Individual actions, at their core, are often simple, but they can feel like large, complicated undertakings if they involve a change in our habitual patterns. Wake up at 6 A.M. Walk for 20 minutes. Drink herbal tea instead of coffee. These are all simple tasks I set for myself and have often failed to accomplish.
Why is something that looks easy on paper often difficult to actually do?
The answer, my friend, is resistance.
That bit of panic you feel when you contemplate the next step towards a big goal like, say, writing an eBook? That anxiety that overtakes you as soon as you sit down to write something? The distraction that plagues you daily, pushing your goal one day further away from reality?
The tasks themselves are simple, but resistance keeps us stuck, keeps us surfing the web, keeps us going to see what’s in the fridge or filling our time with the urgent things instead of the important.
I got tangled up in a nasty web of my resistance when I started writing my own eBook last spring. There were lots of sources for this resistance — beliefs about who I was, fear of becoming more visible through a launch and the pure unknown-ness of creating my own business and livelihood. When it came time to sit down and write words, finding the words wasn’t the problem — the resistance was.
Any creative endeavor, any good, juicy goal, comes with a dose of resistance — if for no other reason than because we have not gone down that road before. The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t, right? That’s what our “lizard brain” thinks — the part of us that’s wired for self-preservation but often stymies our efforts at progress.
But I’m the eBook expert, not the resistance expert, right? All these nuances of resistance came into perfect focus for me because I was listening to a teleclass given by an extremely talented coach and my friend, Susan Johnstone. Susan specializes in helping people work with their resistance. She’s a resistance-whisperer, gently coaxing out the awareness of your own unique patterns. Susan knows your resistance is trying to tell you something, if you listen.
In fact, the best way to escape the clutches of your resistance is to make friends with it.
That’s what I plan to learn how to do. Susan’s 5-week teleclass the Wisdom of Your Resistance starts next Tuesday, and she’s only taking 25 people — I’m really excited to be taking up one of them, it’s going to be a powerful experience. It’s just one of the many amazing tools she’s created to help people get out of their own way, gently. Susan’s also kindly agreed to do a teleclass with my next group of eBook Boot Camp participants, since the creative process is often ground zero for our resistance..
Maybe you don’t want no stinkin’ class, you wish there was a pill you could take that would placate your amygdala (aka lizard brain). Maybe you’re resistant to the idea making friends with your resistance instead of pounding it into submission. That’s totally understandable. Just know that it’s there, trying its best to protect you, and in doing so it might be keeping you from progress.
I want to explore more ideas around creativity and resistance here as I go through the course in the coming weeks, especially the myth of will power, because I think we beat ourselves up way too much when things don’t go as planned.
What is resistance doing to your progress?
What do you do when you it shows up to hold you back?
That sounds like a great class. Everyone fights resistance – both internal and external resistance.
When I you suffer from resistance when having to write something, my favorite tactic is to start with an outline. For an ebook, you could start with outlining the chapter topics. Then, outline the sub topics for each chapter. Once this outline is in blog, the ebook is just a series of bite size essays. This works like a charm for me.
I would love more info about your ebook bootcamp. I think the link is broken.
When do you think you will be doing another class?
Hi Glad, thanks for letting me know. The next boot camp is kicking off 8/30 – here’s the link: http://stickyebooks.com/ebook-bootcamp/
I have a bad tendency to over-complicate the process and become overwhelmed. I find it so much easier to get something done when it’s broken down for me into simple steps. I wrote my first ebook after reading an ebook by Melanie Mendelson called “24 hour ebook”. I have since decided my ebook is actually terrible, & would make a much better software program (I had to learn how to outsource on Rentacoder). I’m now writing a workbook to go with the software. I think the hardest part isn’t actually the writing or even the outsourcing, but really nailing down my marketing message. I don’t have a background in marketing or advertising, so that’s my biggest obstacle. How to write an ebook so it sort of has a big enough marketing message you can then spin it off into a whole line of other ebooks, products, brands, etc. That’s where most of my resistance is. If I could get a handle on my brand, my marketing message, I think the rest would fall into place easier? I don’t have a blog yet either, for that same reason.