Lena Dunham has just perfectly summed up the toxic New Year pressure to be ‘transformed from the inside out’

Lena Dunham has served up an authentic, empowering take on the pressure to be a better, improved version of yourself after entering a new year and – above all – the problem with the pressure to always be “trying”.

In an Instagram post, Dunham recounts a recent run-in with a lady in a pharmacy who was looking at nicotine replacement options, presumably to give up smoking. The lady said to Dunham “you’ve gotta try, right?”, and the actor clearly got to thinking about our pressure to “try” when it comes to the New Year, and whether it’s actually good for us. 

“That does seem to be the spirit of this holiday, waking up not only to a new year but a new you, transformed from the inside out,” she wrote. “You’ve gotta try, right? But I’ve been dogged by a feeling, as real as any of the parts of myself I ‘should’ be remodelling: I’m so f*cking sick of trying.” 

She breaks down what the action of “trying” can do, and how it can often leave us stuck between numerous overwhelming and unrealistic goals.

“I’m not sick of doing, or being, or any other action verbs. But I’m sick of *trying* – the word that evokes a hamster wheel, running and running only to find yourself still here, still stuck or in pain or in fear. Still just trying,” she wrote. “Trying to be sunny but not cloying, healthy but not obsessive, honest but not offensive, trusting but not gullible. 

“I’ve tried to be tidy but still express myself, powerful but non-threatening, loyal but not a lap-dog, enlightened without sounding like a self-help book. And every time I’ve failed, I’ve said: ‘I’m trying.’ Trying to squeeze through the narrow corridor of good habits and successful resolutions.” 

We have Lena Dunham to thank for the best alternative perspective on “trying” to be better – she urges us to just “be”.