Look at the illustration below of two people in a boat, rowing in opposite directions. What will happen if the stronger of the two rows harder. The boat will speed up, right? But what is obvious is that with more effort comes more speed, but the situation remains inefficient. No matter how hard one person tries to speed up, they are still encountering resistance, drag, and extraneous effort toward the intention to move forward in one direction. Obviously, the admonition to just try harder here, misses the point.
If we take this as a picture of our physical existence, then we realize that our movement, our running can be improved, ultimately not by trying harder but by discovering and eliminating unnecessary effort.
While will power and persistence can be admirable qualities. They cannot by themselves allow us to achieve our full potential. "Trying" could be defined as using extra effort to make up for lack of skill. What results is less than our full potential. We reach plateaus and cannot make further progress. If we apply this idea to the mechanics of our running, we realize that most of us could benefit from becoming more efficient in some way. We can always improve. Most of us do not have action that is fully consistent with our intention of moving forward smoothly.
Most of us have a divided mind, a divided action in one way or another as a result of habit and previous learning. The solution is more learning.
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