Resistance and the stories you tell yourself

Note to self: When you feel yourself in a place where the resistance feels strong, remind yourself, it probably means you're not doing things your way. That can be your clue to get back on course, even if it seems counterintuitive.

If I reflect back on my path it's obvious to me now that when I felt the biggest resistance I was doing things wrong. It's not so much that I was doing anything wrong, but I wasn't doing things MY WAY. It's not to say that "my way" is the best way or only way, but it is THE way to being most true to myself, just as your way is true to you.

The thing is, it's hard to know our way sometimes. We're blinded by what others are doing, groomed to think a certain way in school and workplaces, and rewarded by certain algorithms that don't necessarily have our best interests in mind. We’re taught to trust our instincts when they match societal standards. No wonder for many of us we can veer off course.

On top of it, we tell ourselves stories. They’re rooted in assumptions and get in our way. We start to believe them, which only provides more resistance and distance from where we’re trying to go. We imagine things have to be done in a certain way, that we’re not ready yet, that nobody cares, that we can’t make money doing XYZ, that something will take a certain amount of time so why even start, that every job will be the same. We forget that there is another way we may not have considered yet as we get engulfed in these stories and limiting beliefs. We get in our own way.

It's hard to get quiet and trust ourselves in a loud world. We were never designed to have to take in and respond to so much input, let alone at the intensity we witness with news cycles and content creation. We get sucked in and it can be intoxicating. No wonder we can start to lose our way, and feel like we’re behind and always playing catch up.

It's not until I start to emerge from a stagnant or darker time that it becomes apparent that I was doing things I thought I was "supposed to" rather than trusting myself. In an ideal world, I'd start to be able to recognize this barometer earlier so I could make the shift back to be aligned with what I know deep down. Still, the external forces can be powerful, and it's not always easy to change course when we're caught up in a storm. Sometimes we don’t even realize we’re in it at the time.

When I first heard about the idea of resistance in work it was from Steven Pressfield. In his book Do the Work he says,

"Don’t prepare. Begin.  

Remember, our enemy is not lack of preparation; it’s not the difficulty of the project or the state of the marketplace or the emptiness of our bank account.

The enemy is Resistance.

The enemy is our chattering brain, which, if we give it so much as a nanosecond, will start producing excuses, alibis, transparent self-justifications, and a million reasons why we can’t/shouldn’t/won’t do what we know we need to do. Start before you’re ready."

I want to break this idea down and explore what may be trapped between the lines. I’m a firm believer in starting before you’re ready (that’s how all my workshops were born!), but I can’t help but think there’s more at play.

For me there is some element of not starting—fear is real, new is scary—but there's another piece to it. More often than not my avoidance is linked to the fact that whatever I think I should do is not at all a way that feels true to me. (Social media algorithms do nothing to help us stay aligned to who we are.)

I'm a big proponent of getting out of our comfort zones, and it's something I do in all of the workshops I run (it turns out pen and paper can take people deep out of their zones of comfort). But I suspect there are different kinds of comfort zones too: navigating the discomfort of newness, working to the next level, or doing something different from what we’ve seen done before us. It can be scary to do what we haven’t experienced before, but that shouldn’t keep us from doing the thing. This is when we need to learn to believe and build those trust muscles.

Other times resistance is just avoidance and excuses. We can be quite convincing at talking ourselves out of things we really want or need. It makes it easier to put the onus on something/one else. The fear of success can be just as daunting as the fear of failure. The resistance is real. How long can I swim upstream?

What if one way of overcoming resistance was to listen to ourselves more? There are small inputs (also referred to as "pings") that can give us clues as to where to take our next step. When I first launched Mapping Your Path in October 2020, it was an idea that came to me two weeks prior to when I launched it. It of course had been building over time—we too often forget and underappreciate all the experience we bring into everything we do. I knew I couldn’t wait, it was something I NEEDED to do. Now. It was ok if I didn’t have it all figured out.

It was TERRIFYING when I launched it as I never had done something like this, or at this level. But I had to trust myself. I had the support of my coach who encouraged me and asked the right questions and gave me feedback for things I could tweak as I put it out into the world.

I had the right supports in place to follow my path. And know what? Trusting myself turned into creating something that I’m so incredibly proud of and felt like a true compilation of all my greatest strengths and gifts I bring to the world. I had never been so grateful for listening and trusting myself. That doesn’t always mean I had it all figured out, but I learned to trust each step of the way would unfold when it needed to.

We often feel so much pressure or guilt for not starting, that we get sucked into the mental spiral rather than taking the next smallest action. Our big ambitions can get in our way, when really all we need to do is take aligned action, and do one thing—no matter how small—towards the thing we’re working towards. As my favorite gym coach would say, “there’s no progress without effort.” Our brains can get muddled when we attempt too much at once, or if we’re forcing the wrong things. What’s the worst that could happen if you tried?

Excuses are another hurdle. We forget we have agency in our lives and that the obvious ways of doing things are not the only ways of doing things. What if we gave ourselves permission to imagine different outcomes and ways of doing things? What if there were no limitations, what would be the ideal scenario? What if there’s a solution or way of doing things that we haven’t considered yet? Life isn’t black and white, this or that, despite the ways we are wired to think may make us believe.

We're often socialized to be people pleasers. When we speak what we really feel I find that there’s a natural flow. Everything becomes easy—or at least easier—at that point. It almost was like resistance tries to show us the way, but when we’re too busy resisting we stop trusting that there's another way, our way.

I know, dreaming can be hard, but there may be a hunch tucked in there. This is where we can look towards resistance to be our guide. Maybe instead of running away, it’s time to take steps (no matter how small) towards what is next for you. Follow the resistance, build those trust muscles, and BELIEVE.*

* Thanks Ted Lasso for the reminder to BELIEVE ;)

Mapping Your Path into 2022 is now open for enrollment. It’s a unique experience that will allow you to MAKE THE TIME (as little as 3 hours a month) to EXPLORE, REFLECT, and TAKE ACTION towards the path you want to be on. There’s no one way or right way to do this, but know that you will be guided along the way, by Anne and supported by an incredible community of warm-hearted curious humans around the world. This 3-month adventure runs from October 2021 through mid-January 2022. Sign up TODAY!