You WANT to be taking action on your true desires, but you just can’t seem to get past that invisible wall that’s got you stopped.

Maybe random things just keep getting in the way. Maybe you’ve been telling yourself you’re too busy – but that doesn’t make the longing stop.

Or maybe you KNOW you’re sabotaging the very thing you want the most and judging yourself for that is becoming one more reason to avoid it.

Whatever your resistance looks like, you know you simply must get past it if you’re ever going to get to where you really want to be in your life.

And if you’re anything like me, you’ve found that willpower doesn’t work long term – it’s just tiring – and forcing yourself takes all the joy out of something you want to love and not hate everyday.

Get the Skills and Knowledge to Go Past Your Invisible Walls

The Wisdom of Your Resistance is a 5-Week Teleclass program that shows you step-by-step how to track your resistance and enter into a compassionate dialogue with it so you can immediately end the tug of war you’ve been having with yourself.

Your resistance patterns, and all parts of you for that matter, are incredibly wise and with the right training, you can start finding out WHY they’ve been getting in your way so you can give them what they need to get on board and work FOR you.

You’ll be building skills in 6 distinct areas and learning practical techniques you can use anytime, anywhere, to make new choices and keep resistance from taking over.

Plus, you’ll be unlearning a lifetime of judgment and inner criticism and learning brand new positive, heart-centered ways to stay connected to your motivation and desire.

The program includes 5 weekly teleclasses, mp3 recordings and transcripts in case you can’t be there live,  a community support forum, weekly worksheets and pdf guides, a copy of the 15 Minutes to Outsmarting Your Resistance kit and one personal Discovery Session with me.

And you won’t have mountains of homework! This is about doing tiny things through your day that completely transform your inner experience. Our resistance loves to make tasks look like big barriers, so everything will be bite-sized and do-able!

No matter what your obstacles are, you’ll find effective ways to see through them and transform them into good fuel, for progress you can feel great about.

And the brilliant thing about this process is that it’s designed to work even if you’re resisting the program itself!

Personalized Coaching

Whenever you’re dealing with resistance, it’s good to remember that things are being actively hidden and kept buried in your subconscious in order to keep you safe and happy.

That’s why I’m including direct, personal coaching time with me, so you can get straight to the bottom of what’s been blocking you and save yourself years of hunting and struggle.

AND, you’ll have a half-price discount on additional coaching hours for the duration of the 5-week program and for one month after, as well.

Community Support

One of the favorite and most common strategies of resistance is “divide and conquer”. That means your resistance likes it when you’re isolated, cut off from support and thinking you’re the only one who’s feeling this way.

So one of the things I’m the MOST excited about is the community forum that will be a part of this teleclass program.

You’ll be able to get direct feedback from me, but when you get a taste of the support available from the rest of your fellow students that will probably become even more valuable to you.

Together we’ll create a resource for each other filled with wisdom, camaraderie, insight and laughter.

And I’m going to keep it open for an additional month after the program ends so you’ll have a transition time before you start “flying solo” with all your new habits and skills.

Plus, YOU Get to Help Design the Program!

This is the first ever offering of The Wisdom of Your Resistance Teleclass program. And because of that, I’m going to be seeking your input and advice on what you need, what order to do things in and what formats will work best for you.

So you get to help me create the program that will work the very best for you!

What’s the Free Offer?

This is actually a moment I’ve been waiting a long time for. I struggled so long with my own resistance that I had moments when I seriously thought I would never really accomplish anything.

And I know from intimate experience that one of the areas resistance likes to go after is money – making sure the resources are never there to get what you need to move forward.

Now, finally, I have the chance to take that limitation off the table for you.

That’s why I’m offering three scholarships to the readers of this blog. The three lucky winners will get the entire program absolutely free. Winners will be notified two days before the course opens to the Early Bird List that they have won their spot in The Wisdom of Your Resistance teleclass program.

How Can You Get in for Free?

To enter to win a free scholarship, here’s what you need to do. At the bottom of this page, add a comment, and tell me:

• What’s your biggest frustration around dealing with resistance and obstacles to your goals and dreams?
• Where would you like to see yourself after The Wisdom of Your Resistance Teleclass program? (You don’t have to give specifics if it feels pretty personal – just tell me in a general way.)

Do you have questions about the Wisdom of Your Resistance teleclass? Please let me know those, too! I’m happy to answer them.

