I don't know if you've ever experienced this, but sometimes it seems like the more you want something in life, the tougher it gets.
This seems to be the case with starting a business or writing a book or any of these big life plans we always dream about. Seems like the more we fantasize about these types of things, the more we procrastinate doing anything about them.
But there's a very specific reason for this and it is brilliantly explained in probably one of the best books I have ever read in my life called, "The War of Art" by Steven Pressfield.
So in this book, Steven Pressfield explains that there is a psychological force that is working against you every single day of your life and is intimately involved in every decision that you make whether you're aware of it or not.
And the sole purpose of this force is to keep you from reaching your potential, it's called resistance.
Now whether we've called it resistance or not, we've all felt it usually in the form of its sort of internal tension that you feel whenever you think about doing something constructive whether it's picking up a paintbrush to start painting or opening the Word doc to start writing the essay you've been procrastinating forever, resistance will be there to rear its ugly head because resistance prevents progression.
If there were no such thing as resistance, we would all be living according to our highest ideals. If we knew it was our mission to write a book, we would just start writing.
If we knew that it was in our best interest to do cardio, sail faster on ice when we played hockey, we would just do cardio, whenever we thought of it, we would just do cardio, there would be nothing stopping us.
But unfortunately, every single time we think about doing something constructive, resistance starts to inject itself into our being without us even realizing it. It's an automatic process and it happens every single time.
So for example, pretend you're wasting time playing X-Box or something and you've been playing for a couple of hours and the thought dawns on you to go to the gym because it's Monday and Monday's international Chest Day or religious holiday and you really should hit the chest, it's the right thing to do.
But since it's the right thing to do and it is integral for your growth as a human being, at least in that area of life, you will encounter resistance.
First, it usually takes the form of physical discomfort. When you think about going to the gym while you're wasting time on X-Box, the thought of going to the gym becomes very physically uncomfortable.
You start to tense up, you start to win set the thought of doing something more uncomfortable than the thing you're currently doing, which is interesting because once you're actually at the gym, it's not that bad.
It's pretty fun and you feel fulfilled and you feel like you're accomplishing something but at that moment, when you're wasting time going to the gym seems like a monster.
It seems like something you don't want to do, that is resistance. And since human beings like to stay intellectually consistent, resistance will start to creep into your mind in the form of rationalization.
You need any sort of good reason not to encounter this physical pain of going to the gym. Maybe you think about the fact that since it's Monday and International Chest Day, everybody is going to be doing chest on Monday.
So there's gonna be a huge lineup for the bench press.
Besides, you went to the gym last week and it takes a lot longer than one week for you to lose all your gains and for your muscles to deteriorate so it's probably not a big deal if you just skip this week.
You've been pretty good up until this point and you kind of deserve a break. Maybe you're familiar with this type of pattern of thinking and it's actually really common and it's resistant but here's something I find a little bit more disturbing.
It seems like the more important something is for your growth as a human being, the more powerful resistance will be stopping you from doing it.
And as I've started to reread "The War Art" by Steven Pressfield, I start to realize that this type of thinking is just resistance.
Resistance never goes away.
You always hear about famous singers and performers and comedians who still get nervous before they go on stage. They encounter resistance even though they've been doing it for decades even. So what's their response.
So they just do not go on stage. Of course not, their careers will be over but what the most successful people do instead is they get really good at automatically breaking past this resistance as it presents itself.
And the better you get at doing this, the more efficient you'll be at doing the right thing instead of the comfortable thing.
Because when you just sit down to write or when you just put on the running shoes or when you just hit record, something magical happens, words start to flow, endorphins start to run, inspiration starts to magically descend upon you, and all the pieces sort of fall together.
The proper response to resistance is to just start the thing anyways. Once you start realizing that whatever rationalizations you have for not doing the thing you know you have to do is just resistance.
You can gain the mental clarity to just do the thing anyway. And as you become more familiar with resistance and seeing it for what it is, you can start to use resistance as a guide.
Since resistance is most powerful, the more important something is, it's a great compass leading you to where you need to go. And as you win these battles with resistance, day by day, month by month, and year by year, the life you live will become bigger than the unlived life within you.
And you'll eventually start living the kind of life you want to be living.
Thank you for spending your time here, I Appreciated it.
Update:
We will post about our project soon.
