[kaitai]

I think it's telling that parent says "we can change anything" and you went to "just tr[ying] harder". This is what many of my students do (I'm doing poorly in math, I need to just try harder, but trying harder doesn't help, so I must be bad at math, so I'll do something else). My observation about these students is that they are not very good at learning math -- that is, the techniques they use to study are not appropriate to the task -- and so trying harder indeed does not help.

Trying to assemble Ikea furniture using only a spoon also does not succumb to "just trying harder" but no one paints that as a moral failing.

We must continually learn new skills appropriate to our situation, not just try harder. This is a theme even in ancient history and religion, but it's still true. When it comes to being organized it was a revelation to me to read Marie Kondo's book and Organizing Solutions for People with Attention Deficit Disorder: between the two of them, I realized that I could build my living space to facilitate being neat or organized, working with my brain rather than "just trying harder" to be neat.

It is not good to be lazy, but I think we sometimes teach people that some topics are just hard for some people and so you might as well give up because trying harder won't help. No, sometimes your math teacher or textbook actually suck; sometimes your living space is organized for a different kind of brain; sometimes you're depressed because you're eating an allergen every day or because your manager truly is terrible and there are things you can do to change it without trying harder.

Do agree with, "We're all different, I'm glad this worked for you but it doesn't necessarily follow that your approach would help others," and that applies to my comment as well.

[RobertRoberts]

Ya, if you read my other comments, I never said "try harder" and I wanted to clarify that. I agree with that assessment for similar reasons you point out here.

But, it doesn't mean you can't do something to improve anything in your life.

But I found that usually people that are stuck end up thinking "it won't help me", but how do you know for sure? Sometimes you can't just do some new thing a little, sometimes you have to do it for a long time before you see results.

And, you are always right by saying "this may not work for others, just because it worked for you". But there are some universal things that work for everyone. If you eat you live, if you stop eating you die. If we starting working our way up from there, the logic tree splits and gets more complicated, but no matter what, you will be on the same branch with someone else. No one is truly alone here in their problems, we just need to find those other people, find out how they succeeded. Asking for help is a good start.

[mtpn]

Some good recommendations here! I do think that in the original parent post, but not in yours, the implication is that people who had problems had simply not found the correct motivation to solve them. I appreciate your take too though, and think I was maybe too hard on first poster, who maybe didn’t mean it the way it sounded.

[eeZah7Ux]

You can try hard and learn to swim very well, but you can't learn to flap your arms and fly.

"trying harder" to have more willpower is an oxymoron.