I often get this question: “When do I know I’m putting too much effort into something that just hasn’t been going my way? How do I know what action is truly worth it or not?”
In other words, what is the balance between intention and surrender?
Let me differentiate two things for you: effort and aligned action.
Effort vs Aligned Action
All 3D manifestations require you to take action. You must meet the universe halfway - never have I seen anyone create and live their dream lives from doing nothing at all.
But when does aligned action become effort? In this case, I’m defining effort loosely as something that feels, hard, burdensome, time consuming, and like something you have to do.
In my experience, true aligned action feels easy. And that can mean a lot of things - maybe less time, less energy, etc.
Effort is when I spent 3.5 years doing intense diets and homeopathic modalities that took up weeks of my time (and a lot of money) to heal less than 10% of my health issues.
Aligned Action is when I spent 6 months meditating 1 hour a day to heal 100% of my health issues.
As you can see, aligned action has a lot more leverage than effort does.
How can you tell if your action is effort?
There are nuances to each case, but here are some obvious signs:
- Your health is compromised
- Your values are compromised
- You don’t have time for the things you really want to do and enjoy
- You don’t have time for the people you deeply love and care about
We are conditioned to turn action into unnecessary effort - this stems from a collective wound that we need something outside of ourselves to be whole.
Effort has tension and stress, stemming from the feeling of lack and the core belief that you need to be better, achieve more, have more to be worthy of love and acceptance.
Action becomes effort when your ego says “let me push myself more and harder so I can achieve that thing that I want faster and finally feel the way I’ve been wanting to feel my whole life! That I am somebody!”
Moving from effort to aligned action
Discerning where we are efforting is always the first step. Check the list above and see if any apply to you. If you have awareness of where your old conditioned patterns are, you can then move towards new ones.
Then comes actually changing your core pattern that is running your subconscious mind, which you are unconsciously creating your reality from - which I’ll talk about in the next email.
Moving towards aligned action is ultimately part of our larger purpose of knowing our divine selves - because the Divine is the ultimate creator, and true alignment taps into that creative power that you hold.
To your becoming,
Ai