Tell All Your Friends

Do you know someone who could benefit from The Wisdom of Your Resistance Teleclass program? Click on the Share button below to share it on Twitter and Facebook and wherever you like. You can also use the Retweet button to tweet it out to your peeps.

Remember, you just need to tell me:

• What’s your biggest frustration around dealing with resistance and obstacles to your goals and dreams?
• Where would you like to see yourself after The Wisdom of Your Resistance Teleclass program?

And if you have questions, let me know about those, too!

Best of Luck!

Our contest is now closed and congratulations go out to our 3 lucky winners, Eva, LaVonne and Sang-Gye. Thank you all for your participation and comments! For more program info, previews, discounts and access to a FREE Intro Teleclass July 27th @ 8 pm Eastern, just put your name on the Early Bird List.  I’ll also be sending the mp3 recording of the teleclass, entitled “7 Sources of Resistance and How to Make Friends With Them, to everyone on the list!

You might also like these:

1. Why Traditional Coaching is No Match for Resistance
2. Resistance is Your Soul’s Compass
3. Are you making it safe enough to succeed?

When you’re dealing with the part of yourself that’s getting in your way, it’s helpful sometimes to grab onto a metaphor - an image or idea - that helps you understand what’s going on.

But what if that metaphor is making things worse?

I read a post a month ago by Marelisa where she did an excellent review of a book by Theodore Bryant called “Self-Discipline in 10 Days: How to Go From Thinking to Doing”. Her post was very well written (and I thank her hugely for the inspiration), but Bryant’s book sums up every single thing that I object to about classic ‘self-discipline” thinking.

And the metaphor he uses for our inner impulses toward action and toward avoidance of it are, of course, Jekyll and Hyde.

By the time I finished reading the article, I was ranting. My husband happened to walk into my home office just then, after I had printed the post and scrawled my comments all over it. I looked up at him and said, “Can I just talk for the next 5 minutes?”

When I’d finished my rant, I realized that I had finally summed up the essence of my defining beliefs in this area. And when I went back over my notes I found 15 distinct ideas that I knew I had to write about.

In this first post of the series, I want to begin taking apart the Jekyll and Hyde metaphor for self-discpline and show you why it’s so very damaging and why we MUST outgrow it in order to create truly healthy, encouraging relationships with ourselves.

Mr. Hyde is an icon for our fear of what’s inside us.

Most of the people who use the image of Mr. Hyde these days do so pretty lightly. They sometimes paint him as a kind of trickster or mischief or someone who just enjoys going against our decided course of action and messing things up.

But his image is actually much darker.

The reason that Robert Louis Stevenson’s original book was so powerful, and so horribly fascinating, in 1886 was that Mr. Hyde was a character of pure evil with no human mixture of both good and bad. Other characters felt disgust for him immediately without being able to say why.

There’s no middle ground with Hyde. No gray area. He’s all bad and he lurks within. The idea that there might be something that dark in us brings up as much fear now as it did when the book was first published.

And the thing about an icon is that the mere mention of it calls up everything it represents in our subsconscious, whether we remember it consciously or not.

So every time we invoke him, we’re telling ourselves there’s something in us to be very afraid of. And that shuts down all our impulses to explore our inner world.

Hyde is also an icon for the “inner enemy”.

This image puts us into a battle with something inside us that we can’t quite see or name.

It creates a constant tension, an “us and them” mentality within our very self that means we need to constantly use our energy to keep up the fight and keep our unknown enemy from winning.

As some of you know, it’s the battle metaphors that really set my teeth on edge when it comes to working with resistance.

And that’s one more reason that I truly hate this image. It consigns us to a lifetime of using up all our energy in a battle with something that will never go away.

So now, let me tell you 2 things very, very clearly:
(This is where my rant really picks up steam!)

#1 – NOTHING in you has EVER been your enemy!

Read that again and let it really sink in.

EVERY single impulse you’ve ever had, EVERY action you’ve ever taken, EVERY behaviour you’ve ever engaged in, even the darkest ones you can think of, have been in the service of your ultimate protection, survival and ability to meet your needs and thrive.

There’s nothing in you to fight against.

There are definitely parts of you that believe that going towards your stated desires and intentions won’t be safe for you. And they’ll get in your way if they think they must.

And there are also more instinctive parts of you that might not want to act in accordance with your higher intentions. They’re more like children that simply need a parent around for firm direction.

