You know what you’re supposed to do. We all do.
Each and every one of us is packed to the gills with helpful advice.
Why is it that we just can’t sink our teeth in to these habits or find any headway in cultivating our lives, the way we say that we want to?
There are two schools of thought on this matter.
1. Using your resistance as a teacher
We are talking about those moments where we think we should do something, and, yet, a very firm no bubbles up out of our intuition. It’s our desire to walk, even when we know all the fit kids are training for a half-marathon, or when we think that we should drink a green smoothie every morning, only to find ourselves overcome with a craving for eggs.
The moments when we are able to see that our path might not look like the path that other people are on, and that’s OK.
This school of thought focuses more on the journey, and less on quantifiable results.
2. Feeling the pain + doing it anyway
This school of thought will have you persevering through any feeling of resistance or obstacle that pops up in your way. This is the school of getting shit done, no matter how you do it. It is pedal to the metal.
This is the school of Results. With a capital R. The kind you can count, quantify, and show off at dinner parties.
It has no moment of pause for fear or anxiety or your body telling you to slow down.
The middle ground
It can be very difficult to unravel your stuff from your heart-felt, soul whisper of this actually just isn’t going to work for me. Many of my clients experience difficulty in overcoming the feeling that they are just not wanting to follow through on something, even something that they originally set out to do.
Change is uncomfortable. Real, life-altering transformation can be alternately exhilarating and terrifying.
Have you ever walked along the edge of a pond, feet in the water, only to find that what looked like a crystal clear body of water from the shore, becomes murky as sediment is kicked up under your feet?
Your experience with change can be much like that.
Never mind the disturbance in the pond when you’re running or skipping merrily, or engaging in a gleeful splashing competition with a loved one. Downright sludgy.
No matter how clear or pristine your life looks from the outside, change kicks up all of your sediment.
Murky. Mucky. Clouded.
Now, the sediment will settle, as you calm and retreat. The flurry of excitement and fear will not last forever.
But in the moment? Pure overwhelm. You can’t see the bottom! Your feet are sinking into the sand! There could be creatures down there – lurking, waiting to get you!
Change can be exactly like that.
This does not mean that change is always like mucking around in your old stuff, but in those moments – that is your resistance. Even though you know in your heart that the dust will settle – in the moment, your resistance tells you that the only way to restore order is to stop moving and back away slowly.
Pushing through your resistance has benefits, but so does trusting yourself.
The truth is – you will know, deep in your core, what separates your Resistance from an old-fashioned not good for you, bad idea.
Each and every one of us is different. Something that worked for me will not necessarily work for you. Something that one client gains amazing insight will not necessarily inspire another.
We are the best judges of what will work for us, and what will not.
The difference between Resistance and something that is decidedly not working can be found in the softening of your core, submitting to your own knowledge, and trusting that you already know the right answer.
It can be found in a quiet space, with your hand on your heart, and the desire to to know yourself better, more profoundly.
It is in the moments of seeing the sediment kicked up, and choosing not to be afraid.
It is in trusting that you deserve more. You deserve habits that make you feel like the best version of yourself, not ones that mimic what you read in Self Magazine. You deserve relationships that makes you feel alive and gorgeous, not one that keeps you chained up out of fear of being alone.
You deserve a relationship with yourself based in the utmost love and trust.
Refuse to accept anything less.
Very well said, great reminders in this post for me. It’s so easy at times to should on ourselves and to feel like we have to do what others are doing. But when you can look at it from a view of what serves your mind, body and soul and realize that at times the resistence is really about your fear of change then it makes it an entire different game!
We’re on the same page today…