I am very good at pushing through.
Tired? I can keep going.
Busy? I'll figure it out.
Something needs to get done? Give it to me.
For a long time, I considered that one of my strengths.
And to some extent, I still do.
There are times in life when we have to do things tired. We have responsibilities. Deadlines don't always care how we feel. Kids are famously unconcerned with whether we're currently operating at peak capacity.
Being able to keep going matters.
But here's what I didn't understand for a long time: pushing through is a strategy.
But it cannot be the only strategy.
Because eventually you reach a point where the thing that has always worked... doesn't.
You sit down to do something you've done a hundred times and can't seem to start.
A minor problem feels disproportionately irritating.
You read the same paragraph four times.
You finally get an hour to yourself and don't even know what you want to do with it.
So naturally, if you're anything like me, you respond to the fact that pushing isn't working by...
pushing harder.
Excellent.
This is where the idea of regulation finally started making practical sense to me.
I'd heard the word plenty of times, but it sounded clinical. Something happening in the nervous system that I apparently needed to learn how to optimize.
I don't need another thing to optimize.
What helped was thinking about regulation much more simply:
Can I get myself steady enough to respond instead of just react?
That's useful.
Because I know what unsteady feels like.
It's when every request feels irritating before I've even heard the whole thing.
It's when one more item gets added to the list and suddenly I'm furious about all seventeen.
It's when I'm staring at something I genuinely want to do and still can't seem to make myself begin.
Sometimes I'm overwhelmed. Sometimes I'm tired. Sometimes I'm hungry, distracted, overstimulated or carrying something emotionally that I haven't dealt with yet.
Those aren't all the same problem, which means they don't all need the same solution.
And “try harder” is especially bad at telling the difference.
Regulation gives me a beat to figure out what I'm actually dealing with.
Do I need ten minutes without anyone talking to me?
Food?
Movement?
A conversation?
Sleep?
Do I need to stop scrolling because I've somehow consumed the emotional state of forty strangers in twelve minutes?
Do I actually need to do the thing I've been avoiding and let the relief come afterward?
That's possible too.
Regulation isn't always rest.
Sometimes getting steady means taking action.
That's an important distinction because I don't want this conversation to become another way of telling ourselves we should never feel uncomfortable.
Growth is uncomfortable.
Hard conversations are uncomfortable.
Changing habits is uncomfortable.
Following through when you don't feel like it can be uncomfortable.
The goal isn't to eliminate discomfort.
It's being able to tell the difference between discomfort you can move through and a system that's already overloaded enough that more pressure is making everything harder.
I think I've spent a lot of my life treating those as the same thing.
Push.
Then push more.
Then wonder why I eventually want to quit everything and move somewhere nobody can find me.
Apparently there were other options.
Who knew?
And this is where faith can become regulating for me in a very real sense.
Prayer slows me down long enough to stop reacting.
Scripture gives my mind somewhere steadier to land than whatever thought is currently yelling the loudest.
Sometimes simply remembering I don't have to solve all of this in the next ten minutes changes how I walk back into the problem.
Then discipline becomes useful again.
That's the relationship I think I was missing.
Discipline helps me do what matters.
Regulation helps me get steady enough to use discipline well.
I need both.
So if pushing harder isn't working right now, you don't necessarily need to throw out the goal.
Before you add more pressure, figure out what state you're bringing to it.
Get steady.
Then see what you're actually capable of from there.
Want to keep going with this conversation?
🎧 Listen to Episode 38: Why Forcing Discipline Backfires and How Regulation Creates Steady Growth →