But what these parts are calling for is deep questioning, compassion and understanding in order to address the buried fears, impulses and safety needs.

As soon as they’re brought into your awarness, you get to meet them in the best way you can and move forward without a battle.

What would it feel like to relax into a deep knowing that every single part of you is working for you and can be trusted and guided?

And what if you knew that, far from trying to mess with you and thwart you, these parts of you actually WANT you to show up in all your loving awareness and bring the guidance and healing they need?

How would that change your relationship with them?

And now for the second place where Hyde misses the mark:

#2 – You have NO bad parts!

Read that again, slowly, and breathe.

You only have qualities that have been buried, wounded or thwarted into less than constructive and beautiful expressions of themselves.

And what they need is not more denial and ignoring. Their thwarted expressions and behaviours begin to transform with even the slightest amounts of love and attention.

But when we grab hold of a metaphor that makes us fear, mistrust and ignore these parts of ourselves, we close down all possibility for real dialogue and healing to happen.

We need a metaphor that encourages exploring and deep inner friendship.

 I’m not sure what that metaphor would be right now, but I sure as heck want to see Jekyll and Hyde replaced permanently!

For me, this quest to understand and guide all the parts of me is really more like a treasure hunt. And the treasure is what our denied parts become when they’re honoured and allowed to find balanced expressions in our lives.

What are your metaphors for YOUR inner parts or your resistance? How do they work for you?

What do you feel when you think of the Jekyll and Hyde metaphor and what would you like to feel about these parts of yourself?

I really want to hear your thoughts and ideas below. Please share a comment! I’d love to see this whole conversation evolve over the next few weeks and months as I share the next installments of “the rant”.

And if you’d like to receive the next posts by email, just sign up here: Fresh Updates

You might also like these:

1. Beyond Repression – Making Space for Your Irrational Beauty
2. When Fear Makes Our World Smaller
3. Right Sizing Our Metaphors For Maximum Progress

Oh, no! by Charlie Donahue

Coaches generally tend look forward not back. It’s therapists who dig into the past. And the coaching profession is pretty careful to distinguish themselves from therapists.

My work has evolved exactly at the intersection of coaching and therapy because I’ve discovered that both ingredients are essential when dealing with resistance.

I know plenty of coaches who want to tear their hair out over clients who simply WILL NOT take an assigned or even a self-chosen action, as a part of their weekly homework agreement.

And this illustrates the very essence of the difficulty with resistance.

Many coaches find themselves hugely frustrated and doubting their own abilities when resistance rears up in a client, because nothing they do seems to be able to move the coachee into action.

• Motivation and inspiration don’t work.
• Chiding and disapproval from the coach only make it worse.
• Pointing out the consequences of non-action doesn’t work.
• Cognitive approaches to change thinking aren’t effective
• And behavioral approaches to just change the actions don’t work well either.

In short, the client can’t respond to any of these approaches because, when resistance takes over, they’re no longer in full conscious control of their actions.

When it comes to resistance, we’re dealing with an internal part of us, our amygdala or safety brain, that has the ability to completely switch off our awareness and our thinking brain in order to protect us. This is how we end up standing in front of the fridge with the door open and not quite sure how we got there!

Changing habits or focusing only on current actions doesn’t work here, because before we can even think about it, our thinking gets switched off and we end up suddenly in front of the TV or cleaning the house or something equally distracting.

And we only remember what we had intended to do at times when there’s no way we can actually do it, like just before going to sleep.

I keep recalling what a client said after a session several months ago. She said every time she tried to think about what she wanted to do her brain “just skittered away somewhere.” That’s the safety brain shutting the door to the neocortex and our thinking ability.

Coaching works when it’s just a matter of choosing an action and doing it. No problem.

But, at the moment when resistance surfaces, coaching fails and that’s when therapy works.

Because the whole reason the brain is being shut off is due to a forgotten danger and usually a buried wound or childhood pain. And the protective self is actually working to keep us from the dual hurts of both remembering it and possibly repeating it with our current actions.

And the safety brain is VERY invested in keeping the reasons for its distracting, obscuring behaviour buried.

So when you initially ask yourself what the obstacle is, you’ll almost never get a truthful answer. You’ll get  layers of smokescreen from the mind. (The body and the emotions will be more honest.)

Resistance is so powerful because a part of us is afraid to even remember what’s actually in the way.

