In my line of work, I get to hear lots of stories from my clients about their resistance. They tell me all about how pathetic (they think) they are and all the creative ways that they’re finding to block their own path to what they want.
And to their great surprise, I smile. I feel a mixture of joy, hope and encouragement about this place they’ve reached in their quest.
This makes no sense to them. Why on earth would I be excited by this? They’re generally frustrated, depressed, angry or all of the above.
My response comes from the unique understanding I’ve gained about what our resistance and self-sabotage are really about. I’ve come to view them like a big golden “X marks the spot” and I get as excited as a pirate finding buried treasure!
Because that’s really what we’ve found – the treasure of your buried qualities and authentic self that, for whatever reason, weren’t OK or safe to express in your early years. By qualities I mean things like your confidence, passion, focus, clarity – anything you might say that you’re lacking in now.
And for some wonderful, Divine, incredibly intelligent reason, we seem to be wired up so that our deep desires are constantly calling us to reclaim these buried parts of ourselves. For example, the person who’s really shy keeps feeling an inner pull to help others through public speaking.
And when we meet our resistance, most of us respond by feeling badly about it in some way. We’ve never been taught that our resistance is simply the mechanism that keeps us safely in the status quo of our current identity.
So I get incredibly excited when we identify your resistance because I know that, if you keep following your desire, you’re about to get a beautiful gift. You’re about to reclaim a perfect part of yourself.
It really puts our change efforts in a whole new light doesn’t it?
I’ll be writing more in the coming weeks about our buried qualities, our desires and the call to transform ourselves, so stay tuned.
For now, try this idea on for a while and see if it softens your view of your resistance and makes pursuing your desires just a little more worthwhile!
