Overcoming Resistance

Resistance is familiar to anyone who has pursued a creative endeavor. It is that comforting force of distraction in the face of a meaningful task. It’s calling friends, surfing the web, researching something random, browsing Amazon, and day dreaming when you know you should be doing something else.

In The War of Art, Steward Pressman shares:

Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.

Resistance is intimately related to being. The two form a partnership of polarity. On the one hand you have being with what is. On the other, avoiding discomfort. This is resistance.

Risk is uncomfortable. Learning something new is uncomfortable. Growth is uncomfortable. Even intimacy is uncomfortable.

Have you ever pulled back from a person because you were afraid of where it might go?

Resistance.

Have you ever dropped the ball on something important for some undefinable reason?

Resistance.

Have you ever told yourself you need to start meditating, dieting, or exercising? Over and over again, without actually doing it?

Resistance.

You cannot see it, you cannot touch it, and you can hardly define it. But it is absolutely real. The answer is not some special technique that gets rid of it. It is simply choosing to step into it willfully.

Elon Musk shares that he often feels a great deal of fear when he embarks on a new project. When starting Space X, he predicted that his odds of success were less than 10%. But he felt that even if he could move the field of space exploration forward a little bit, then someone else could pick up where he left off.

This is stepping into resistance for a higher purpose. This story reminds me of a beautiful passage from the Bhagavad Gita:

They live in freedom who have gone beyond the dualities of life. Competing with no one, they are alike in success and failure and content with whatever comes to them. They are free, without selfish attachments; their minds are fixed in knowledge. They perform all work in the spirit of service, and their karma is dissolved.

Aho.

Well, that sounds great in theory. But what about practice? Today’s video explores some specific techniques you can use to start winning the game. Please enjoy.