This leaves us playing a convoluted game of “guess where the block is” and our safety brain is like the carnie who makes sure the truth is never in the cup we look under.

But when someone makes a strong compassionate container for us (like a coach or therapist), it becomes safe to remember and these buried triggers can actually be healed surprisingly quickly, perhaps in just hours or days, without years of therapy.

And I think that’s what scares people the most, is the idea that any deep remembrance of childhood pain will send us reeling into years of therapeutic interventions. And that’s just not what happens.

Most of the buried events that our safety brain is holding onto can be felt and released very gently and quickly.

They simply need to be processed through our conscious mind.

As soon as we’ve done that, they stop being an invisible boogey-man. I’ve started to think that, once the buried trigger is made conscious, the safety brain can finally relax about trying to warn us about it. Just the way everyone in the room relaxes when a secret finally comes out. I think it’s like that.

And looking back doesn’t have to mean getting sucked into the quicksand of all our old wounds and issues.

Something I’ve observed over 12 years of working with clients is that this look at the past is most effective WITHIN the context of who we’re becoming and who we’ve come here to be.

This is soul stuff and not everyone wants to go there. But without this context, we can quickly end up bogged down in old hurts and regrets and “if-only’s”.

The soul perspective acknowledges that every piece of the journey has a purpose and is taking us toward our destination. And connecting with and supporting this evolutionary process keeps us from getting obsessed with our past or stuck in a victim role.

So even though transforming resistance requires a look into our past, it’s not nearly as scary as you might think.

And there’s a deep, deep wisdom underneath each obstacle that will leave you smiling in appreciation of your loving safety brain.

And you can use all that energy that’s been tied up in the struggle as fuel for your journey forward.

..

Where has resistance shown up for you?

I’d love to hear how you’ve experienced resistance in yourself or in those around you. (You can change names to be kind to those you love.) Where are the stubborn places that you’ve been the MOST blocked? Let us know in the comments below.

You might also like these:

1. Why Your Resistance is Perfect
2. Beyond Jekyll & Hyde – Outgrowing our fear of ourselves
3. How to Become Immune to Your Resistance

Garrison Keillor, author of The Prairie Home Companion and host of the radio show of the same name,  said the most brilliant thing about writer’s block, and it sheds a lot of light on the “I don’t feel like it” bug.

He said (and I’m paraphrasing here) that there’s no such thing as writer’s block and that we never, ever hear about surgeon’s block or bricklayer’s block, etc, etc.

Can you imaging a surgeon showing up for work and saying that they can’t operate today, that they just don’t “feel right”?! Never!

Garrison says that writer’s block comes from writers putting pressure on themselves to create at a level beyond their current abilities.

So whatever we’re working on, it’s as though we’re always looking for that “perfect state” that will cause our work to turn out like a master’s, even though our skill level can’t take us there yet. It’s kind of a fantasy, really.

And we have to remember that the masters became masters by showing up to their craft every day no matter how they felt.

I believe that “I don’t feel like it” is often a code phrase that means “I’m afraid this won’t be good enough”.

And then, in order to avoid facing our sense of not feeling like we’re good enough, we buy the reasoning that it’s all because of our current state and if we wait until later we’ll magically be good enough then! (Even though by not doing it now, we’re throwing away any possible chance of improving our skills for “later”.)

That’s some kind of crazy reasoning!

So what to do?

I’ve found 2 things helpful:

1) Get good at being able to sit with the feelings that are sitting just under the surface of “I don’t feel like it.”

Make sitting with the feelings part of your action step on whatever you’re moving towards. Give yourself a time limit at first – no more than 30 seconds, if that’s all you can take. Work your way up to 5  minutes and those feelings will permanently stop holding so much power over you.

2) Slow WAY down and do each step or action as though it’s simply for it’s own sake.

When you get extremely present with what you’re doing at this moment, and you start to notice the subtle sensations and nuances of the task itself, there’s no room to be making moment to moment calculations of whether it’s any good.

And remember, this is supposed to be the thing you love, the thing you want…right?

Lastly, take a good solid look, like Garrison says, at your exact skill level right now and be honest about how good you can expect anything to be at this moment in time. And then let that be completely OK!

And now ask yourself – do I still want to get better at it? And if you do, make a choice to practice or take an action just for the joy of getting better at it.

How has this pressure to be better played out in your life? Share your thoughts, questions and comments below.

