Trying is all we can do

On developing my journaling habit, wondering about the connection between "trying" and "failing", and trying to reframe it.

Oct 02, 2024

It’s insane how fast time passes: I’ve been flipping through my planner and realized that there are more “past” pages than “future” pages in it now. To be fair, that was already the case starting from July on, but this time I felt how little the chunk of left pages is.

I use the daily pages of my planner to journal. I have already mentioned my journal habit in You can’t decide what you want: it took me years to develop, but now I can say fairly confidently it’s wired in me.

I don’t journal every day, though. Flipping through the planner I can see the many blank pages I left—they are sometimes just a couple of days here and there, but in some cases, I have entire weeks left empty. And I’ve been pretty consistent this year: in the past, I left complete months out of my journal.

Years ago, I used to be very disappointed in myself when that happened. The perfectionist side of me considered those empty pages and missing months as proof of my failure and a reason to berate me.

Until I kinda got tired of doing that.

I realized that being judgmental towards myself wasn’t helpful: instead of motivating me to journal more, it made me less likely to do so. Anytime picked up my planner again, I found myself thinking, Why am I trying this again? I’m going to stop and fail, just like the 10 times I did before.

I don’t know when exactly I started to wonder about the connection between trying and failing: maybe it was while I was trying to get down my journaling habit; maybe when I was trying to write a short story idea I had had since I was in high school and never got to; maybe when I went back to the gym after five months of not showing up.

I had this thought: we think that when we stop doing something, it means we have failed. We say, I’ve been trying to get into exercise for years, and that trying over there has a negative connotation because if you’re still trying it means that you haven’t succeeded yet. Meaning, you have been failing to get into exercise for years. And there’s an undercurrent, a question unsaid, that maybe keeps being repeated in the back of your head.

Why am I even trying? I should just do myself a favor and give up.

But, if you’re like me, you find yourself trying again. But, I tell myself, this time I’m not trying anymore: I’m doing it. This is going to be the good one: I’m going to make it. This time, I’ll kick myself in the butt and get the thing done and keep on doing it. This time, I’m not going to stop.

Well. That hasn’t worked out very well for me, most of the time.

What has worked for me was, instead, accepting that I’d stop. Fail, you could call it.

Think about it for a moment: how realistic is it to get started with a new habit and just winging it? Let’s say I have never gone to the gym in my entire life, and my New Year’s resolution is to go twice a week—how realistic is it that I’ll start and just keep on doing it without breaking the streak for the following ten years?

Maybe I’m motivated and I keep up for a couple of weeks, let’s say for a month, but then the motivation will wane out and something will happen (vacation or something unexpected) and there, I’ve missed the workout a couple of times.

So what? Seriously, what did you expect?

We’re bound to “fail”, if we still want to call it like that. We’re bound at some point to break the streak, whatever is the habit we want to develop. That’s what I realized: breaking the streak isn’t a failure, it’s an inherent part of the process. So, instead of wanting to avoid it at all costs, maybe it’s more efficient to accept it as a natural stage of the development of a habit.

That’s what I decided to do with journaling. I threw my perfectionist side in a little dark cellar in some recess of my mind1 and decided that, fine, I’ll have missing months in my journal and I’m not going to retroactively fill them out (yep, I used to do that. Yep, it was exhausting). Nope, what’s done is done, what’s missed is missed; we look onward instead.

Accepting it made me so much lighter. And, you guessed it, I ended up being more consistent with journalling—which doesn’t mean that I write every day, or every week, or every month. It’s just that, even after a long break, I’m not scared anymore to go back to it. I just… do it. Want to do it.

Whenever we want to do something, trying is really the only thing we can actually do. We can start, stop, and then try again. And stop. And try again. And stop. And try again. Hopefully, we’ll get better each time—but what if we don’t? Hopefully, at some point it’ll stick—but what if it doesn’t?

Well, what can you do? Try again.

I know, it gets frustrating when you’ve been trying for years. And admittedly, there are probably other things you could do: if you’re banging your head against the same wall over and over again without any new result then, yeah, maybe you need to change something about your method or strategy or even goal you’ve set yourself.

It’s just that I don’t think we need to put ourselves down while in the process. It may not only be unnecessarily painful—it may hold us back from going back at it.

Is there something that you’ve been holding yourself from trying again because of fear of failing? Or did you experience something similar to what I did with journaling? Do you find this reframe potentially useful, or do you have any other thoughts on it?

Let me know by simply replying to this email, writing me at ryeyoubs@gmail.com, or leaving a comment!

Take care and be kind to yourself,

Rye Youbs