The Problem With Saying “I’m Trying”

In today’s episode, I’m digging into one tiny word that seems innocent but sneaks its way into our goals, our relationships, our parenting, our businesses — and quietly holds us back: “trying.”

I share a few stories (including the Central Park tennis-ball mama, a birth-pool moment where I finally snapped at my husband, and some honest coaching from a client in a relationship spiral) that show how “I’m trying” keeps us hovering in hesitation instead of stepping into real commitment.

We talk about why the words you use matter, how to notice when “trying” is actually code for “I haven’t decided yet,” and what it looks like to shift into 100% commitment — even when it’s messy and imperfect.

If you’ve been feeling stuck, wobbly, or half-in/half-out with something in your life, this episode will land deeply.

And if you want to take this work further, you can always join my free monthly group coaching call or book a free one-on-one consult. Both are completely complementary.

https://www.tamarcoaching.com/group

https://www.tamarcoaching.com/consult

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:13

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. How you doing? Welcome back. Welcome back to the podcast, guys. Got some good stuff happening for you. But first, my random thoughts. Do you guys like me sharing my random thoughts with you guys? I hope so. I got two random thoughts happening today. Number one, I just want to say, I want to do a huge shout out to all the mamas out there. And even more specifically, the single solo mamas, but just mamas in general. Because I was driving today, I was driving my kid to school, and I look over and I see this other mama that I know. She gets her kids go to my kids' school, and she's pregnant, riding her bike with her little duckling kids riding behind her, riding school. She she bikes her kids to school every single day. And I just had this moment of like, they freaking badass. Like, who does this? Who does this? Like, who bikes pregnant and with their little kids, you know, riding on their own little bikes behind, having to watch out for them and watch out for the cars and all that kind of stuff. It just like it just amazed me. And it actually reminds me of a particular moment that I literally it really impacted me. It was like imprinted me. So this is like it was a big deal. But I remember this moment I had in Central Park years ago, way before I had kids. And I must have been like 19 maybe. And there was this mom walking with our two little boys. They were maybe three and five, and she had these three tennis balls stuffed in the front of her shirt because she didn't have enough hands to hold them. Like literally, she was holding a kid's hand with, you know, each one has it had one of her hands, but she still needs to carry these tennis balls. So boom, she's a genius. She put them like inside of her shirt so they would like, I guess she didn't have pockets. And I just remember being like young, 18, 19 years old, watching her and thinking, wow, being a mom is so full on. And like you just have to get creative, you have to be resilient, and you just have to go with it. And I was just impressed with that. So then when I saw this morning this mama riding her bike pregnant with her other kiddos and tow, I was like, damn, we are so freaking crazy and amazing and all the things. So that's random thought number one. Number two, I just want to say, I just also had a thought. We're on episode 25 today, which is crazy. And I had this thought this morning in the shower. I was like, oh my God. Like, I'm so excited for that person who hasn't even listened to one of my podcasts yet. All of a sudden, they have 25 to listen to now. Like, it's like, you know, when you find like, you know, like a show on Netflix and oh my god, it's amazing, and you get and you have no idea about it, and there's like nine seasons. I just had this thought, and I just want to bless everybody out there, any content creators, whether it's podcast, showing up on Instagram, email, all the kids have a moment with yourself where you are thinking about those people who don't know about you yet, and who once they find you, they're gonna get to just digest gold for days and days and months and months, because now they have all this incredible content to digest. So those are my thoughts right now. Those are my moments. So thank you for playing along with me and going with it. Anyways, all right, today we're gonna jump in. We're gonna just by talking about, we're gonna be talking about this little something very small but very big, this one tiny word that seems really innocent, but changes really everything. It's subtle, it's sneaky, and it really affects the energy we bring into our lives and our goals and our relationships and our businesses and all the things. And that one word is trying. I'm trying. I'm really trying. You know, we grew up with this being totally normal. When you're a kid, it's like, good job for trying, keep trying, go, go, go. And yes, kids do need that, right? Kids are learning the concept of effort, and so they do need that. But as adults, we're walking around with a fully developed human brain with access to our prefrontal cortex, that part of