And if you missed it, you can still catch the free e-course, called Ignite Your Desires to take full advantage of the energy boost we’re getting this week when the planet Mars goes direct starting late Tuesday.

You might also like these:

1. The Myth of “I don’t feel like it” (Part I)
2. The Curse of “You should know better”
3. Secret Fuel to Overthrow Temptation

I’ve been watching a particularly subtle but aggressive form of resistance in myself over the last week or so.

It’s the dreaded “I don’t feel like it” fog. Do you ever get that?

I’ve been studying it for a while now and I’ve come to the conclusion that it  starts at the crossroads of deep caring and emotional need.

Today we’re going to talk about the caring in Part I, and I’ll show you what I mean about the need in Part II.

So why would caring about something lead to not wanting to do it?

When we care a lot about what we’re doing, we don’t want to put any negative energy or emotions into it. We don’t want to “mess it up”.

I think more and more of us are understanding that the energy we put into things matters and that it actually is felt by others when our creations go out into the world.

And this applies just as much to stuff no one will ever see, like practicing our music at home. The key is – we want it to be GOOD.

So when I sit down at my computer to write a blog post, and I just had a snarky exchange with my husband, well, I don’t want to put any of THAT in my writing. I’m just sure you’ll all feel it!

So in order to put my best work out into the world and share the “right” kind of energy, I’ll be kind to everyone and keep my snarky energy to myself and wait until I’m feeling better to do this. (Which is probably why I didn’t post for 3 weeks!)

So this is really a loving impulse….until your resistance gets a hold of it!

The minute you set up a standard around an action that says you only want to put “good” energy into it, and therefore you’ll do it only when you feel  “good”, you leave the door wide open for your resistance.

Because now, all it has to do to stop you from doing something, is make sure you don’t feel “good”.

And we have to remember that our unconscious safety brain, where our resistance comes from, has control of our thoughts and emotions first, before our conscious brain has anything to say about it. So if your resistance thinks your next action might take you a little out of your comfort zone, it just pulls up a little negative emotion and Voila – action thwarted!

So how do we get around this?

Have you ever watched a child change emotions in about 2 seconds? They can be in full out tantrum one second and then in total wonder over something that caught their eye in the next.

We all have the ability to do that. I was once given an assignment by my teacher to conjure up the states of joy, sadness, fear, anger, grief, anxiety – as many different ones as I could think of in just a few minutes. (She dared us to do it, actually, and I’m always spurred on by a good dare!) And it worked. I had WAY more conscious control over my emotional states than I ever imagined.

I remembered that exercise this past week, watching the “I don’t feel like it” fog roll in and out. So I made a big decision…

I decided that from now on I’m going to choose the state that matches my task, instead of choosing the task that matches my state.

Read that again.

Choose the state that matches your task, instead of choosing the task that matches your state.

When this dawned on me, I realized that I didn’t have to be held prisoner by whatever energy or emotion I happen to be in. So from now on, I choose what I feel like. Or at least that’s what I’m aiming for.

Want to try it with me?….I dare you!

And leave a comment below to let me know how it goes or tell us how your states are affecting what you do in your day.

If you enjoyed this article, sign up to get new posts by email or in a feed reader here – Subscribe.

You might also like these:

1. The Myth of “I don’t feel like it” (Part 2)
2. What’s Colouring Your World?
3. Secret Fuel to Overthrow Temptation

Seth Godin just released his new book called Linchpin – Are You Indispensible? and from what I’m hearing it’s  another great offering. And lucky for us, he spends a significant number of pages on the concept of resistance and the lizard brain – what we here at The Heart’s Voice call the “safety brain”, the source of our resistance and defenses.

And suddenly everyone is talking about it! Up until now doing a Google search on the term “resistance” would mostly generate pages only a licensed electrician would understand.

In a recent guest post on Leo Babauta’s  Zen Habits Blog, Seth says this at the very end:

The resistance is powerful, so powerful that all the shortcuts, time savers and focusing tools are powerless in its path. Now you know its name. Now you know how it sneaks in under the radar and sounds quite sensible as it undermines your work and compromises your vision. When the resistance appears, you must call it out. Call it by name. Recognize it for what it is and then defeat it. You will defeat it not by rationalization or even a calm discussion. You will defeat it with single-minded effort, effort so deep and dedicated that it might exhaust you.

So what is it about dealing with resistance that’s so exhausting? And does it have to be this way?

