A lot of times, even when you're not failing, even when you're not at the point where you don't know why it's not being answered, on a regular day you wake up in the morning and you have something you want. Here's what you should do when you have something you want. You haven't been told by Hashem yet whether you're getting it or not. You just have something you want. Here's what you should do. You should put in extreme max effort. You should put in so much effort you can't imagine. Double people's expectations. You should put in max effort. And then, after you finish your max effort, look at the effort and say, “Effort, you mean nothing. I am completely giving up to Hashem.” You don't need to fail first. You don't need to go through two years of frustration first to give up. You can give up on day one. On day one, you say, “Hashem, I'm putting in all the effort in the world, but I know it's got nothing to do with my effort. I am completely giving it up to you.” Try it.
The next time you have a project in front of you, and you're overwhelmed, and you don't know how you're going to get through this—I don't know what project you might be in. Maybe someone's raising a kid, or starting a business, or just cooking a meal for a holiday, and you're just like, “I don't know how I'm going to do this.” You ever look at your to-do list and say, “This is never going to end”? You ever look at that? Stop before you start and say, “Hashem, I'm going to put in all the effort in the world. I'm going to go through this list. Little like a machine gun: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. But I know that that's not going to get me to where I need to go. What's going to get me where I need to go is when I have the power and the strength to completely give up and leave it in your hands.”
What most people don't realize is the power of giving up. Now, giving up doesn't mean, “I give up, and I'm done, and I'm toast, and I'm frustrated.” That means you're just upset you didn't get the first box, and that's all you're thinking about. That's the fact that you're upset that you didn't get the first box. No, I'm not saying you're upset. I'm saying you're content. You're accepting the second box. Hashem, I'm putting in all the effort I'm supposed to put in, but I'm not delusional to think that my effort, that my control gets me anywhere. I'm putting in all the effort I can, and then, before I even know the result, I am giving up and waiting for what you have stored for me in the box of your results. I am going. You take me.