our brain that plans and commits and creates our future and thinks about growth and thinks about what we're wanting, like not this second, but tomorrow and five years from now. And we're still walking around saying, like, I'm trying, I'm trying. And you know, here's the problem with trying. So I'm sure you guys are like, oh my gosh, she's gonna do a whole podcast on like trying, but hear me out. Uh I I think you're gonna be sold by the end. Because here's the problem. Trying is a soft explanation for I'm not committed yet. It's just this kind of like slips, it's just like it tries to sneak, it's a sneaky version of like I'm not committed yet. It's basically like I'm dipping my toe in, I'm gonna see how it goes, but I haven't fully decided yet. And we don't even know that we're doing it. That's probably the craziest part about it. Not craziest, but it's probably like the why we keep on doing it. Let me just actually give you an example that really brought this forward to me, which was, you know, when I was giving birth to my first babe, who's 19 now, uh, which is crazy, but I do remember it like it was yesterday. Home home birth, I'm a home birther. Home birth, pool b pool birth, the whole thing. And I was in the pool, and my husband kept saying to me, You can do this, you can do this, you can do this, which is like, you know, so adorable and sweet and all the things, and definitely straight out of every birth scene and every movie, you know, you can do this, you can do this. But, you know, if you've ever been in birth, you know that you become like laser clear, like stripped down to your essence, no filters, no politeness, no pretending. And I just remember turning to him, you know, probably with like crazy wild animal eyes, and you know, and saying, it's not that I can do this. I am doing this. Please change what you're saying. Please continue on by saying, I you are doing this, you are doing this. And, you know, that shift, I needed that shift. I needed him to change the way he was saying it. It was like pissing me off. But that shift, it and that clarity, like let me tell you, that clarity and that birthing moment, if I could bottle it up and give it to every entrepreneur on the planet, we'd all be like unstoppable. Because, you know, you can do this, lives in the future. I am doing this, lives in the present moment. It's immediate. It's already happening. And I will tell you, my husband never said you can do this again during any birth, by the way. He learned his lesson very well. But, you know, the same thing happens with trying, guys. This is the same idea. When we say I'm trying, we think it's helpful. You know, we think that, okay, at least, you know, like it kind of lets us off the hook a little bit. But what it's actually doing is pulling us out of commitment. It's, you know, I have this client. He is he's really my only non-business client right now, I believe. You know, by the way, you just should know that like, you know, all even my business clients, we're just coaching on all the things as well, right? Because I truly believe it's, you know, our business. We are our businesses. This is a holistic mesh of everything together. But he's a client I'm not, he's not an entrepreneur. He's my only non-entrepreneur client, that's what I really mean. And we're doing a lot of coaching on dating and relationship. And in his relationship, everything he'd bring up to our session was like flavored with, I'm trying. I'm trying to make it work, I'm trying not to get upset at her, I'm trying to be patient. But underneath, he was judging her. He was judging himself. He was feeling disappointed at her all the time. You know, getting resentful, wondering if he should stay, always kind of like constantly having the thought, like, what am I doing in this relationship? Constantly going back to that. And trying, quote unquote, became, you know, this patch. He kept slapping over the truth over and over and over. So in session, yesterday, I think it was even, um, I gave him a new assignment. And I I my assignments, by the way, I call soulful work assignments because I really do feel like it's they serve the soul, they really help us kind of become even more of who we are. And, you know, I said, stop trying and just commit. And I created a 60-day commitment container for him. You know, not something that he shared with her. It was something just for him. It's not a whole it's not a whole performance, just something and kind of an internal commitment. And for 60 days, he was is going to show up in his relationship committed. Not perfect, just committed. You know, which basically looks like letting her be who she is, letting himself be who he is, not letting every disappointing moment mean like total disaster, bringing himself back again and again to why he chose her and why he's in this relationship, watching his his thoughts at a much deeper level, not letting the old patterns like yank him out every five minutes of like, what am I doing in this? What am I, do I want this? I don't know. You know, and on day three, right, so this was not yesterday, this was a couple days, two, two or three days ago, because then he emailed me saying, but how do I know what's going to happen at the end of 60 days? Like, what you know, what