And the answer is – it’s awareness and intention that require so much of our energy when we’re trying to get past our own resistance. And I’m convinced, through my own direct experience and that of others, that any one of us can learn the skills to handle our resistance much more easily!

If you’ve ever done any kind of mindfulness practice – breathing, a mantra, yoga or meditation – you know that it takes energy to watch your thoughts, your state or your body.  And it takes energy to stay awake and to notice when you’ve strayed from being present. And it takes energy to bring yourself back to the practice again.

We can expend a lot of energy just being aware and holding our intention.

And that’s just for 20 or 60 minutes or so. Magnify that by the weeks or months that it might take to complete a project that we’re resisting, and we can see the huge amount of energy that it takes to be present and focused for that long.

Add to that the fact that our resistance is constantly trying to derail us from our goal in order to keep us safe from some imagined danger, and we can see how much energy this takes when we approach it like a battle!

So can we ever really defeat our resistance?

And I would say that the answer is no…and yes.

Bottom line, no one can be alive without their amygdala, or their “lizard brain”. So, no, we never really defeat it entirely. And it’s actually designed to shut off access to our logic and left brain functions in order to take over and get us to safety.

Our brains were perfectly designed so that when a sabre-tooth tiger strolled into our village, we didn’t spend any precious escape time wondering whether to run to the left or right. The adrenaline closes a gate to our logic brain and simply reacts – fight, flight or freeze.

That’s why we call resistance “sneaky” – because it’s designed to act in a way that prevents us from being consciously aware of what it’s doing. And that’s also why we often don’t see what it’s done except through hindsight – our left brain is quite literally disconnected while our safety brain is operating. At least it is until we have some practice.

So what’s the antidote to struggling with resistance?
Awareness.

Conscious awareness is the single only thing that trumps resistance.

It’s entirely possible to be focused on our goal and feel our resistance come up, and notice the adrenaline firing, and notice the biological cascade of symptoms that follows, and feel the emotions and hear the thoughts, all bent on stopping our current course of action….and not react at all.

I know this because I’ve done it. And my clients and many of my friends have done it. And most long time meditators can do it.

And that’s because of awareness.

Think of awareness like a space you’re standing in. And think of your resistance like an agitated squirrel.

When you’re trapped in a 3×3 ft closet with your resistance, it’s pretty hard not to react to it. When we haven’t had a lot of practice developing our awareness and our capacity to not react, our inner space feels pretty tight and it takes enormous energy to stay detached and focused in that tiny space.

Now imagine standing in the center of a football stadium with the same agitated squirrel. You’d be WAY less affected by it. You could easily hold your focus and your intention, stay on a task you were doing, and not be bothered much by it. And it would hardly take you any energy at all.

That’s the power of awareness and that’s when resistance stops being exhausting!

So anything that increases your awareness will decrease the energy it takes to get past your resistance. And there are literally hundreds of ways to increase awareness and, for the first time in history, without needing to spend years in a mystery school, they’re widely available at a bookstore near you!

And I believe there are some really exciting things that become possible when lots of us gain this kind of awareness, and we’ll explore those in the next post.

I’d really love to hear your thoughts, feedback and experience with this idea. Please join the discussion in the comments below.

If you’d like to sign up to get the next installment by email or in a feed reader, you can subscribe. And if you’d like to learn 3 practices that will help you cultivate more awareness and detachment with your own resistance, you can download my free e-book.

You might also like these:

1. When Fear Makes Our World Smaller
2. Why Traditional Coaching is No Match for Resistance
3. Is Being a ‘Visionary’ One of Your Resistance Strategies?

Is this what your obstacle looks like?

I read a very interesting post on Steven Pressfield’s blog yesterday where he compares battling his resistance to wrestling an  alligator.

(I’ve referred to Steven’s ground breaking book on resistance in a previous post called Resistance is Your Soul’s Compass.)

He says:

Sometimes the beast is a cute little cayman. I can clamp his jaws shut with my left hand, grab him by the tail with my right. It’s no problem to wrap him up and get him into the trunk of the car.

But sometimes that gator gets a little bigger. Right now, in the project I’m working on, he outweighs me by eighty pounds and he’s kicking my ass.

We can see clearly here how his metaphor for his resistance to writing changes over time and according to what he’s working on. He goes on to describe the recent gator as a huge, prehistoric, invulnerable beast that sees him as nothing but lunch meat.

