500 Words a Week - Overcoming Resistance
Frustration or resistance as Steven Pressfield would call it, is something we encounter with every endeavour. As I try to write more, I feel I get a better understanding of what this resistance is. You sit down at your desk, open the laptop, open the project you are working on or a blank word document and you stare. You stare waiting and hoping that something will happen. Willing inspiration to strike. The first 20-30 minutes are always the hardest, they are the moments when your mind begins to start commenting “why bother”, “what’s the point”, “you’re not feeling it today”. It’s easy to succumb to these thoughts, but if we do, we get nowhere. I’m sure in your own struggles with your work or in trying to achieve something, you face your own battle with resistance. You have had your own internal dialogue of “why bother?”
The path on any journey is paved with frustrations, particularly in the beginning. Frustrations over our no or slow progress. It’s disheartening. We feel we are getting nowhere. How we respond towards this frustration or resistance determines how far we will go. If we continuously give up when we first encounter it, we will go nowhere.
Working within high performance sports for several years, what inspired me the most from the athletes I worked with was their tenacity to show up everyday, and try to get that little bit better each and every day. Some days things didn’t go well, there were setbacks, injuries, losses or decisions that didn’t go their way. But it’s those who just kept showing up who were rewarded for their efforts. It’s something that inspired me to try and do things on my own accord. As I saw many individuals over the previous number of years pursuing their own dreams and ambitions.
Nothing in life is a linear process. The path is made of mountains and valleys, of turning back on ourselves to ultimately move forward. Those who give up at the first sign of things moving astray or the early frustration of no/slow progress are those who never make it along their path.
This is my current battle with my endeavour, there are great weeks and there are quiet weeks. It’s the process of not letting the quiet or slow weeks deter us in what we are ultimately aiming towards. You may feel similar in your endeavour, there are good days and bad. We feel the pain of bad days far more than the joy of the good, but we can’t allow that to stop us.
Each day is about making a simple decision, to keep putting the next tentative step forward on our intended path. Regardless of the bad days, or even the bad weeks, we just keep attempting at least to move forward. To move past that point of frustration and resistance. At the bare minimum we just keep showing up.
