social media and SEO games just to grow my audience, especially if it leads to superficial growth; by this I mean the audience grows, but not with people who are actually looking to move closer to their authentic Self and life.
I also shared that I don’t want to put any pressure on my content to do anything other than share my thoughts, challenge people’s current views on their lives, and hopefully encourage others to take back the pen to the story of their lives. Don’t get me wrong, YES, I hope that there will be some people who realize they need help in designing their authentic life and coming up with a plan to get there and I might be the right person to help them—I hope this happens, but I don’t want to put any pressure on my creative work that I trust will lead to this outcome.
If I decided to put more “effort” behind my content—beginning to play the system’s games (clickbait headlines, cheesy thumbnails, etc.), writing for keywords (which is actually outdated), using other hacks for growth, and putting pressure for my creativity to lead to a specific outcome, it would slow me down (the content would be harder to create–when it flows from my heart it’s easy) and weaken my work.
I’m putting in the right amount of effort right now, which is a lot, and if I were to put in more, it would take away from what I’m doing and where I’m going.
I don’t believe Bruce Lee is encouraging us not to put forth any effort; anyone who has watched his movies or read his works knows he put a lot of effort into the work he did. But, in his martial arts practice, he learned there is a certain point where putting too much effort into a move or a punch leads to a slower and weaker impact–and he realized this is true not just in his craft but also in life.
If you find your Self not making the progress you’d like to see, despite putting in a lot of effort, try scaling back the effort you’re putting in and the pressure you’re putting on your Self for an outcome and see what happens.
You might just find out your extra effort was what was getting in the way and slowing you down all along.
🎧 Listen to today's Note on the LifeDesign+ podcast.
See you tomorrow and keep pursuing,
JC
🦅 Some ways I might be able to help you live your authentic life:
🤝 One on Ones Let's hop on Zoom to do a guided meditation, a creative brainstorming session, or an overcoming an obstacle session.
📝 LifeDesign+ LifeDesign+ is rooted in the Kinder Institute of Life Planning’s EVOKE process, which is a five-step process to help discover what your authentic life looks like and begin to design a plan to bring that life to reality. It continues to incorporate the alignment of your spirit, mind, and body to ensure you evolve with your authentic life, as the authentic life is not a destination, it’s an evolution.
💸 AlignedLife+ AlignedLife+ (and the one-time engagement AlignedLife) takes LifeDesign+ to the next level by aligning your finances with your authentic life at RLS Wealth. For individuals looking for a financial advisor to help design and manage their financial plan while maintaining the alignment of spirit, mind, body, and money, AlignedLife+ was created specifically for you.
📈 LifeDesign+ for financial advisors LifeDesign+ for financial advisors mirrors the LifeDesign+ relationship, including the focus on the alignment of spirit, mind, and body, with an important distinction—once the plan for your authentic life has been designed, we shift our focus to integrating your new plan with your practice.
🤝 Outsourced life planning As your outsourced life planner, you bring me in to take your client through the Kinder Institute of Life Planning’s EVOKE process to help them better understand who they are, what they want their life to look like, and create a vision of this life for you to execute on the financial plan. Since you are their financial advisor, you will be a part of each of the meetings, so you understand the “why” behind your client’s new plan.