And this really got me thinking and asking…

What good is a resistance metaphor I can barely beat?

When I first read Steven’s post I thought “Whoa! A metaphor that big is just setting us up for defeat. Why not make it smaller?”

In fact I was going to write this post about how to make our obstacles seem smaller by making our metaphors and our images of them smaller. (And sometimes that can really work in our favour!)

But then it started to sink in, what Steven is describing here.

Sometimes what we’re up against is BIG!

And generally, knowing that up front is a good thing. What’s that old  line about “never bring a knife to a gun fight”?

Now I usually try to avoid battle and war images of all kinds when I’m talking about resistance. I’m really trying to change the mindset out there from one of battle to one of welcoming it’s wisdom and evolving beyond it’s power.

But Steven’s really got me appreciating the fact that sometimes we need to know the scope of what we’re dealing with, so we can take appropriate measures.

There’s no such thing as “casual” when it comes to a 200 lb ‘gator

So when our resistance is being extra sneaky, extra vigilant against our progress, and extra strong, we need to get stronger to match it.

How do we do that?

Here are a few ways to get stronger so you can keep moving toward what you really want:

1.  Strengthen your awareness – of your resistance and it’s strategies and where you do and don’t fall prey to them. Get good at noticing your state. Track patterns and even keep a log of progress and stuckness so you can understand it’s top tricks and catch resistance in the act faster and faster.

2.  Strengthen your desire – for what you want, your dream, your project. Spend some time with it – imagining it, breathing with it until you can really FEEL the longing for it. That’s powerful, resistance-transforming juju.

3.  Strengthen your structures – Look at the routines, habits and systems in your life and in your environment. Are they strong enough to help hold you on course or are they derailing you and leaving back doors wide open for resistance to crash through?

4.  Strengthen your metaphors - Make sure your metaphors for things like your resistance and your path forward are really working for you.How do see them? What are the images and stories you use to talk about them to yourself and others? Are these helping or hurting your progress?

And finally, is your metaphor for resistance the right size?

Big enough to take seriously and yet small enough to not feel overwhelmed and defeated by it before you even start.

What ARE your metaphors for resistance? I’d love to hear them below!

And if you enjoyed this article, and you’re not signed up yet, go ahead and subscribe to receive free updates by email or in a reader.

To your deepening journey.

You might also like these:

1. Beyond Jekyll & Hyde – Outgrowing our fear of ourselves
2. We’re the Golden Kids
3. When Fear Makes Our World Smaller

I’m starting to find out what kind of fun things can happen through blogging!

Some of you may remember that I wrote a post earlier this year about Steven Pressfield’s book The War of Art.

It’s a truly brilliant journey into all aspects of our inner resistance and all the ways that it tries  to keep us from the desires that are closest to our heart.

It’s written through Steven’s journey as a writer through all the years that he tried to resist his calling and his art and how he still faces it every day before he sits down to actually write. And it’s incredibly complete and insightful.

Well, a little while after that, I got an email from Steven Pressfield’s publicist. Just that alone, plus the fact that she liked the post, was pretty cool.

And then she offered me the chance to have a written dialogue with Steven himself! But I need your help.

I get to ask Steven Pressfield any three questions I want about the War of Art and resistance and receive his answers in writing and share them with you! Wow!

Then, of course, my very next thought was, “OMG, what three questions will I ask?”

So I’m putting it out to you. Help me figure out what three questions to ask Steven Pressfield about resistance.

You don’t have to even have read the book to come up with a question. I’m sure you’re pretty familiar with the ins and outs of your own resistance. Think of what you’d like to ask someone who has struggled with resistance and triumphed.

And, just to make it juicy, I think I’ll throw in a bonus 1 hour teleclass  on resistance for everyone who submits a question.

(and if you can’t make it you’ll get the recording anyway.)

So go ahead. Submit your ideas below. My motto is “there’s no such thing as a stupid question”. All questions open doors. I can’t wait to see your ideas.

(And if you want to stay in the loop when Steven sends back his answers, go ahead and subscribe to receive free updates by email or in a reader.)

You might also like these:

1. Resistance is Your Soul’s Compass
2. Right Sizing Our Metaphors For Maximum Progress

Many years ago my teacher told this story in a class I attended.

She said “Imagine there was a game being played and there were two teams.

The first team is The Golden Kids and they have every gift, every talent, everything they need to win this game hands down.”

