#47: Resistance.
The more important the goal, the more resistance you will feel.
This weeks newsletter is coming to you a few days late due to my own inability to get my words onto the page. I tried, many times to write it, but every time I sat down at my desk I found myself second guessing what I was trying to say, repeatedly erasing my words almost as soon as they hit the page, effectively blocking my own ideas from fully forming. I typically love writing, so I have been somewhat perplexed by these recent events.
I played with the idea of simply not sending anything, accepting that this just wasn’t my week, but one of the many reasons I write this newsletter is to share the many ups and downs of navigating life and work and motherhood - and identifying and moving through our own resistance is definitely part of it.
I have been creating a weekly newsletter for almost a year and every single Monday I meet the blank page half way, but lately my words have felt stuck, not quite ready to show up. This week my writing process has felt like swimming through sludge or moving boulders up a mountain with my hands tied behind my back. No matter how hard I try I simply cannot figure out what the heck I want to write.
I wish I could blame my inability to write on summer vacation or a lack of childcare, which is so often the case, but my kids are in longer days of camp this week awarding me even more autonomy than normal.
The truth is, the closer I inch toward the one year anniversary of this ‘thing,’ the more resistance I feel and my own internal blocks are nobody’s fault but my own. Resistance is a form of refusal aimed at blocking ourselves, an attempt to prevent something from happening by action or argument. Resistance shows up in the form of fear and self doubt, it shows up in procrastination and avoidance, it shows up in all the many ways we talk ourselves out of instead of into our ideas. Resistance is the little voice in your head that says you can’t. It is a very real obstacle standing between you and the life of your dreams.
Steven Pressfield, who wrote one of my favorite books, describes “resistance as a negative force in the world that keeps you from fulfilling your dreams. For example, maybe you want to write a book, start your own business, or completely change careers but… you're worried you don't have enough talent. Or enough time. Or people will think it's stupid.” He continued on to say that “resistance is the enemy, our chattering brain produces excuses, effectively blocking whatever it is that we truly want.”
I have found that the more we want something, the more we resist it and this is how I know when to pursue an idea or a project or simply reject it; the more resistance I feel, the more important it is that I push through it. In my case, the resistance I have been fighting against isn’t this newsletter exactly, but to something else that I am working on and my own refusal to sit down and complete that task has seemingly blocked my ability to do just about anything else.
Moving through my own resistance has proved to be a challenge time and time again, and yet, on the other side I often find the exact thing I have been fighting against. So here I am publishing this week’s newsletter a few days late, well beyond my own predetermined deadline in an attempt to push past my own resistance, to show up for my own ideas, to accept that sometimes things just take more time, to share what has been on my mind.
What are you resisting? What is your resistance telling you to do? How could you lean into your resistance instead of pushing it away? What is your resistance trying to say?
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Thank you for sending me back to reading this - because we were traveling in July I missed reading it. Or maybe I read the title and wasn't ready. "the more resistance I feel, the more important it is that I push through it" - oof. This is so spot on and so hard. But there isn't any other option anymore. Ordered the book and have my "homework" time scheduled.