which how should I prepare for that? And I wrote back to him, you know, listen, a committed person wouldn't ask that question. A committed person would ask, why does a commit what does a committed partner and then I asked him, what does a committed partner think right now? I had him, you know, think about it. Like, if that's not what a committed person would say, what would a committed person be thinking and saying? And then you practice that thought. Because commitment is an identity. Trying is hesitation. And I see this everywhere. I'm trying to sell my offer, I'm trying to start a podcast, I'm trying to take this coaching seriously, I'm trying to work out consistently, I'm trying to be patient with my kids. But listen, trying is not an action. Trying is a pause button. Hoping is the same thing. I hope it works. I hope someone signs up. I hope the relationship gets better. Hope puts it out of your hands, and commitment puts it back into your hands. And when you're committed, there will be failure. I will tell you that. Do not think that there will not be failure. It doesn't mean like you're committed, you're going in, it's just gonna happen, you're just gonna keep on moving forward. Like there's gonna be lots of fails. There will be breakdowns, there will be days where you forget or fall out of the habit or feel hopeless. But you bring yourself back because it's repetitive, it's steady, it's imperfect, it's humbling, it's all the things that we are as humans. It doesn't ask you to be anything different than you are already, but it moves you forward, right? So that the idea of this commitment thing container that I shared with him, I had him like write down all the potential things that could come up that would want to take him out of commitment and back into trying. Right? Like a just something that she would do that's disappointing, a conversation that he'd want to have that she wouldn't be open to, a judgment that he might have, all the kinds of things. And we came up with a plan of what he could do if those things come up. So he can keep on bringing himself back into commitment. And for 60 days, he's not gonna ask himself the question, what am I doing here? He's gonna be in it. And after 60 days, he then gets to come back and then reevaluate inside. Am I going to recommit, do another commitment container, or am I out? Right? Kind of gives it a framework to be able to play around with it. You know, listen, this is a good one, you know, this is a good demonstration of this. You know, one of my coaches once said this per demonstrated this perfectly. Um, I believe this might have been in my coach training. I'm not sure, but she handed a piece of paper to one of the other folks being coached in this container. And she said, you know, try because she was because she was coaching this person on the this whole concept of like trying or being committed. She said, try to rip the paper. So my colleague, you know, tried to rip the paper. She took the paper in her hands and she ripped it. And my coach said, No, no, no, no, try. Just try. So the student ripped it again. And the coach said, No, try to rip the paper. And finally, my colleague was like, I don't understand. You're telling me to try to rip the paper and I'm ripping it. And she said, Exactly. Trying isn't ripping. Trying isn't doing, trying is nothing. It's the in-between. When you're doing, the paper gets ripped. When you're committed, your life shifts. The paper gets ripped. That same idea. That's it. Right? So this week, notice when you're saying I'm trying, especially in your business or your parenting or your health or your relationships, your creative work, whatever it is. And ask yourself right there, what would commitment look like here? How would it look differently than what I've been doing that might be labeled as trying? What would the version of me who's doing this not trying actually think? Actually feel, actually choose, and then practice just that. See what happens. And I'd love to hear what you have to say about that. I'd love to hear what comes up for you from this. All right, guys. That is it. That's what I got. I want you to go out and practice, not trying, but committing and doing it and see what happens. Alright, guys, if you're loving this, if you're loving this podcast, please, please go ahead and follow the podcast with a little plus sign. You just push that. If you want to leave, you know, stars and even a testimonial, that would be incredible. It helps spread the podcast far and wide because the little internet angels out there are like, oh, people like this. More people should hear it. So go ahead and do that. That would be amazing. Um, and as always, if you want to take this work deeper and off the podcast and kind of bring the podcast to life, remember you can join my free monthly group coaching call. Or you also can book a free consult with me. That's a one-on-one version. If you're more of a one-on-one kind of folk, you can do that and we can explore exactly you know what you're wanting, how you're wanting to bring, how you're wanting to basically go from trying to committed. Both are complimentary on me, and both will also change your life. So be in touch with me. That's it. Love you guys. Have a good one. See you next time.