For much of my life, I underestimated myself, quietly deciding ahead of time what I could and couldn't do. I didn't even notice I was doing it until I started doing it less. I never set out to change; I just kept trying, often clumsily and with no visible progress, and somewhere along the way the old story stopped fitting. When my birthday came around last month and I sat down for my yearly bit of reflection, one phrase kept coming back as this year's motto: trying matters.
Much of that shift happened upside down. For months I judged my handstand practice by whether I could hold it, and by that measure most mornings ended in a wobble or a tumble. My yoga teacher used to say that yoga is a lot like pizza. Good pizza is amazing, with fresh ingredients and a perfect crust, the kind you close your eyes to savor. But gas station pizza? Also pretty good. Even a little, done imperfectly, still counts. So I changed what I was measuring and started paying attention to the trying instead of the hold.
Some part of my nervous system seems to have come with a built-in belief that chin-ups and handstands are for other people. I'm tired of that story. The small tries have been quietly adding up, and I keep surprising myself. There's a line often credited to Picasso: "Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working." Progress, I'm learning, works the same way. It shows up for the one who keeps showing up.
It helps that so little rides on this grown-up handstand project. So much of my life carries real weight, but in my practice, if I fall out, I come down, shake out my wrists, and kick up again. Nothing breaks. I'm learning how much I need that kind of low-stakes trying.
And it has been quietly changing the upright me, too. We tend to hold the people around us to the same standard we hold for ourselves, and I know I can be hard on my people partly because I can be hard on me. As I get gentler with myself in handstand land, that softness is following me home. Is it really the end of the world if the counter has a few crumbs on it? When I go a little easier on myself, I go easier on the people I love, too.
Why is this hard to do in relationships? Every time we reach for someone we love, we risk something real, and when the stakes feel that high, most of us brace and get harder on ourselves and each other. So the first move is often an inward one: easing up a little, lowering the stakes on this one conversation, and noticing our success before anyone else can see it. We can't control how our partner responds or how fast things change, but we are in charge of our trying, and we can honor it long before it shows.
I see this with the couples I work with. Together we practice reaching for a softer response where there used to be a sharp one, and noticing when an old hurt has taken charge. Most of it happens clumsily, halfway, a beat too late. But when one partner says the hard thing kindly instead of with the big huff, even if it comes out a little stiff, that's a gas station pizza moment: not gourmet, but genuinely good. Sometimes the other partner notices, and sometimes the effort works quietly underneath for a while. Either way, it matters.
This is the work of relational integrity. It begins with two people on a couch trying to reach each other, and that effort doesn’t just stay on the couch. The way we learn to try with the people closest to us travels with us into our work, our families, our neighborhoods, and our conversations with people who see the world differently. Effort adds up. Multiply those small moments across enough living rooms, and they start to look like a different kind of world.
I'm an idealist, and happy to own it. I can hope big and keep trying at the same time. Whatever you're reaching toward, you don't have to have it mastered yet, and you don't have to have the perfect conversation with your partner. Just keep showing up, gas station pizza and all. Trying matters, and when we bring patience, humor, and a little tenderness to it, we build kind, steady relationships, and through them, a kind, steady world.
If you keep a journal, you might sit with this one: Where might you be underestimating yourself, and what would it look like to try anyway?