To Push or Not to Push

Source: Tim Mossholder / Unsplash

Earlier this week, I was lying in a puddle of sweat with a cold towel on my forehead. It was day three of the flu, and I was frustrated with my inability to do anything. As a result, I was trying to decide whether to get off the sofa and try to push myself through it.

On one end, I knew I was ill, and my body was telling me to rest. On the other end, I am a very stubborn Finnish soul with lots of sisu, and I persist through challenges. Was this one of the scenarios that I was simply meant to push through?

Moving beyond the frustration of being ill, we are often faced with situations like these in which we need to decide whether to push or not to push. How much do we keep pushing when we are feeling tired but still have things to do? How do we know how much to push when we want to create change in our lives? How do we know when to stop pushing and let the momentum of life bring the right opportunities to us?

It could be argued that every situation you are faced with brings forth the following three questions:

1. When, where, and how do you push?

To know when, where, and how to push, you need to know where you are going. Once you know where you are going, you can use the push strategies that help you to head in the direction you want to go. If you’re not sure where you’re going, pick one direction you might potentially want to go in and push that way. Then, when you push that way, you’ll know if you’re going in the right direction because you’ll either feel better, worse, or indifferent. If you feel worse, change your direction. If you feel better, keep going. If you feel indifferent, push even harder until you get some kind of feedback that this is right or wrong.

If you’re overwhelmed with all the options for pushing towards something, create a priority list. You can’t push in three different directions in three different ways all at once. You can only do one thing at a time. Pick the number-one thing on your list—the one you feel most excited about and the one you think will bring you the best results. Remember the 80/20 rule. Twenty percent of what you do yields 80 percent of the results. What is in that 20 percent that excites you the most and helps you to go in the right direction?

2. How much do you push?

On a daily level, think of the gym analogy here. Your personal trainer pushes you out of your comfort zone so that you are challenged, but not so much that they break your body. Your mind works in exactly the same way. Push little and often. If you’re trying to decide whether or not to keep pushing, ask yourself if pushing more will help you to grow—or will it push you over the edge into exhaustion?

Knowing how much to push also relies on listening to your intuition. Do you feel like you are progressing even though you might not see concrete results yet? For example, if you’re an entrepreneur, you might not see new sales yet, but you have more leads. If you’re going through a career change, you might not have the exact idea of where to go, but you have more ideas of what direction to go in. You have also been able to eliminate some ideas from your list because you realized they weren’t right. In short, you feel like something is progressing.

If you feel nothing is happening, and you still have the energy to keep going, keep pushing until you see some signs of progress. However, be wary of pushing so hard and fast that you miss the signs of progress right in front of you. Remember to take pauses and breathers, as it’s often in these moments that you realize how much progress you’ve actually made.

3. When do you stop pushing?

On the other hand, if you feel like there is no progress and you are pushing against a brick wall, you have three options: 1) Stop pushing and take a breather to regroup so you can go back to push when you’re stronger again; 2) change your approach to how you are pushing and try something new (e.g., rather than push the wall, break it, climb it, or go around it); or 3) realize that you’re pushing the wrong wall, and you need to adjust your direction.

For example, I stopped pushing earlier this week when I realized the flu was getting the best of me, and I had no mental capacity to work. I knew then that it was better to stop and recharge and pick up again the next day after more rest.

Finally, don’t push the river that flows in itself. Sometimes, you’ve just got to trust the flow and go with it.