09/17/2026
Trying Is Not A Strategy
There is a moment in every real transformation where the soft language has to fall away. Not the compassion, not the grace, but the language people use to protect themselves from the weight of a decision. "I'm trying" is one of those phrases. It sounds like effort. It sounds like humility. But when it is used in place of a choice, it becomes a hiding place, a way to hold onto the story of change without having to live inside the discomfort of actually changing.
This is not a piece about shame. It is a piece about precision, about calling a thing what it is so that the person hearing it can finally stop negotiating with themselves.
The Trap Inside a Small Word
"I'm trying" sounds like commitment, but listen to what it actually promises. It promises nothing. It leaves a door open before anyone has asked for one. It is the sentence that gets to exist right alongside the decision to walk into the exact situation you said you were working to leave behind, because if it goes wrong, you were only ever trying.
This is the quiet mechanism of self-sabotage. Not a dramatic collapse, but a small linguistic exit built in advance. Say "I'm trying" enough times and you never have to say "I decided," which means you never have to fully own what happens next, good or bad. A person who is actually determined does not need the word. They say what they are doing, and then they do it, or they don't, and either way there is no soft cushion of language sitting between them and the truth.
Awareness Raises the Bar
Some people can hide behind not knowing better. Someone who has done real shadow work does not get that cover. She has sat with the parts of herself most people spend a lifetime avoiding, and she has come back from that work more awake, not less. That awareness is real, and it matters, but it also means the old excuses no longer fit. A person who understands her own patterns that clearly cannot use "I'm trying" as an accident of ignorance. She knows exactly what that phrase is doing when she reaches for it.
This is not a punishment for that intelligence. It is a recognition of it. The higher standard is asked of her because she is already capable of meeting one.
Where Compassion Still Lives
None of this means perfection is the standard. Stumbling is human, and healing is rarely a straight line. A hard day, a hard craving, a moment of weakness met honestly and owned outright, that is not what this piece is against. That is someone in the arena, telling the truth about how difficult the work actually is.
What this is against is different. It is the moment soft language gets used to cover a choice that carries real physical risk, a decision made with full knowledge of the danger, wrapped afterward in the language of effort so it does not have to be named as what it was. That is not a stumble. That is a choice wearing a stumble's clothing. The difference matters because one deserves support and the other deserves an honest mirror.
Determination, Not Trying
Determination sounds different from trying. It sounds like naming the risk out loud before you are in it, not after. It sounds like calling for support before the moment gets hard instead of explaining it afterward. It sounds like knowing exactly what a choice will cost the body and the healing already in progress, and choosing not to make it, not because someone is watching, but because a person has decided her own life is worth more than the temporary relief.
The awareness is often already there. What determination asks is that the awareness make the decision instead of narrating around it. Not trying. Deciding, and then living inside that decision, one honest day at a time.
Tracy Stanis
CTILC, CCHt, CNLPP
SoulSync Coaching
[email protected]
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