Overcome Resistance and Achieve Your Goals

 Wow, I don't want to do this today. 

I committed to blogging every day for 30 days, and my first thought when I went to sat down was to put up a big ole resistance wall. I anticipated this, of course, but it didn't feel good.

So my brain told me to do other things, and I did.

The mind chatter can be so dramatic and very convincing.

"you should check your email real quick."

"I don't know what to write about."

"This is going to be hard."

"I'm a terrible writer."

"No one will read it; what's the point?"

But then I remember this quote from Steven Pressfield's book The War of Art.

"The more important a call or action to our soul's evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it."

Resistance is a universal force that acts against human creativity.

I'm sitting down to create and feeling so much resistance. This must mean I'm close to my soul's evolution, but why does it have to feel so terrible?!

Well, because I'm a human, and so are you!

For the longest time, I felt something was inherently wrong with me. So I'd ask myself repeatedly what's wrong with you, and I'd always have an answer.

But once I started to do this work, I realized there was nothing wrong with me after all that I'm just a human, with a human brain going through a human experience. 

ahhh, a sigh of relief.

So now, when I have very human moments, I drop judgment and meet myself with compassion. I talk to myself with love, and it sounds like this:

"Hey, I understand why you don't want to sit down and write. Writing essays was hard for you in school, and I know this brings up many feelings of inadequacy. I get it - school was super challenging for you, and you didn't have the support you needed to get through it. It was easier to hide, and I want to acknowledge your brilliance. You intuitively knew how to protect yourself when It didn't feel safe. You can be a writer if you choose to be, and it would be worth trying it; you won't get graded on this."

And in the next moment, something happened. My jaw softened. I sank into my chair, opened a blank page, and started writing. 

And while it might not be my finest work, I feel incredibly proud that I sat down and did the damn thing.

Following through on a commitment to myself is the most important thing to build self-trust. 

Yes, I didn't want to do it.

Yes, I did get distracted in the beginning.

But by being aware and FEELING the resistance, something happened (or didn't happen).

So I stopped distracting myself and got started. 

I didn't allow the resistance to mean anything was wrong with me, I opened myself up to the possibility of writing, and I'm so glad I did. 

You start improving and progressing when you're willing to practice feeling instead of distracting yourself (which could be with food, social media, shopping, etc.). 

When you're repeating distractions daily, you're not going anywhere; you're just repeatedly spinning on the same habit. 

It doesn't serve you; it pulls you away from your growth and evolution. 

It helps you hide from yourself. 

What do you do that helps you hide from yourself?

What distracts you from looking at your thoughts or feeling your emotions?

Start there. And then, once you meet yourself where you're at, understand it, soften the edges with love and kindness, and notice how much easier it is to get the important work done.

"Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be but to find out who we already are and become it." ― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

Okay, I slayed the resistance dragon today - now it's your turn.

Slaying resistance is key to creating a life you love, so take the first step.