What Is Resistance?
Resistance is the invisible force that stops us from taking action. Resistance appears every time we consider doing something challenging that results in something good for ourselves or others. Some examples are: working out, pursuing our goals, starting something new, leaning something new or anything outside of our comfort zone. Let’s say you want to ask someone out. What’s preventing you from doing it is something, like a wall, that’s Resistance. It’s what stops us and makes us hesitate.
If Resistance didn’t exist, everyone would be learning, growing, solving problems, being productive, building strong relationships with others and enjoying life. Resistance is an evil force and it’s the main cause of unhappiness. If everyone overcame resistance, we would all be doing our highest priority thing without hesitation
Most people have two lives. The life we live and the life where we have accomplished our goals / achieved our potential. Between the two stands Resistance. Many people has lost to Resistance and the worst part is that they don’t know what hit them (it was Resistance). No one can escape Resistance and everyone has to deal with it.
We must identify and recognise resistance or it will sabotage our lives and prevent us from achieving our goals. Everyone has some kind of calling in life and for most people they are no closer today than they were yesterday or will be tomorrow in taking action on it. If you don’t recognise and overcome Resistance, this will be how you will spend the rest of your life.
The secret real writers know: Writing is not hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.
The goal everyday should be to beat Resistance. All that matter is sitting showing up every day and do the work. It does not matter how much work you produced, all that matters is that you tried your best and beat resistance that day. When we do something difficult it requires effort to get started, the reason we need effort is because resistance is there. Effort plus discipline is used to beat resistance everyday.
Identifying Resistance
General Info About Resistance
Resistance comes is many forms.
Resistance can’t be seen, heard or touched. But it can be felt. We experience it as a force that comes from the work or thing we have to do. It’s a repelling and negative force. It’s goals is to shove us away, distract us and stop us from doing our work.
Many think that Resistance comes from outside, like their job, spouse, age or kids and therefore blame them for their inaction and failures. But resistance comes from within ourselves.
Resistance will tell you anything and come up with any kind of excuse as long as it prevents you from doing your work.
Resistance can be used as a compass and guide to find what we really need to do. The bigger the task or work, the harder and faster will Resistance hit you. So the thing you feel most Resistance towards is the work you should do.
Resistance never goes away and will be with us for the rest of our lives. Meaning this is a battle that has to be fought every day. But just like most things in life, overcoming Resistance gets easier the more we do it.
Resistance has no strength on its own but is fuelled by our own fear. If we master how to handle fear, we beat Resistance. The more we fear something the stronger Resistance becomes. Fear can also be used as a guide. The more we fear something, the more sure we can be that it’s something we need to do (be reasonable, don’t do anything illegal or life threatening).
Resistance only hits us when we are about to do something more difficult than we currently are. So if we go from a hard job to an easy job, we will not be affected by Resistance.
Resistance and Procrastination
Procrastination is the most common form of Resistance because it’s the easiest to rationalise. We don’t tell ourselves “I’m never going to start this work”, we tell ourselves “I’m going to do this work, I’ll just start tomorrow”. The worst part about procrastination is that it can easily become a habit and it doesn’t make us feel bad anymore when we do it. Never forget at any time we can choose to change our lives and overcome Resistance.
Resistance and Instant Gratification
Resistance makes us feel empty and negative on the inside. The more empty and negative you feel after doing something, the more certain you can be that you lost to Resistance. This applies especially to things that give instant gratification such as drugs, unhealthy food, spending time with random people without any purpose, video games and random videos.
Resistance and Drama
Another way Resistance shows itself is through over dramatising things. We start to imagine and look for problems where there previously wasn’t any and once we solve one thing we look and always find the next thing. If we can’t find things in our own lives we go online and start looking for things to think about or get offended by what other people are doing. And Resistance knows it works: at the end of the day, no work has been done.
No work gets done when we see ourselves as a victim. The victim exaggerates and doesn’t take responsibility for their own problems and all they do is seek attention from others. They think their problems are external but most likely they are internal. Don’t see yourself as a victim. If you are doing it, then stop.
