Since When Did Trying Become Embarrassing?

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The coolest thing you can do is to be vulnerable enough to try.

I was talking to a friend a few months ago about something she'd been working on for a long time. A project she really believed in. And when she told me about it, she did this thing I've noticed a lot of people do, herself included, me included, where she kept undercutting it. "I mean, it's probably nothing." "Don't make it weird." "I don't know, we'll see." 

She wanted it badly. That was obvious. But she couldn't just say that. 

I've been thinking about that conversation ever since, because I do the same thing. Most people I know do. There's this reflex we've all developed where we preemptively shrink our own desires, make them casual, act like we could take it or leave it, before anyone else gets the chance to find them too much.

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Somewhere between exchanging bracelets and exchanging documents, we lost the ability to try new things without caring about judgment. 

The desire you keep making casual, the one you keep pre-shrinking before anyone can find it too much, might be the exact thing that brings you what you have been chasing.

The shape of the problem 

There is a version of trying we have all been sold that goes like this: you set a goal, you work toward it, it either works or it does not, and the value of the whole thing is determined entirely by the outcome. Which sounds logical until you realize what it actually does to you. It makes the entire experience hostage to a result you cannot fully control. 

The obsession with it working out is often the very thing that messes it up. You are so locked onto the destination that you cannot be present in the process, cannot adjust, cannot enjoy it, cannot even notice when something better is emerging sideways. And when it does not go exactly as planned, because it rarely does, not exactly, you do not just feel disappointed. You feel like the whole thing was a waste. Like you were a fool for trying. 

But there is another version that is quieter and just as corrosive. The projects we start and abandon, not because they failed, but because they got hard. There is a specific kind of excitement that lives at the beginning of something new, before it starts asking anything real of you. The idea feels alive, full of possibility. You are in it completely, until the moment it demands actual work. Sustained, unglamorous, no-guarantee work. And suddenly something shinier catches your eye. Something still in that untouched stage where everything feels possible. 

So you jump. And then again. And slowly, without really noticing, you accumulate a graveyard of half-finished things.

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Three things worth knowing 

Before we get to the antidote, three concepts that explain why this happens, and why it is not just a you problem.

Pike Syndrome 

A pike fish is placed in a tank with smaller fish it would normally feed on, separated by a transparent glass panel it cannot see. It keeps swimming toward the prey, hitting the barrier over and over, until eventually it gives up entirely. Then the glass is removed. The fish had learned the food was unreachable. The lesson outlasted the barrier. It stopped going after the smaller fish even with nothing in the way. And it died. Not because the glass was there, but because it had learned to stop trying. We do this too. One failed attempt, one public stumble, one thing that did not unravel the way we pictured, and something in us quietly files that away. The glass is there. You already know how this ends.

Tall Poppy Syndrome 

Tall poppy syndrome is the cultural tendency to cut down people who try to rise above the norm. When you try at something with real conviction, it can threaten those who are too afraid to go after what they want themselves. People might talk. They might make it weird. And maybe that fear has held you back before. But the people who end up somewhere meaningful have such a clear vision for what they are moving toward that they simply do not leave room for that to stop them. Their persistence ends up mattering more than other people's opinions of them. And once you stop needing the approval, there is nothing left to hold you back.

The Graveyard of Half-Finished Things 

Every unfinished project is a promise you made and did not keep to yourself. After enough of them, something shifts. You stop fully trusting your own enthusiasm. You start new things with one eye already on the exit. You wonder, somewhere underneath the excitement, whether this is just another one. It becomes genuinely hard to tell what is worth pursuing and what is just another shiny object. That blurring is not laziness. It is the accumulated weight of let-downs you gave yourself. You trained yourself, slowly, to not believe in you.

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What trying actually looks like on people

I have noticed that the people I find most magnetic are not the ones who play it cool. They are the ones who are clearly, unapologetically in it, whatever their "it" is. The person who loves their work enough to talk about it with real feeling. The one who says "I really want this to work out" without dropping three disclaimers after. The one who tries something new and talks about it before they know whether it succeeded. 

It is a little uncomfortable to witness at first, because we have been so trained to wait for outcomes before caring. But then something loosens. You realize you are in the presence of someone who is actually here, in their life, not managing it from a safe distance.

That is what I want more of. For myself and around me.

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The antidote 

The antidote is not to try harder or want it more. It is to detach the trying from the needing-it-to-work. 

To go after things for the experience of going after them, for who you become in the pursuit, for what you learn, for the aliveness of it, not just for the payoff at the end. Because if the

only point is the outcome, you will stop the second the outcome feels uncertain. And the outcome always feels uncertain. That is the whole thing. 

Understanding that it will look bad until it looks good is a major shift. While other people are worried about looking cool, you can be worried about progressing and becoming really good at whatever it is you picked up. Never be embarrassed to try your best. Sometimes we hold 

ourselves back not because we do not think we can do it, but because we are scared of being seen to be trying. Of being caught caring. 

I want to be caught caring. I have decided that is what I am going for. 

Not the motivational poster version of trying. Not performing effort for an audience. Just the private, earnest, sometimes clumsy act of actually meaning it. Of doing the thing and caring about how it goes without constructing an exit from your own investment. 

It will look uncool sometimes. Fine. Most things that are actually worth anything look a little uncool up close. 

The truth is, we only get to become ourselves by daring to try new things. At any time, the desire you keep making casual, the one you keep pre-shrinking before anyone can find it too much, might be the exact thing that brings you what you have been chasing and keep just missing.

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