The Pendulum of Striving
Learn to try smarter instead of harder.
Posted May 21, 2026 | Reviewed by Margaret Foley
We tend to live like malfunctioning windshield wipers. Frenetic motion. Sudden collapse. Frenetic motion again.
One week we are downloading habit trackers, ordering supplements with names like Alpha Brain Thunder Powder, and telling ourselves that this is the month we finally become the kind of person who answers emails within 24 hours. We wake at dawn. We stretch. We hydrate aggressively. We make ambitious, sprawling lists in multiple notebooks.
Then comes the recoil. We dive under the duvet. And we stay.
Push. Collapse. Push. Collapse.
I know this rhythm well because for much of my life I have confused striving with virtue. Somewhere along the line, many of us absorbed the idea that if we were not straining, we were failing. Rest became suspicious. Ease suspect.
Recently, on my podcast Fifty Words for Snow , where my cohost Emily John Garcés and I explore words without direct English equivalents, we discussed the Sanskrit word viriya with head teacher at the Zen Center of Los Angeles, Katherine Senshin Griffith.
Viriya is often translated as effort, right effort, persistence, or diligence, but Katherine doesn’t feel any of these quite capture viriya . Katherine prefers “diligent enthusiasm.”
The Buddhist tradition contains a story about a monk named Sona who understood extremes very well. Before becoming a monk, Sona reportedly lived a life of luxury and sensual pleasure. After entering spiritual practice, he swung violently in the opposite direction. He became so determined and ascetic that he pushed himself to exhaustion. According to the story, he walked meditation paths until his feet bled. Still, he believed he simply needed to try harder.
The Buddha eventually asked him about a lute.
When the strings are too tight, can it play beautifully?
When the strings are too loose, can it play beautifully?
Only when properly tuned does music emerge. That image has survived for thousands of years because it describes something central about being human. Most of us do not know how to tune ourselves. We only know how to tense or collapse.
American culture, in particular, tends to glorify the tightening phase. Push harder. Optimize more. Wake earlier. We are constantly encouraged to overpower ourselves, as though the psyche were a stubborn horse that simply needs more aggressive whipping. Then we wonder why so many people secretly fantasize about disappearing into a cabin with no Wi-Fi and becoming the kind of person who makes soup from scratch.
The problem with living at extremes is that eventually the body revolts. The psyche revolts too. I’ve come to see we can override our own humanity for only so long before some neglected part of us stages a coup. Sometimes that coup looks dramatic: burnout , illness, panic attacks. Sometimes it looks deceptively ordinary.
You stop returning texts. You stare at a simple email in abject terror. You begin resenting everyone for wanting anything from you.
And then comes the self-scolding. This is where many of us double down. We assume the answer is greater force. More discipline. Better focus. But viriya suggests something radically different. Not passivity. Not laziness. Calibration.
Katherine pointed out that wholeheartedness looks different depending on the conditions. Wholeheartedness when you are exhausted is different from wholeheartedness when you are rested. Wholeheartedness when grieving is different from wholeheartedness when joyful.
This sounds obvious until you realize how rarely we actually allow for it. Most of us expect identical output from wildly different internal realities. We treat ourselves like malfunctioning appliances rather than living organisms. Imagine demanding that a violin sound the same in a thunderstorm as it does in a climate-controlled concert hall. Imagine screaming at the instrument for swelling in humidity. Yet this is often how we speak to ourselves.
Why can’t I focus? Why am I so behind? Why can’t I just do the thing?
What if the wiser question is: What tuning is needed now?
Katherine described viriya not as overriding reality but as checking in and responding skillfully to the conditions of the moment. You notice the fatigue. The sadness. The actual conditions of the moment. Then you align yourself with the best possible intention within those conditions.
Not every day requires a heroic push. Sometimes the wisest thing is refusing the cycle of violent self-improvement altogether. Sometimes viriya looks fierce. Sometimes it looks gentle. Sometimes it means swimming laps even though you don’t feel like it. Sometimes it means taking a nap.
The important thing is that the energy remains alive rather than coercive. Not forcing. Not collapsing.
Tuning. Again and again. Toward the music of an actual human life.
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Maggie Rowe is the author of Sin Bravely: A Memoir of Spiritual Disobedience and Easy Street: A Story of Redemption from Myself. She co-hosts the podcast Fifty Words for Snow.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.