Do The Work by Steven Pressfield is one of my annual reads. It’s one of those books that no matter how many times I pick it up and make it from the front cover to the back, there are new pieces that fall into place, new insights that land and new layers of myself that fall away.
It’s a book about RESISTANCE and its place in any creative process…including creating yourself and evolving toward a more conscious way of living, leading and doing business.
It comes to mind this morning as I grapple with a releasing yet another layer of my old self and how to grow into the space it leaves bare.
Pressfield talks about resistance as self sabotage, as a dragon that must be slayed every day.
"Resistance in my experience always kicks in when you're trying to move from a lower level to a higher level or to identify with a braver part of yourself or your higher nature. So it's that negative repelling force. it's kind of the dragon that we have to slay every day if we're artists or entrepreneurs"
I used to see it that way but several years ago I chose to reframe it as a guide, a divining rod that indicates a rich vein of potential for growth lying unseen beneath limiting mindsets, old behaviours and negative self-talk.
I now experience the physical and psychological manifestations of resistance as something to be welcomed, if not entirely comfortably, at least as familliar signs of an opportunity for me to evolve. They are there to give me a little nudge, or a full body PUSH, toward something that needs to be handled in order for me to become more of who I could be.
When I saw resistance as something to be vanquished it set up a dynamic that made it hard for me to approach whatever was feeding it, tricky to investigate its source and exhausting to battle through it. It set me up in opposition to myself.
Resistance is Fertile
Once I reframed resistance as a divining rod over ground fertile with personal growth opportunities it became easier to visualise it as something I could hold gently in my hands, work with safely and examine closely. Afterall, resistance is just some part of ourselves showing up in the often misguided belief that it needs to keep us safe from imagined danger or small so we won’t be seen for who we really are…because who we are isn’t good enough.
Seeing resistance as a part of myself, not some ‘other’ there to fought, has made it easier to work with. It takes courage to look that deeply at myself and willingness to do the work to understand why its there – but on the other side of all that – is a better me.
If you’re interested in developing deeper awareness of the self-talk that comes with resistance and some tools to better engage with it through your INNER COACH then check out our upcoming workshop Tune In – Unlocking the power of self-talk.
