Why Your Brain Needs You To Stop Trying So Hard

The most profound step can be no step at all.

In the world obsessed with productivity and hustle culture, stillness has almost become a swear word. Wake up, go to the gym, have a healthy breakfast of course, we don’t want to miss out on those proteins. And supplements. Never skip the supplements. Journal, meditate, set the intentions for the day. Mushroom coffee, green smoothies, the latest skincare routine, and at least ten different AI powered tools for the maximum optimization, and you are good to go. No wonder we should all be in the 5AM club. We’ve been brainwashed into thinking that progress means movement. But sometimes, the most profound step we can take is no step at all. 

Yet, when we inevitably face a real obstacle, this programming fails us utterly. How many times have you found yourself in a situation where no matter what you do, nothing seems to be working out? And the more you push for resolution, the more obstacles appear.  It feels like you’re hitting the wall. The truth is, sometimes that is exactly what we do, we blindly keep hitting the wall in hope somehow we will pass through it. Needless to say, ‘Open Sesame’ will most likely do nothing here and our only chance is to take a step back and look for alternatives. We’ve all been there, but these reactions are more psychological than you might think. 

The Anxious Brain

The "hitting the wall" feeling is a real neurological state: stress pressing against immovable obstacles.

When we find ourselves in situations where we only see obstacles, our first response is usually anxiety. And that reaction is mainly due to the fact that our brains are not wired for uncertainty. In this context, adversity is perceived as danger so the brain triggers stress response by releasing cortisol and adrenaline. At this point, our bodies get into fight, flight, or freeze state, which means our focus gets narrowed, and our creative problem-solving gets temporarily reduced. As the stress hormones start to rise, our prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain responsible for reasoning, planning, and decision-making, starts to struggle. We find it hard to think clearly, plan long-term, or see alternatives.

The more we try to ‘fix’ things from this state, the less perspective we have, while our need to extract ourselves from the situation and find solutions increases, creating a counter-effect. Ironically, the harder we try, the deeper the psychological pit we get ourselves into. To make things even better, we often mistake these inner reactions as determination, but often it is just fear masked in productivity. By understanding why we react in this way, we can better judge if following our instincts is always the best solution, or perhaps sometimes we should pause first. 

Against Instinct 

The paradox is that the way out is not through more force, it’s through stillness. And in times when we feel walls are closing around us, stillness seems not only counterintuitive, but also extremely difficult. If you ever tried meditation, you know that stillness can seem as the most excruciating thing to do, especially when we feel restless. A 2014 study by University of Virginia found that people would rather be electrically shocked than left alone with their own thoughts. In the experiment, 67% of men and 25% of women, who were left in a room without any distractions for 15 minutes, chose to shock themselves rather than just sit there and think. Yes, this is how much non-action can feel painful sometimes. More painful than electrical shocks as it appears. 

So, what happens when we choose to hold still instead and against all our instincts to keep moving? If you would ever find yourself in a situation where you might drown (I truly hope not), remaining still could be the only thing to actually save your life. And that is because we would allow our bodies and their natural buoyancy to keep us above the surface and preserve our energy.

Sometimes, preserving energy and allowing natural buoyancy is the only way to stay afloat.

Similarly, our brains too have the natural ability to ‘keep us above the surface’ in times of adversity. Instead of forcing any form of action, if we pause and reflect, our anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a brain region that integrates emotion and cognition, detects the obstacle, redirects attention to error correction or strategy adjustments and activates the process of neuroplasticity. In other words, the brain literally starts to form new pathways to approach the problem differently. Stillness in this case is not about stagnation, it is about receptivity, allowing for the next step to arise naturally.  

The Receptive Mind

If I learned one thing during my psychology degree and in life in general, is that you can’t help anyone who doesn’t want help. You can pour all your best advice, experience, good intent, but if a person is not willing to listen, let alone act on that advice, there is not much you can do. (Which also taught me to never offer advice unless I was explicitly asked so). For anything to be received, we first need to be receptive. And that applies to solutions as well. Receptivity is not some mindfulness trick, it is a well-documented process with real impact on brain chemistry and is considered as the conceptual opposite of force.   

When we stop consciously forcing a solution, we allow for the brain's introspective and integrative network known as the default mode network (DMN) to become active. DMN is linked to spontaneous mental activity and mind-wandering, a cognitive process associated with creative problem-solving as it connects memories and ideas that appear unrelated. In other words, when we stop forcing the outcome and become receptive to solutions, the brain’s background processes start to connect the dots for us. It links distant neural networks, allowing intuition and insight to arise spontaneously. Research on creative insight (‘aha moments’) shows that breakthroughs often come after rest or during simple chores, not during intense focus. What looks like stillness is actually allowing for the sophisticated machine of our brains to do deep integration. 

The difference between the receptive and ‘forced’ mind is visible on various levels. Where control is a sympathetic (fight/flight) response, receptivity on the other hand, comes from activating the parasympathetic nervous system, the one responsible for rest and digestion. There is a reason why we first say ‘breathe’ to someone who is in distress before tackling the problem. Deep breathing directly activates the parasympathetic nervous system and when the nervous system feels safe and calm, our attention widens, learning improves, and openness to new input increases. Stillness doesn’t mean doing nothing. It means giving our mind and body space and time to provide us with solutions. When we allow for the nervous system to rest, the mind to reorganize, and intuition to surface, what feels like a step back often turns out as a beginning of a new direction. 

When we stop forcing, the brain's background processes connect the dots.

The Bear Test 

Recently, while hiking in the mountains of Georgia, near the Russian border, I learned that if you come across a bear, things can go in one of two directions. We’ve all heard pretend dead advice. However, that technique will work only if a bear is in so-called ‘defensive attack’. If you have a ‘predatory attack’ situation (I hope not), you better fight with all that you have. Moving away from another terrifying example, how can you know if stillness is a better answer when facing obstacles?

There are many cues that we are hitting the wall, including physical tension or exhaustion, need to do something without knowing what, or only seeing the problem, but it all comes down to one distinction: action from clarity feels different than action coming from panic. If you are moving to escape discomfort rather than toward a solution, that is your signal to be still. Sometimes the mountain won’t move. But our minds can. 

This article was inspired by Hexagram 39 (Obstruction) with changing line 4, transforming into Hexagram 31 (Attraction). The journey from forced effort to receptive stillness mirrors the ancient wisdom of these hexagrams.