“Now imagine that you’re on the other team. How do you beat them?”

She paused while she let us consider how we would do that. And then she answered:

“You make them doubt who they really are.”

In this metaphor of course, we’re the Golden Kids. We have every gift, every talent, every ability we need to succeed in life.

But this is a world of duality – and that means there are two sides, two polarities to everything. Good and evil, light and dark, fast and slow.

And in this world of duality, there’s always energy moving toward and away from each polarity.

So there’s energy that’s moving toward compassion and away from it, toward goodness and away from it, toward fear and away from it.

I prefer not to get all hung up on labeling anything that’s moving away from goodness as “evil”. It’s just energy and it’s going where it’s going.

A mosquito isn’t “evil” for wanting my blood for it’s life cycle, it’s just doing what it does. That’s it’s nature.

So in this metaphor, if we’re The Golden Kids, we need to get smart about the fact that there’s energy working against whatever we’re working towards.

But in our society, we’ve learned to take opposition very personally from the time that we’re little.

Now you know how soft-hearted I am by nature, and I do believe that our sensitive responses to opposition need to be listened to with great compassion.

AND…in my own journey I’ve found it so very helpful to understand this metaphor about opposing energy so I don’t need to take it so personally.

So a lot of that stuff we experience inside and call us? The doubt, the fear, the anxiety, the worry, the emotions, the whispered judgments, etc, etc, etc.

That’s just the other team using everything they’ve got to talk The Golden Kids out of remembering who they really are!

How does this metaphor land with you? I’d love to hear your feedback.

You might also like these:

1. Beyond Jekyll & Hyde – Outgrowing our fear of ourselves

I’ve been really focused on a couple of major writing projects these days. And maybe it’s just the fact that I’m at my computer all day, but I’ve also been doing a lot more reading online, clicking links and just generally exploring as I love to do.

I’ve been watching how I’m walking the line between reading just enough stuff out there to keep me motivated for my own work vs letting the exploring cross the line into “avoiding writing” territory. A few avoidance moments, but not too many to throw me off track completely, so I’ll go with it.

And today, I got into some really cool and interesting stuff about designing online learning programs at ‘Teaching Sells.com‘. Seemed more motivational than avoidance, and I was definitely getting pretty fired up about new possibilities for sharing with people.

I stopped to make lunch, my head starting to swirl with new visions,product ideas, ways to create support & community, and suddenly it struck me…

I’ve done this before!

I could immediately think of several times when I’ve been tightly focused on my website, or an e-book or improving something current, and I’ve been “exploring” and suddenly found myself in ‘Visionary’ mode, all inspired and looking down the road at a future full of possibilities.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever done Marcus Buckingham’s Strength’s Finder, but one of my top strengths is ‘Ideation’, the process of coming up with new ideas.

I LOVE this part!

I get all excited, I grab a pen and paper, or open a new Word doc and start writing frantically, capturing as much as I can of the vision while I have it.

And, to my credit, a lot of my current stuff is coming from re-visiting writing I did years ago in just such a state. (Fortunately, I’ve kept absolutely everything!)

But what I can suddenly see with jolting clarity, is how many times I’ve turfed the current project I was tightly focused on for the excitement of the new idea and vision.

I’d say it’s been a crap shoot over time, a 50/50 chance, that I would actually get back to what I was working on and finish it completely.

And, when I REALLY look at this pattern (Yikes!) I realize that there were whole areas of expertise that I was ready to share that I threw out the window just before they were ready.

OK, breathe. Now breathe compassion to the horrified part of me.

I know that all the things I’ve ever worked on were stepping stones to what I’m doing now, and I still have all the writing I did on them, so all is not lost.

But what I think I really lost was the opportunity to experience success with each one of those. To bring them to fruition and know the sweetness of the completion and the harvest.

And I think I missed out on a way of seeing myself in the light of those successes that would have me in a different place in my life now.

And then, of course, with compassion, I know I’m in the exact right place right now, and I do have a deep feeling that couldn’t have claimed this new way of seeing myself any earlier that I have.

We get it when we get it. And not a moment before.

But now, please excuse me while I get back to my writing!

How about you? Does being a visionary every get in your way?
Join in the dialogue below.

You might also like these:

1. Resistance is Your Soul’s Compass
2. How to Become Immune to Your Resistance
3. Learning From Remorse Without Having a Self Pity Festival