Do Your Best

"If you try too hard to do  more than your best, you will spend more energy than is needed and in the end your best will not be enough."

There's a fable I've always liked about doing the best you can and learning to be satisfied with that effort.  A novice tells a master that he meditates for four hours a day and wonders how long he has to do this to become enlightened.  When the master replies "If you do this you should be cool in around ten years" the novice tells the master he's going to meditate for eight hours a day to speed things up.  "Now how long will it take me to become enlightened?"  The master says: "Ummmm . . . about twenty years."  The novice says something along the lines of WTF kind of math is that?  Here's the thing, says the master:  If you meditate that much you'll start to feel bored and irritated and you'll forget that we're supposed to live life, to enjoy life, to find joy in life, not engage in a grim death march of forced meditation.  Do your best and enjoy your life.  

I have an ability to make almost anything into a grim death march.  I can ruin even the most pleasant things by overdoing them and overdoing them perfectly.

Here's Alcoholics Anonymous' take on the issue of spiritual growth found in the 12 & 12: "It has been well said that 'almost the only scoffers at prayer are those who never tried it enough.'  We will be comforted and assured that our own destiny in this realm will be secure for so long as we try, however falteringly, to find and do the will of our own Creator."  Not the Creator - our own Creator.