What Does It Feel Like Loosing to Resistance
We first feel unhappy. We get bored and we can’t get any sustainable satisfaction out of life. Then there is a lot of guilt. If this continues for some time we will feel depression, aggression (towards others because we are not happy with ourselves) and then eventually we hate our lives and ourselves. Big companies are aware of this unhappiness and have created products such as video games and tv series to make us feel better. But this is only a short term solution to our unhappiness. The only real way to solve this unhappiness is by doing the important work.
Resistance and Criticism
People who has overcome Resistance almost never criticise others. Most people who criticise do it because of Resistance. When they see others working who has overcome Resistance it makes them feel bad because they are weak and can’t do the work.
Resistance and Love
Resistance is directly proportional to love. If you are feeling a lot of Resistance towards a project, it means there is a lot of love there. The more love you feel the more gratification you will get when you do it.
Resistance and Fantasising
Fantasising and day dreaming a lot is caused by Resistance. No work gets done here and it’s the sign of an amateur. The professional has learned that success and happiness is the result of work. They focus on the work and welcomes reward whenever it comes.
Resistance and Rationalisation
Another form of Resistance is rationalisation. Rationalisation’s job is to keep us from feeling the shame we would feel if we looked at how weak we are for not doing the work. Rationalisation will present us with many different excuses for why we should not do the work.
Overcoming Resistance
Most of us are amateurs. The way to overcome resistance is to turn pro. In order to turn pro, we need to think and act like a pro.
Principle of priority: You must know what’s urgent and what is important. And you must do what’s important. Most of the time, what’s important is the work.
Learn How to Be Miserable
During the work, the pro know what there will be a lot of self-doubt, isolation, ridicule, rejection and struggle. During these difficult times, the only thing a pro can do is take pride in that he is more miserable than most people.
We Are All Pros Already
All of us are pros in one area: our job. We show up every day. We show up no matter what. We stay on the job all day. We are committed to our job. The stakes for us are high and real, if we don’t do well we won’t get any money to survive. This is the same kind of attitude and habits we want to have towards our goals.
Characteristics of a Professional
The professional does his work out of love and because it’s important to him.
A Professional Is Patient
The pro understands delayed gratification. The amateur sets unrealistic timelines while the pro knows that all good things takes at least twice as long as you think. The pro prepares his mind for a long journey.
A Professional Needs Order
The pro needs an environment free from distractions. They know that distractions will steal their attention and disturb the mind. A pro will not accept disorder.
A Professional Acts in the Face of Fear
The amateur thinks he must first overcome his fear and only then can he take action. The pro knows that fear can never be overcome. Fear will always be present. The pro instead, despite feeling fear, knows that once he takes action, the fear will disappear and he will be ok.
A Professional Accepts No Excuses
The pro know if they fail today, they will be twice as likely to fail tomorrow. The pro adapts to the circumstances and does not complain. There might be difficulties but the pro finds their way around and gets the work done.
A Professional Is Prepared
The pro knows that Resistance will show up and is prepared for it. His goal is not success (because he know it will come when it wants to) but it’s to overcome Resistance and be as steady as possible.
A Professional Does Not Hesitate to Ask For Help
The pro knows that he does not know everything. They therefor seeks out knowledgable teachers and listens to them. The pro knows that they can only be a pro in one or a few things and asks or hires others to do the rest.
A Professional Does Not Take Failure Personally
Resistance knows that everyone fears failure and rejection and uses this against us. The pro knows that how well their work is received by others is not within their control and therefor does not get offended by this. The pro does not let negative criticism get to him but instead uses what’s useful in order to improve. He also recognises envy-driven criticism and jealousy from others and sees it as a a compliment. He knows that they would have done the same if they had the guts.
Becoming a Pro
There is no mystery in becoming a pro. We make up are mind to view ourselves a pro and then we do it.
